Conference Program

The contribution aims to position at the crossroads of issues concerning adult education and the pedagogy of work and organizations, from both an epistemological and methodological perspective. The rationale lies in the interest in the initial, and above all, continuous training of teachers who, as adults, require an approach oriented toward the interpretation of experiences and, consequently, the systems of meaning (Mezirow, 2003) of which they are carriers. Furthermore, this work intersects with the specificities of pedagogical research within organizational contexts by considering teachers as an integral part of the school environment; understood as a workplace, this setting can become a place for either the enhancement or depletion of learning processes (Alessandrini, 2004) and professional reflexivity.

The focus on teachers' professional reflexivity is observable internationally in reports highlighting the importance of promoting reflective thinking and well-being in both initial and continuing teacher education (OECD, 2025) to re-imagine education as a common goal (UNESCO, 2024). Within the Italian regulatory landscape, the guidelines for initial teacher training (DPCM, 2023) call for learning outcomes in terms of teachers' reflective and self-evaluative competencies, both in purely disciplinary fields and in the digital facilitation of students’ learning processes.

Reflective thinking as a driver for inquiry that liberates one from routine and impulsive action is a crucial theme in Dewey’s work, in which three key values of incorporating such thinking as an educational aim can be identified. In line with this perspective, Schön (2010) proposes an inquiry trajectory that centers on the cognitive activity engaging professionals – within the relationship between action and thought, starting from and in view of action (Baldacci et al., 2023) – and seeks a new epistemology of professions, challenging the concept of technical rationality.
Reflection on one’s own experiences plays a crucial role in activating career guidance practices, as the reflective act regarding one's life experiences can be configured as a moment in which one allows oneself to distance experiences from the self. This improves focus and, consequently, introduces “a level of self-awareness that increases the intensity of feeling” (Mortari, 2019, p. 129), capable of "awakening the awareness of the fragility of one's own being" (p. 150).
Based on these considerations, it is possible to identify the teacher's task of promoting the habitus of reflection by becoming an “intentional guide”, endowed with an ethical responsibility “in pursuing one of the primary tasks of the democratic school: to offer all students the tools and opportunities to position themselves, as adults and citizens, in a complex world” (Formenti et al., 2017, p. 76). This task resonates as a renewal of Morin’s warning: “the reflective attitude of the human mind, which enables it to consider itself by doubling itself, should be encouraged and stimulated in everyone” (Morin, 2000, p. 52).