Conference Program

The educational provision of early childhood services (0–3) and preschools has long drawn on the spaces immediately surrounding educational settings as fundamental mediators of children's experience. Through the exploration of the local environment, educators and teachers support the acquisition of everyday competencies and knowledge, reconfiguring children's experiences within a structured horizon of meaning. Every space — corridors, threshold environments, shared areas, classrooms, courtyards and gardens within the service; streets, squares, shops and public parks beyond its walls — becomes an educational imprint within diversified, complex, and interrelated experiences (Bertolino & Guerra, 2021).

The establishment of the integrated system of education and care, designed to guarantee "all children, from birth to six years of age, equal opportunities to develop their potential for relationships, autonomy, creativity, and learning, in order to overcome inequalities and territorial, economic, ethnic, and cultural barriers" (Legislative Decree 65/2017), both affirms and radicalises this vision. The 0–6 Integrated System constitutes an educational continuum accompanying the child from birth to six years through an articulated network of services — from nurseries and micro-nurseries to spring sections, from supplementary services to state and accredited preschools — conceived in close interconnection with one another and with the wider community context. The system's core innovation lies in the Childhood Hubs (Poli per l'infanzia): shared spaces in which the 0–3 and 3–6 segments coexist, fostering educational continuity and the construction of a community of care and learning that brings together children, families, and educators within a shared project (Rosa, 2025).

The theoretical framework of this contribution integrates three complementary perspectives. The first is that of the Extended School (Scuola Estesa), which interprets educational continuity both vertically — between nursery and preschool — and horizontally (Mangione et al., 2025), between institution and territory, maximising local pedagogical traditions and transforming the integrated system into a permanent cultural resource for the entire community. The second is that of the Community Hub, which reframes 0–6 services as vital centres capable of generating social cohesion and connecting families, services, and local resources. The third is that of the Whole School Approach, a holistic strategy that engages all members of the educational community — staff, children, families, and the wider territory — in the shared construction of genuinely collaborative, supportive, and inclusive environments (Rosa, 2024).

The forms through which the integrated 0–6 system may be concretely configured are multiple, offering responses calibrated to the traditions, specificities, and needs of individual territories. The Puglia Region has in this respect developed a range of strategies that have been the subject of INDIRE research through case study methodology. The findings make it possible to identify models in which preschool educational provision takes shape as centres of social aggregation and learning ecosystems situated at the intersection of architecture, urban planning, and pedagogy, offering transferable insights for the development of territorial educational policy.