Conference Program

This contribution explores the practice of observation not as a passive act, but as an active pedagogical and research tool aimed at fostering ecological postures (Guerra, 2019). Through experimentation and documentation - at the intersection of scientific rigor and aesthetic sensitivity (Guerra, 2020) - the act of observing is transformed into a relational framework that allows the "other" (whether human or non-human) to manifest in its own alterity. Recalling Mary Oliver’s poetic triad (“pay attention, be astonished, tell about it”, in Oliver, 2008), this approach outlines an educational posture where vivid attention becomes the premise for authentic ecological dwelling. The objective is to present observation as an exercise of slow looking (Tishamn, 2018) and in deep listening capable of unsettling the already known, promoting an education based on reciprocity and vital participation in the world. These are pivotal elements for a World-based Education that values the biodiversity of contexts and experiences (Persico, Guerra, Galimberti, eds., 2024; Luini, Persico, Galimberti, Guerra, eds. 2025). Exercising the gaze and giving back the experience through documentation—understood as a research device that transforms the encounter with the other into an open narrative—means inhabiting a framework of reciprocity that creates space for the biodiversity of both subjects and phenomena.