Conference Program

For decades, guidance has been framed as a strategic lever of educational policy, intended to prevent school delay and dropout, foster academic success, and align schooling with active labour market measures. Within this policy architecture, School-to-Work programs have been consolidated as structural devices designed to accompany students in constructing informed educational and professional trajectories.

Yet a persistent paradox underlies these initiatives: although students are their primary addressees, they are seldom involved in their design, evaluation, or reflective re-elaboration. Currently configured in Italy as Formazione Scuola-Lavoro (FSL), formerly PCTO, these pathways risk functioning as hetero-directed dispositifs in which aims, contents, and methodologies are predominantly defined by adults, while young people occupy a largely receptive role. Such a configuration appears particularly problematic if guidance is understood as a process aimed at strengthening agency, autonomy, and the capacity to attribute meaning to one’s own future. Marginalizing students’ voices may therefore undermine the emancipatory potential that guidance policies explicitly seek to promote.

This contribution draws on findings from the PRIN 2022 research project (Stanzione, 2025; Truffelli, Stanzione, Pagani, in press), which—grounded in the Student Voice framework and its conception of listening as both a democratic imperative and a driver of educational improvement—adopted a mixed-method design. The study involved 297 students across five Italian secondary schools in qualitative focus groups and collected survey data from 1,575 students, allowing for an integrated analysis of lived experiences and broader trends. By foregrounding their perspectives, the paper critically reinterprets School-to-Work programs through the voices of those most directly concerned yet often excluded from governance processes.

Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative evidence, the contribution reflects on how limited student involvement can constrain recognition, agency, and meaningful participation. Conversely, when students are acknowledged as legitimate co-constructors of their pathways, School-to-Work programs are more likely to operate as emancipatory spaces that expand capabilities, foster reflexivity, and contribute to more socially just educational trajectories.