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Conference Program

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

Daily Overview

Session

E.09. Spaces of Commons in Education: Learning Democracy through Practices of Togetherness (1/2)
Location: Scienze Politiche (CU002): Aula XII (Multimediale)

Convenor(s): Stelios Pantazidis (University of Thessaly, Greece); Yannis Pechtelidis (University of Thessaly, Greece)

Presentation 1

Libraries as a place for Educational Commons

Antoine Henry

Lille University, France

Inspired by the principles of Educational Commons (De Lissovoy, 2011; Pechtelidis, 2020), this research explores the evolving role of libraries in fostering learning environments that extend beyond the traditional confines of the school. It’s an opportunity for us to think about Education not only within schools, but also in other places where children can learn, experiment, contribute and share. Libraries are increasingly becoming vital social hubs and incubators for innovation, offering spaces for children and young people to learn, experiment, contribute, and share. This proposal investigates how these libraries are echoing the ideals of an Educational Commons, creating opportunities for participatory learning and community engagement.

This proposal will focus on two cases in France where libraries are experimenting innovative approaches related to educational commons. Their experiments contribute to the transformation of libraries as a social hub, further from their traditional missions:

With eXperium, Lilliad (Lille University Learning Center) is performing an important scientific mediation (more than 10 000 children were concerned) and transforming the way students are practising the library.
From its start, the Petite Bibliothèque Ronde is about children's literature and how to create a space for them. By actively involving artists and with people under constraints (children/people in detention facilities), the library is working on key concepts like democracy, inclusion and access to reading.

Libraries are deeply related to their territory meaning that this place could be an opportunity to create space where the initial “doing things together” also means creating spaces to rediscover this “common moral and political socialization of all children and young people.”(Laval, 2006) In this perspective, we are working on a “learning territory” (Gwiazdzinski & Cholat, 2019) where education performs within and outside School.