Conference Program

This contribution explores the educational potential of a civic atelier as a space for research and professional development for teachers. The reflection is based on the comparison of two short Teacher Professional Development Research (TPDR) pathways (Asquini, 2018; Dodman et al., 2025) involving a preschool section composed of children aged 5–6 and a primary school class with pupils aged 8–9.

In both experiences, teachers, an atelierista, and a researcher participated, giving rise to a reflective learning community. Throughout the activities, the experiences with the children were documented and reinterpreted through research and design tools, making it possible to revisit the experiences lived in the Atelier a Palazzo¹ and to relaunch them in educational and school contexts. In the preschool, the pathway was intertwined with section planning, while in the primary school it was connected to curricular subjects.

Over time, the concept of the atelier (Malaguzzi, 2015) has expanded beyond school boundaries, also taking shape as a public civic atelier. This evolution expresses a vision of school rooted in its context and of the city as an educational and cultural place, defining the atelier as a space that generates connections among children, adults, expressive languages, and territory. Within this approach, teachers’ professional development is conceived as a continuous, situated, and collegial process grounded in relationships, dialogue, and participation in building a culture of childhood (New, 2007). From this perspective, the teacher assumes the role of researcher who learns alongside children, developing an educational stance understood as inquiry, characterized by greater flexibility, openness, and willingness to embrace uncertainty without predefined answers (Lyon & Donahue, 2009), thus creating democratic, non-hierarchical contexts for the construction of knowledge. Multi-professional collaboration between teachers and atelieristi, and experimentation through atelier culture, foster innovation in educational practices (Palmer & Aprill, 2016), while documentation supports shared reflection, distributed leadership, and participation (Heidi et al., 2009), making children’s thinking visible and promoting an educational culture attentive to rights, listening, and plurality of perspectives (İmir & Tuğrul, 2023).

In this perspective, TPDR pathways have strengthened within the professional network the capacity to broaden the pedagogical gaze on the child, the role of the teacher, and learning (Therese, 2020). The child has progressively been recognized as an active subject and protagonist, bringing their own rhythms and exploratory strategies, while the teacher has redefined their role in observational and non-directive terms, oriented toward listening and the construction of meaningful contexts. Field experience, supported by documentation and multi-professional dialogue, has nurtured the desire to renew educational practices, valuing environments, materials, and small-group work as conditions for autonomy and collaboration. Learning thus emerges as a shared and situated process, intertwined with professional reflection and the desire to transform teaching strategies.

At the same time, the conclusion of the pathways highlighted the challenges related to transferring innovation and experimentation into participants’ own educational contexts. This shows that professional development inspired by the atelier approach cannot be uniformly replicated, but requires grounding in contextual specificities (Guo & Rouse, 2024) and genuine organizational, cultural, and material sustainability.

1https://asbr.it/progetti/atelier-a-palazzo-2