Conference Program

This paper presents the findings of research conducted by INDIRE within two projects promoted by the Municipality of Trento and aimed at secondary school students across the territory: Reagenti (for upper secondary schools) which engages students in various roles of representation and active participation (school representatives, Link Group members, peer tutors, civic education laboratory participants, and Provincial Student Council delegates); and Strabene (for lower secondary schools), which fosters youth agency through actions centred on the care of common goods, European citizenship, and school democratic participation (Parlamentino).

Both projects are structured spaces for youth protagonism in which students act as active agents in school life and in the local community. Now in its second year, the research adopts a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative tools: for Reagenti, pre-post questionnaires administered to all student groups involved and focus groups with teacher coordinators; for Strabene, an innovative photo-elicitation pathway — a qualitative methodology using photographs or drawings as reflective stimuli — integrated with teacher assessment grids and student self-evaluation forms. The instruments for both projects were developed drawing on two European frameworks: the RFCDC (Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture) and LifeComp, covering the areas of values, attitudes, skills, and critical knowledge for democracy, as well as personal, social, and lifelong learning competencies.

Findings from the first year of Reagenti show that groups with higher levels of active engagement report strong development of collaborative, communicative, and civic competencies: over 90% of students report having learned to listen to and respect differing opinions and to represent the group's ideas in order to achieve a shared outcome. The vast majority recognise in their experience the defining features of Service Learning and call for greater formal recognition within the curriculum. The photo-elicitation pathway of Strabene, by contrast, gives access to more tacit and emotional dimensions of experience, revealing how visual language enables students to articulate transformations in their sense of belonging, civic awareness, and responsibility towards the community that would be unlikely to surface through traditional instruments.

Across both projects, a significant misalignment emerges: while students perceive substantial growth in democratic and transversal competencies, teachers tend to frame these experiences as occasions for personal development that are difficult to integrate into the formal curriculum. The second year of the research aims to address precisely this critical gap: through longitudinal comparison of pre-post data and the explicit introduction of Service Learning as a shared pedagogical framework with teachers, the study seeks to examine whether and to what extent a more intentional integration between project activities and the formal curriculum can foster greater recognition of the democratic competencies developed by students and strengthen the school's role as a Learning Hub and Civic Center.