Conference Program

This presentation examines educational commons as an alternative pedagogical and political paradigm that reconfigures learning as a collective, relational, experimental, and democratic process. Challenging individualized, competitive, and market-oriented models of education, it conceptualizes education not as a private good but as a common good and a shared social practice grounded in processes of commoning. Educational commons extend beyond the notion of shared resources to encompass dynamic practices through which communities collectively govern knowledge and learning, spaces, and social relations. Through horizontal decision-making, shared responsibility, and co-creation of knowledge, educational environments are transformed into sites of democratic experimentation, where learning becomes affective, collaborative, and socially embedded.

The presentation highlights the significant contribution of the Laboratory of Sociology of Education at the University of Thessaly in advancing the study of educational commons both theoretically and empirically. Drawing on European and national research projects, the Laboratory has systematically explored how practices of commoning emerge within schools, youth spaces, and cultural institutions such as museums and libraries. These projects investigate children’s and young people’s participation in collective governance, the potential of collaborative structures to address educational inequalities, and the ways institutional cultures can shift toward more inclusive and democratic forms.

Central to the presentation is the Libcommons project, which serves as the main empirical case study. Libcommons explores how public, school, and academic libraries can function as commons-based educational infrastructures, repositioning them from passive repositories of knowledge to active hubs of collaborative learning and democratic participation. By fostering structured partnerships between higher education institutions and libraries, the project bridges formal and non-formal education and promotes innovative pedagogical practices. Within this framework, libraries are reimagined as living ecosystems in which students, educators, librarians, and local community actors co-design learning activities, co-produce knowledge, negotiate shared norms, and cultivate collective stewardship. This approach supports the development of key competencies for contemporary societies, including civic engagement, participatory citizenship, intercultural dialogue, critical thinking, digital literacy, and lifelong learning.

At the same time, the presentation critically engages with the tensions between grassroots commons-based initiatives and macro-level educational policies. By situating Libcommons within national and European policy frameworks, and drawing from the theories of hegemony and post-hegemony, it examines how dominant policy discourses both enable and constrain the scaling of commoning practices. This micro-macro perspective allows for a nuanced discussion of the conditions under which educational commons can be sustained, institutionalized, or transformed without losing their participatory ethos.

Drawing on insights from childhood and youth studies, the presentation foregrounds children and young people as present political subjects rather than future citizens. In commons-based educational environments, participation moves beyond tokenistic inclusion toward shared authority and collective responsibility, fostering democratic subjectivities grounded in collaboration, mutual recognition, and care.

Overall, the presentation argues that educational commons operate as laboratories of democracy, where everyday practices of togetherness generate new imaginaries of learning, citizenship, and institutional life. By combining theoretical reflection with empirical evidence from Libcommons and related projects, it contributes to broader debates on how local practices of commoning can be connected to processes of systemic educational transformation.