Conference Program

Democratic backsliding, growing inequalities, and an infosphere saturated by polarization make the relationship between schooling and democracy a renewed educational urgency. If democracy is not only a set of principles but a way of living together, then schools must offer children opportunities to experience participation, deliberation, and responsibility as early as possible. Creating civic “micro-projects” in childhood matters because it nurtures habits of listening, justification, and care for the common world, rather than treating citizenship as a distant future status.

Methodologically, dialogic and collaborative practices are particularly promising to enact democracy for learning while cultivating learning for democracy (Biesta, 2011; Dewey 1916, 1938). Philosophy for Children (P4C) operationalizes this ambition through the Community of Inquiry: children collectively generate questions, argue with reasons, and co-construct provisional answers (Lipman, 2003). P4C therefore works as an exploratory pedagogy that simultaneously supports critical thinking (concept clarification, reasons, counterexamples) and democratic competence (turn-taking, inclusion, shared norms, collective decisions), foregrounding subjectification as the formation of agents able to speak and act in a plural world (M.R.Gregory, J. Haynes, K. Murris, 2017).

We present MiniGiunta (Rovereto, Italy), a civic education project implemented in a 4th-grade primary class in collaboration with the Municipality and classroom teachers (December 2025–January 2026). Across three meetings, children engaged in: (1) a P4C inquiry on perspective and “seeing differently”, followed by an “urban explorers” mission to photograph hidden beauties and areas needing improvement; (2) a P4C inquiry on beauty/neglect and a gallery-based discussion of the photos, producing situated proposals for the neighbourhood and the city; (3) a metareflective P4C dialogue on participation and preparation for a simulated municipal council (role assignment and peer-education on civic roles). Continuous co-design with teachers led to substantive adaptations (e.g., simplifying community rules, reallocating time from planned activities to sustained inquiry, and shifting some written work to classroom follow-up) in order to respond to classroom dynamics and maximize children’s agency (Biesta 2017).

Findings are being developed through qualitative analysis of the meeting transcripts and children’s artefacts (photos and written rationales), focusing on indicators of democratic participation and critical thinking (question quality, justificatory moves, perspective-taking, collective problem framing). We intend to present preliminary evidence, that highlights high engagement, rich argumentation, and the emergence of feasible, community-oriented proposals.