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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

D.13. The Multidimensionality of Educational Poverty on the Lives of Children Living Outside Their Birth Families. A Focus on Protective Factors (1/2)
Location: Edificio ex Tumminelli (C007): Aula 14

Convenor(s): Alessia Tabacchi (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy); Anna Guerrieri (Coordinamento Care – Coordinamento delle Associazioni Familiari adottive e affidatarie, Italy)

Presentation 4

Guidelines for the Right to Education of Children Outside the Birth Family (2017-2023). A Critical-Pedagogical Rereading

Margherita Cestaro¹, Fabrizio Pizzi²

1: Istituto Universitario Salesiano Mestre (IUSVE), Italy; 2: Università di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale

The paper aims to propose a reflection and a critical analysis from a pedagogical perspective of the ministerial document Guidelines for the right to education of pupils outside the family of origin (2017-2023).

The theoretical framework for this reflection is inherent in the complex concept of educational poverty. Introduced in Italy by Save the Children in 2014, this concept has recently been relaunched as "the deprivation of children and adolescents from the opportunity to learn, experiment, develop, and consolidate skills, talents, and aspirations" (Save the Children, 2022).

Therefore, by configuring itself as a "multidimensional phenomenon" (Istat, 2024), it, by intertwining factors of a different nature (not only economic but also connected to the lack of educational and cultural resources characterising the educational community), is configured both as a "poverty of resources" and as a "poverty of outcomes": the latter form of educational poverty is related to the lack of possibility of acquiring cognitive, social and emotional skills capable of allowing each person to feel part of a community, to "actively and consciously exercise the right of citizenship" (Ibidem).

Starting from these considerations and with constant reference to a pedagogical (Santerini, 2019; Amadini et al. 2023) and intercultural pedagogical (Fiorucci, Minerva, Portera, 2017; Macinai, 2020; Portera, 2022) perspective, aimed at promoting the capacity for existential planning of individuals and communities within a democratic social framework (Dewey, 1965), this contribution intends to reread the text of the Guidelines, focusing on the following questions:

- What idea of the minor supports and guides the set of operational indications contained in the document? What idea of educational poverty does this image of the minor contribute to shaping?

- What are the underlying principles (human and ethical) on which the "Italian path to inclusion" proposed by the document is built?

- What idea of "school" emerges from the document?

- What strengths and weaknesses characterize the text in terms of operational, formative, and didactic attention and indications?

- What specific contribution can the pedagogical stance offer to strengthen the strengths highlighted and, above all, to smooth out the weaknesses?

By responding from a critical-pedagogical perspective to each of the above questions, this paper aims to outline a path of pedagogical reflection aimed at enabling educational action to translate into an experience capable of enabling each child to learn with others not only to "know" and "know how to do," but also, and more specifically, to "be," in order to "learn to live together" (Delors et al. 1997) in today's plural social contexts.