Conference Program

Research has repeatedly documented the fragmented, selective, and often symbolic use of educational research in policy and school practice (Edwards-Schachter & Greca, 2017). Evidence is frequently invoked rhetorically, yet only partially translated into collective decision-making or structural change. This persistent gap has been framed, in broader science policy debates, as a manifestation of the “Ivory Tower” problem: the relative isolation of academic knowledge from the social contexts it is meant to serve. In response, frameworks of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Public Engagement have emerged as attempts to reconfigure the relationship between science and society( Owen et al., 2012; Ceseracciu, 2023). In both concepts, research moves beyond dissemination or consultation; it entails the meaningful involvement of citizens in shaping research questions, methods, interpretations, and uses. However, while these frameworks have been widely discussed in fields such as technology and sustainability, their implications for educational research remain uncertain and under-theorized.

If responsibility and engagement are to be structurally embedded rather than rhetorically endorsed, they require educational practices that redistribute epistemic agency. In the field of teacher education, this opens a crucial possibility: repositioning students not as passive recipients or future “users” of evidence, but as co-researchers participating in the co-production, translation, and circulation of locally relevant knowledge (Timmis et al., 2024). Further pedagogical framing is necessary, though. I therefore build upon the theory of Learning Communities (LCs) presented as democratic responses to global socio-ecological challenges (Montanari, 2025; Francesconi et al., 2024). Pre-service teachers can be conceptualized as boundary actors who traverse institutional domains—universities, schools, municipal authorities—facilitating the movement of knowledge across them.

This paper argues that the transformative potential of LCs depends not only on partnerships between institutions and local actors, but on the democratization of educational knowledge itself. Democratic schooling, in this sense, demands infrastructures that enable communities to critically generate, deliberate upon, and act on evidence, rather than merely receive expert recommendations.

I hence introduce an empirical case, namely, a course-embedded co-research project involving 134 pre-service primary teachers at the University of Padova. Working in small groups, students designed and administered interviews and questionnaires grounded in European competence frameworks, collecting 383 responses within school networks. A core research item examined how educational research is perceived and mobilized in school innovation processes. Mixed-methods analysis revealed a persistent perception–practice gap: research is rhetorically valued but rarely integrated into collective decision-making. However, stronger orientations toward research use emerged when initiatives were locally anchored, problem-driven, and discussed within proximate decision arenas, suggesting that proximity and deliberative spaces are decisive for uptake. Crucially, the co-research process itself functioned as a Learning Community intervention. Through cycles of co-definition, data production, joint analysis, and member checking, students, faculty, and school actors engaged in structured collective sensemaking.

I argue that beyond improving students and schools’ awareness on research use, the process cultivated a culture of scientific literacy understood as a collective democratic capacity: the ability of a community to question sources and deliberate on evidence.