Conference Program

Transformative theory (Mezirow, 2003) focuses on conditions that facilitate the ability to create transformations from learning, which is done through activating processes that reflect upon the premises through which we interpret everyday life events within the social and organizational world (Fabbri & Melacarne, 2023). The theoretical and methodological approach of transformative theory is applied to study and analyze how (micro-)radicalization episodes (Melacarne, 2025) may threat the democracy (Moghaddam, 2025) in several everyday educational contexts, such as universities. The increasing number of multicultural students in Higher Education may generate distance (Amiraux & Araya-Moreno, 2014) and the lack of contacts due to the potential structural racism (Brookfield, 2018; Sabic-El-Rayess, 2021), which may lay the ground for the emergence of micro-episodes of conflict in informal settings among minority and majority students. Considering this scenario, how can we support coexistence practices in highly complex multicultural contexts? How we may prepare students to be democratic professionals? How can we prevent (micro-)radicalization in universities? The Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT, Bosco, 2025) helps us to analyze the impact of multiculturalism in teaching-learning process because facilitate cultural consciousness and critical analysis of beliefs and assumptions about self and others (Gay, 2018) using culture connected to the material that needs to be learned. The literature on this topic highlights positive effects based on the application of CRT practices in universities, in particular the: i) development of personal and professional skills “multiculturally responsive” useful for reading and interpreting social events; ii) belonging to a relational system that involves peers, faculty, and students; iii) learning cross-cultural perspectives of meaning. The culture is the aim, the object, and the instrument that may be applied with students to raise their learning, which will be multidimensional (Fiorucci, 2020), transformative, emancipative, and democratic. This contribution aims to describe methodological strategies that enhance cultural dimensions in the teaching and learning process in order to deconstruct radicalized thinking in the university. The actions are been targeted to students in Bachelor's and Master's Degree Courses of Educational Sciences. In this context, we describe the implementation of photovoice focused on the thematization of intercultural dialogue. Students have been involved in the 1) elaboration of visual materials, 2) analysis of the factors that may (or may not) facilitate the intercultural contact; 3) analysis of future educational practices that may be applied to prevent daily (micro-)radicalization episodes and hate incidents in educational settings. Studying the CRT and its applications in Higher Education provides the foundations to understand and strongly support the importance of pluralism in the universities in order to promote an antiracist and democratic learning for future professionals.