Conference Program

Educational poverty and socio-economic, linguistic and cultural disadvantage are multidimensional concepts and refer to numerous areas of deprivation concerning the individual and his/her socio-economic context (Sen, 2000; Giancola & Salmieri, 2023; Save the Children, 2024). Exclusion from educational experiences deepens intergenerational inequalities, hinders social mobility and prevents, especially children, from acquiring knowledge and basic critical thinking skills to plan the future with respect to socio-relational, professional and political-cultural dimensions. Acting as soon as possible is essential to be able to create the conditions for the recovery of socio-cultural disadvantage in school contexts.

To address this educational emergency, a 2-year project (Agrusti et al., 2024) funded by Italian Ministry of University and Research aimed to design empirically grounded strategic models of teachers’ development intervention in Italian lower secondary schools, with specific reference to urban and suburban areas and their territorial contexts of cities in Northern, Central and Southern Italy, in order to counter socio-cultural disadvantage and school failure through tailored Research-Based Professional Development interventions (RBPD - Ricerca-Formazione; Dodman et al., 2025; Asquini, 2018), that helped removing possible obstacles in implementing active learning strategies for the development of key competences.

The research project – characterised by a collective multiple case study – was carried out in two specific phases:

- an initial investigation phase to highlight risk and protective factors at the meso and micro levels of the system in school contexts;

- a second phase of RBPD intervention within the eight case-study schools. The school contexts considered generally displayed mature and structured professional capital. Training interventions had to enhance already established skills, focusing on advanced professional development rather than basic training. The variability in initial students’ results was significant: students with good levels of competence coexisted with others with significant weaknesses. The implicit dropout (students with insufficient skills yet remaining in the system) appeared to be structural and not episodic.

The first year’s research enabled a detailed analysis of schools' needs: it highlighted main obstacles to equitable and high-quality development of all students' learning. Based on these findings, RBPD interventions were developed with teachers of a class council for each school, tailored specifically to the needs of each specific class-context.

In this first phase, it was very interesting to focus on the teaching practices carried out in the various school contexts. These practices were studied both as “practices declared” by teachers and as “practices perceived” by students (Cecalupo, 2021; Guasconi et al., 2025; Moè et al., 2010). The discrepancies between these perspectives, observed before and after the RBPD interventions, generated new research questions.

Although direct matching between students' voices with those of their specific teachers, triangulated data analysis opened up further possibilities for discussion with teachers and for planning professional development paths, especially considering students' learning outcomes and identified gaps.

Reflecting on the data raises questions about the importance and sustainability of evidence-based teaching practices, geared towards individualisation and recovery. These practices are designed to engage and motivate students, as well as providing them with specific support for developing transversal skills