Conference Program

In the contemporary debate on democratic education, the distinction between Learning for Democracy (LforD) and Democracy for Learning (DforL) has shaped much of the theoretical reflection and educational practice [1–3]. However, both approaches share a common limitation: they tend to focus either on the acquisition of competences or on participatory experience in itself, without systematically integrating the material and structural conditions that make political action possible [4,5]. In a context marked by rising social inequalities and the increasing mediatization of the public sphere, this gap is particularly consequential for efforts to promote and enable youth participation [6–9].

This contribution proposes Materialist Civism as a theoretical paradigm and evaluative framework for promoting and studying youth political activation. This perspective reframes civic education not as the normative transmission of values nor as the mere experimentation of democratic practices, but as a process of concretely expanding the participatory and transformative capacities of young people [10,3]. Political activation is thus understood as the outcome of interactions between formative dimensions and material conditions, both individual and collective [11,12].

The paradigm was formalized through the experience of Rizomi’s School of Political Activation and the analysis of the Theory of Change developed during the educational planning phase [13,14]. The adopted research methodology integrates: (1) a literature review on political participation and social behavior, with particular attention to enabling factors and structural constraints connected to participation [15,12]; (2) a critical analysis of major practices in active citizenship education [16,17]; (3) the theoretical reconstruction of the Theory of Change [13,14]; (4) a comparison with evidence emerging from a recent pilot study conducted within the School, using questionnaires aimed at studying the dimensions underlying the propensity to engage politically [18].

The key innovation achieved lies in the elaboration of a multidimensional evaluation model that moves beyond an assessment centered exclusively on “democratic competences,” reintroducing the importance of contextual and relational factors [19–21]. The proposed framework identifies three domains: (a) personal resources, including competences, motivation, and self‑efficacy [22,23]; (b) situated and collective resources, such as relational networks, organizational access to resources and tools, and shared agency [24,25]; (c) resources of political representation, understood as the concrete possibility of accessing decision‑making spaces and influencing public discourse [26,27]. The evaluation of political activation therefore requires tools capable of jointly measuring learning, resource availability, and the transformation of participatory opportunities [19,15].

By overcoming the separation between theory and practice and between LforD and DforL, Materialist Civism offers a transferable paradigm for both educational design and the evaluation of youth policies [10,16]. It contributes to the debate on democratic education by proposing a model capable of integrating training, context, and the actual distribution of resources and opportunities, enabling interventions aimed at fostering creative, autonomous, and situated youth participation [11,12,27].