Conference Program

Cultural awareness and expression – recognised by the European Commission as one of the eight key competences for lifelong learning – is fundamental to fostering democratic societies, strengthening community cohesion, promoting civic engagement, and encouraging respect for diversity (EC). To enable young people to become citizens who actively contribute to the development of a sustainable society, formal and non-formal educational contexts are increasingly required to become more participatory and inclusive (Giroux, 2011; Bourn, 2022). One approach to achieving this goal is the use of arts-based methods, which are also effective tools for fostering young people’s cultural awareness and creative expression (Chemi & Du, 2018; Ferrer‐Fons et al., 2022). By implementing arts-based pedagogies in diverse educational contexts, educators play a pivotal role as agents of social change, supporting young people in the development of the knowledge, skills, and confidence needed to actively engage with social and cultural issues. Research indicates that dance, as an artistic practice, enables individuals to express personal experiences through movement, contributing to identity exploration and strengthening a sense of belonging, while also fostering cultural participation and intercultural dialogue (Sango & Pickard, 2024).

This qualitative study draws on empirical data collected through semi-structured interviews with dance teachers working with youth aged 16–30 as part of interest-based education in comprehensive schools and cultural institutions or organisations in Latvia. It examines teachers’ perceptions of the educational potential of dance, how cultural themes and democratic values are incorporated into teaching practices, and the contribution of dance activities to young people’s personal growth, cultural awareness, and creative expression.

The findings underscore the importance of interest-based education in dance, which extends beyond physical training to serve as a space for dialogue, exploration, co-creation, and creative expression. Teachers highlight the significance of collaborative practices in supporting learners’ awareness of cultural differences and shared experiences, stimulating intellectual engagement, and enabling young people to assume the role of meaning-makers. The results suggest that competences and skills (including creativity and reflection, cultural literacy and intercultural awareness, personal and shared cultural expression and collective agency and social responsibility) acquired or developed through such activities can contribute to transformative learning processes by fostering learners’ empathy, democratic engagement, and active citizenship.

This article is based on research conducted within the framework of the international project “Promoting Understanding and Lifelong learning Successful Education through the ARTs and culture” (PULSE‑ART), funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe Programme under Grant Agreement No. 101178988. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

The intensification of the climate crisis has fostered growing collective mobilization, giving rise to environmental movements that adopt heterogeneous strategies, ranging from institutional forms of protest to more conflictual practices. The scientific literature on environmental and climate activism outlines a complex landscape in which conventional forms of civic participation intertwine with more radical manifestations of protest.

Within this framework, the ELCRA project (Environmental Literacy in Higher Education Context for Preventing Violent Radicalization in Climate Activism) was developed by a consortium of five European universities between 2023 and 2026: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Klaipėda University, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, the University of Coimbra, and the University of Siena. ELCRA is situated within the perspective of Transformative Education and aligns with SDG 4.7, aiming to train students capable of orienting their practices toward socio-ecological sustainability and preventing forms of violent radicalization within climate activism.

Building on this context, the contribution presents a case study of a project designed for students to foster processes of critical co-construction among future education professionals on environmental issues.

Following a literature review on environmental radicalization, the ELCRA project combined a multidisciplinary MOOC (10 hours) with COIL sessions (6 hours), involving students from the five European universities (n = 228 students for the MOOC and n = 50 for the COIL) in collaborative activities on topics such as sustainability, emotions and climate, critical thinking, activism, and environmental radicalization. The instructional design was grounded in the transformative learning approach originally developed by Mezirow and later expanded by Fabbri and Melacarne. Within this perspective, MOOC and COIL were integrated: the MOOC provided critical literacy on environmental issues, equipping students with the conceptual tools needed to interpret contemporary challenges; the COIL sessions, on the other hand, encouraged reflective re-elaboration of the acquired knowledge—also through a workshop-based dimension—with the aim of guiding students toward an awareness of their future professional roles as agents of change.

It should be acknowledged that the study presents some limitations, particularly related to the difficulty of measuring transformative learning processes. Nevertheless, the reflection developed from this experience suggests that the integration of asynchronous learning environments and intercultural dialogue can represent a fertile context for activating processes of critical meaning-making. Within this framework, students were placed in conditions that allowed them to reinterpret the knowledge acquired in light of their personal experiences, their social contexts of belonging, and the different cultural perspectives involved, in line with a view that understands them as potential agents of change.

In response to multiple crises, debates increasingly link transformative education with civic education (e.g. Hoggan-Kloubert und Mabrey 2022) and education for sustainability (e.g. Sterling 2010). Scholars emphasized that citizens committed to living in a democracy must be open to transforming themselves and the world around them, as they should critically examine themselves, society, and the world, and align their own perspective on the world accordingly (Hoggan-Kloubert und Mabrey 2022, 169). Moreover, transformative education may support the collective search for answers for a sustainable future (Singer-Brodowski 2023, 20625), taking into account the handling of ambiguities, uncertainties, and controversies (Singer-Brodowski 2023, 20625; Pettig und Ohl 2023). Accordingly, educational settings are tasked with creating opportunities for educational practices at the intersection of these aspects of transformative, political, and sustainable education.

Despite these conceptual links, little is known yet about how they unfold in everyday educational practice. This presentation examines such moments of transformative education in schools as one of the most important educational institutions. Drawing on a practice perspective that includes the involvement of all participants and contextual factors (Breidenstein 2008, 110), the focus shifts to different actors in the field, including students and teachers. It also examines both planned and unplanned spaces in which transformative educational practices can occur.

Using ethnographic data from a project in German schools, the presentation analyzes situations in which political and sustainable aspects are addressed in routine school life. The presentation concludes with a discussion guided by the following questions, based on the findings:

• Which individual and collective actors are involved in transformative practices at school?
• In which everyday school situations do transformative practices occur?
• What constitutes the transformative core of these practices?
• How do transformative practices position and engage different actors as democratically and sustainably responsible citizens?
• How can everyday school practices enable students to contribute to democratic and sustainable societal transformation?

Contemporary schooling is increasingly shaped by global crises, including health emergencies, social instability, economic inequalities, and humanitarian challenges. These dynamics profoundly affect educational systems, redefining the role of schools not only as spaces that ensure learning continuity but also as environments that foster social cohesion, resilience, and democratic participation. Within this framework, educational emergencies should not be interpreted merely as disruptive events but rather as structural conditions capable of generating transformative pedagogical responses and stimulating creative educational communities. The present study aims to explore the educational meaning and transformative potential of emergency situations in primary education, focusing on teachers’ perceptions, practices, and professional identities. In particular, the research seeks to reinterpret emergency conditions beyond an alarmist perspective, highlighting their potential to stimulate reflective practice, collective responsibility, and pedagogical innovation within school communities. The study adopts an intercultural ethnographic research design and is grounded in qualitative methodology. Data were collected through participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 40 primary school teachers working in eight public schools located in two distinct geographical and cultural contexts: Rome (Italy) and Freetown (Sierra Leone). The comparison between these two educational environments allows for a broader understanding of how emergency situations are experienced, interpreted, and addressed by teachers in different socio-cultural settings. Data analysis was conducted through an interpretative phenomenological approach, enabling an in-depth exploration of meanings, emotions, and professional practices related to emergency experiences. The findings reveal that teachers in both contexts tend to perceive emergency not as an exceptional event but as a permanent and structural condition affecting everyday educational practices. Despite contextual differences, educators demonstrate strong adaptive capacities, activating relational, emotional, and creative resources to cope with crisis situations. In both contexts, emergency conditions encourage the development of flexible teaching strategies, stronger community engagement, and a redefinition of teachers’ professional roles. Teachers emerge as key agents of resilience, capable of transforming critical situations into opportunities for educational reflection and innovation. While in the Italian context emergency is often associated with relational, emotional, and institutional challenges, in Sierra Leone it is more strongly linked to material and structural difficulties. Nevertheless, teachers in both contexts mobilize similar pedagogical resources centered on care, responsibility, and collaboration. The study highlights the need to move from an alarmist interpretation of emergencies toward a transformative educational perspective. Strengthening teacher education, promoting intercultural dialogue, and encouraging collective action appear essential for developing resilient school communities capable of turning vulnerability into learning opportunities. In this sense, the research contributes to a broader reflection on the civic and democratic mission of education in times of global uncertainty.

Educational practices are shaped not only by explicit pedagogical theories and institutional policies but also by conceptions, routines, beliefs, frames of reference, and cultural norms that often remain unexamined (Fives & Buhel, 2012 ;2015). These structures silently guide how teachers and educators interpret situations and make decisions. Because they operate below the level of conscious awareness, they tend to remain unquestioned, but they influence educational processes. Bringing these logics to the surface is therefore crucial for scholars and practitioners engaged in transformative education.

Drawing on the theoretical framework of transformative learning (Mezirow, 1997), this contribution conceptualises conceptions as embedded meaning structures that shape intentions and action within educational contexts. If left unaddressed, such logics can have significant consequences (Civitillo, Juang & Schachner, 2018): first, they may reproduce inequalities by normalising practices and expectations that privilege certain groups of learners while marginalising others. Second, they can limit innovation by constraining educators’ capacity to imagine and implement alternative pedagogical approaches. Third, unexamined logics may close epistemic possibilities, narrowing the range of legitimate ways of knowing and understanding within educational environments. Finally, they can constrain educators’ reflexivity and naturalise existing power relations, making hierarchical structures appear inevitable rather than historically and socially constructed.

Thus, making implicit logics visible becomes a central step in fostering transformative processes in education. Researchers and teacher educators have a particular responsibility to illuminate these often invisible mechanisms, supporting educators in recognising and questioning the assumptions that underpin their professional practice. This process requires creating structured opportunities for reflection and dialogue that enable practitioners to critically examine taken-for-granted perspectives.

To illustrate how unexamined logics emerge in educational practice, an example drawn from an empirical study on teachers’ conceptions and intercultural educational actions will be presented (Agostinetto & Bugno, 2020). The research adopted a qualitative design aimed at exploring how teachers’ conceptions influence pedagogical planning and classroom practices. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 46 in-service teachers, participant observation of educational activities, and document analysis of planning documents (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2018). The findings revealed a broad and sometimes contradictory range of conceptions among teachers, as well as frequent inconsistencies between declared pedagogical intentions and actual practices. For instance, intercultural education was often interpreted through episodic activities (such as organising a “multi-ethnic lunch”) rather than through sustained pedagogical strategies integrated into everyday classroom practice.

Starting from the data collected in this first research phase, a further step of the study involved an attempt to re-conceptualise teachers’ conceptions through a series of focus groups designed as reflective meetings. These focus groups were intended to create a space where participants could critically engage with the empirical findings, reflect on their own implicit and unexamined logics, and collectively explore possible transformations of their practice.

This qualitative research represents an attempt to move from the identification of implicit teachers' conceptions toward their (re)consideration and possible re-conceptualisation. In this way, the contribution reflects on how research can contribute to opening spaces for reflexivity in teachers’ professional practice and to rethinking intercultural educational actions.