Conference Program

One of the central issues in the sociology of education concerns inequalities: a democratic school system is expected to work towards reducing differences in terms of access, learning opportunities, skills, and outcomes. A still underexplored dimension, however, is inequality in access to green spaces. The territorial location of a school can have a significant impact: for some students, contact with natural environments may be almost absent, while for others it represents a genuine “green privilege.”

To what extent can municipalities, through their planning instruments (in particular the SECAPs – Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans), recognize and compensate for these inequalities by orienting their intervention priorities? (Carrosio and Cogliati Dezza, 2025) Is it possible, for instance, to prioritize the implementation of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) near schools located in peripheral or highly urbanized areas?

Urban climate adaptation measures, including NBS, are never neutral. They can certainly contribute to mitigation and adaptation to the effects of global warming (e.g., depaving, reduction of heat islands, water management, shading, climate shelters), but they can also address a less visible yet crucial phenomenon: the “extinction of experience of nature” (Pyle, 1993). However, when such measures are implemented unevenly—“green enough” in some areas and almost absent in others—they end up creating a structural advantage for certain schools over others.

This raises the question of whether a form of “positive discrimination” by municipalities is needed, especially in more fragile contexts, to rebalance profoundly unequal starting conditions.

Between recent regulatory frameworks such as the Nature Restoration Law (Regulation (EU) 2024/1991), which urges Member States to restore degraded ecosystems, and the urgency to also “restore” students’ attention (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989; Kaplan, 1995) and protect their mental health through contact with natural environments, Europe—and progressively its Member States—are responding by recognizing a stronger role for young people.

In particular, Italy, with Law No. 167 of 10 November 2025, which introduces the Generational Impact Assessment (GIA) for legislative acts, aims to give greater substance to Article 9 of the Constitution in protecting future generations.

From this perspective, climate justice, social justice, and political action converge to strengthen students’ environmental identity (Clayton, 2003) and to restore space for youth activism, calling on young people not only to endure ongoing transformations but also to intervene in the public sphere with concrete and well-argued proposals (Mansion et al., 2025).

A case study is examined in the province of Monza, one of the most urbanized areas in Italy, where two schools, as part of the PAESC Giovani project (INDIRE – EuCliPa.IT), submitted a formal letter to their respective mayors with proposals for NBS to be integrated into the SECAP. In addition, another school asked its municipality to adopt the Covenant of Mayors and, subsequently, the SECAP: this would be one of the first cases in Europe in which a municipal administration is prompted by students from a public school to join the Covenant of Mayors.

Today’s world faces socio-ecological challenges of global magnitude that require coordinated international responses, as outlined in the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2015). Although a global perspective is more urgent than ever to address systemic inequalities, climate change, and widespread violence, educational contexts often reveal the need to translate these global priorities into meaningful and operational local processes. Such an “interscalar” approach (Magnaghi, 2020) calls for situated educational processes capable of connecting global visions with concrete community practices (European Commission, 2024).

This centrifugal movement – from the local to the global – requires the active involvement of communities, with particular attention to youth engagement to ensure the continuity of civic commitment in the future (UNESCO, 2021). However, their involvement, often more formal than substantive, demands serious commitment at both educational and political levels, as well as their recognition as co-protagonists in territorial decision-making processes (Gallina & Zamengo, 2022). Pedagogical models grounded in community education are especially relevant in this regard, as they foster democratic participation through collective learning and co-construction of knowledge, within a rhizomatic organisation that transcends the boundaries between formal and informal education (UNESCO, 2014).

The Alpine context can serve as a laboratory for observing dynamics of community learning. It is a transnational socio-ecological system characterised by urgent environmental challenges, depopulation, and territorial marginalisation, but also by remarkable natural continuity (Alpine Convention, 1991). Within this scenario, young people are the primary actors in out-migration towards urban areas, yet they are also the only ones capable of ensuring the demographic, cultural, and economic survival of local communities (Membretti, 2023), as well as contributing to the development of cross-border strategies for sustainable territorial management in response to global crises (Durand & Decoville, 2019).

This contribution presents preliminary findings from an exploratory qualitative study conducted within the framework of the European cross-border project PITER+ Terres Monviso, in the Monviso area between Italy and France. The research involved young people and youth policy practitioners through focus groups and in-depth interviews, investigating – through narrative inquiry (Clandinin et al., 2016)—their educational relationship with the territory, their role within local communities, their sense of belonging to a cross-border space, and the social imaginaries that animate them (Taylor, 2005). The exploratory research also included the active involvement not only of project partners and interview participants, but also of mayors and local administrators, in a perspective of co-construction of research data and complementarity between local actors and researchers (Flick, 2024). In this sense, the territory as a whole becomes attentive to young people, aiming to create a shared approach to cross-border youth policies and overcome the fragmentation of interventions.

By situating learning communities within a socio-ecological and territorial perspective, the study contributes to the debate on democratic community education, showing how collective educational processes can connect local action with global challenges in cross-border Alpine regions.

In a time of social division and urban isolation, the idea of "living spaces in democracy" stands out as a crucial way to build strong local communities. These spaces are more than just physical places; they represent democratic practices where people come together for common goals and take part in activities that promote the well-being of everyone. At the core of this concept are Educational Community Pacts, innovative initiatives from Italy based on participatory governance. Established through frameworks like Italy's national guidelines on community pacts (MIUR, 2019), these pacts are official agreements among citizens, schools, families, local administrations, and third-sector organizations to create cooperative spaces focused on caring for and improving shared resources. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the Community Educational Pact has become a popular tool for school planning. In 2021, the Ministry of Education encouraged its use through the School Plan 2020-21 to fight educational poverty and boost cooperation between schools and local communities. This co-design tool allows schools to become educational hubs that coordinate local services, meeting children's needs more effectively. A good example of this is the V. Bottego school in Milan, which I studied in my research. Here, educators worked with local organizations to redesign the square in front of the school, which had been turned into a parking lot and had lost its original purpose. Among the different redevelopment projects, students helped plant and care for public green spaces. As part of the pact, they gained hands-on experience with an environmental protection group, focusing on maintaining public green areas and managing waste. The impact on the students was significant; after completing the workshops, some children even advised their parents to adopt more eco-friendly habits. In the end, living spaces in democracy, realized through Educational Community Pacts, provide a model for building local communities that are inclusive, fair, and forward-thinking. They redefine democracy not just as elections but as daily acts of collaboration, where shared goals drive joint efforts to care for common resources. By integrating education with civic engagement, these spaces develop informed citizens who can support lively, inclusive communities in the face of global challenges. This approach is relevant worldwide and encourages adaptations in different settings to strengthen democracy from the ground up.

Climate change increasingly reveals itself as a governance and learning challenge, where local communities and institutions play a decisive role in translating global commitments into concrete action. From international climate negotiations to local implementation, the effectiveness of climate action depends on the capacity of territories to build learning processes that connect knowledge, decision-making and collective responsibility.

This contribution presents the perspective of the Italian Climate Network (ICN), drawing on both educational practices and policy-oriented communication developed through national programmes and engagement in international climate conferences (COPs). Through Missione Aria Pulita, ICN has worked with schools, teachers and students to promote climate and air quality education as a participatory, place-based and civic learning process. Schools are framed as learning communities that foster dialogue between scientific knowledge, lived experience and environmental awareness, strengthening critical thinking, wellbeing and civic engagement among younger generations.

Alongside school-based educational activities, ICN also promotes initiatives engaging local administrations, municipalities and community actors through advocacy, dissemination and capacity-building actions aimed at connecting climate knowledge with local decision-making processes. Operationally, these activities are developed through participatory methodologies such as workshops, public discussions and training sessions involving educators, local stakeholders and civil society organisations. Interactive tools, including collaborative exercises and local dialogue formats, are used to connect climate knowledge with everyday urban experiences and policy challenges, supporting shared responsibility and collective learning.

These experiences are complemented by reflections emerging from ICN’s work on cities and local governments within the COP process, where resilience is understood not as a fixed goal, but as a continuous pathway of adaptation, learning and transformation. Emphasis is placed on multi-level action, cross-sector governance and capacity building as enabling conditions for inclusive climate policies, highlighting the role of communities of practice that connect local authorities, civil society and citizens.

Expected outcomes include the engagement of students, educators and local stakeholders, the strengthening of climate literacy and civic participation, and the creation of dialogue spaces between communities and local decision-makers. These processes contribute to awareness-raising within territories and support the integration of educational and community-based perspectives into local sustainability initiatives and emerging policy discussions.

By combining climate education, youth participation and local governance perspectives, this contribution reflects on learning communities as critical infrastructures for bridging global challenges and local action. It argues that just transition processes require not only policies and funding, but long-term educational ecosystems capable of sustaining collective learning, shared responsibility and transformative action across scales.

In recent years, Learning Communities have emerged as promising socio-educational ecosystems capable of fostering democratic participation, collective knowledge production, and local responses to complex social challenges. Within this perspective, Community Educational Pacts represent an innovative governance model that connects schools, local institutions, civil society organizations, and citizens in a shared educational vision for the territory.

This contribution presents the experience of the R.E.T.I. Project – Ricerca Educativa per un Territorio Inclusivo (Educational Research for an Inclusive Territory), a participatory action-research initiative launched in 2021 in the city of Porto Torres (Sardinia, Italy). The project supported the co-construction of a Community Educational Pact involving a wide network of actors: schools from early childhood to upper secondary education, the municipality’s social services, third-sector organizations, the pedagogical coordination for the 0–6 early childhood education system, and local citizens. After five years of development, the project has reached a mature phase characterized by the implementation and expansion of the Pact as a local learning ecosystem.

At this stage, the initiative has progressively strengthened the involvement of the local community and expanded its scope, particularly through the integration of the 0–6 early childhood education system, thereby reinforcing continuity across educational levels. At the same time, participatory initiatives such as two editions of the Community Educational Pact Festival – “Turris Umpari Edufest” – have fostered broader civic engagement and dialogue among educational, institutional, and community actors.

A central component of the process has been the continuous professional and community learning pathway accompanying the Pact. This work was carried out by experts in community psychology and pedagogy from LUMSA University in Rome. Through experiential training sessions and co-reflection meetings, teachers, educators, social and educational professionals, representatives of third-sector organizations and institutions, and citizens developed a shared vision and methodological tools for the co-design of educational and community practices. The methodological framework draws on co-constructive learning approaches.

The contribution will present the evaluation phase currently underway, aimed at assessing the impact and perceived value of the Community Educational Pact among participating actors. The evaluation adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative tools. A questionnaire was administered to members of the Pact to explore perceived changes in individual and collective dimensions such as sense of community, participation, and empowerment. In parallel, semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives of schools, public institutions, and third-sector organizations in order to deepen participants’ experiences of the process.

In particular, the qualitative investigation focuses on how actors experienced the formation and development of the Pact, how the training and collaborative reflection influenced their professional and civic practices, and how relationships between schools, institutions, and community organizations have evolved over time.

By presenting the preliminary results of this evaluation, this contribution aims to advance the debate on learning communities as democratic educational ecosystems, highlighting both enabling factors and challenges in building sustainable school–community partnerships. The case of Porto Torres offers insights into how participatory educational governance and community learning processes can support the development of inclusive territorial networks capable of responding to local educational needs.