Conference Program

The method of the collective version of the folktale intercepts the expression of peer culture: "a stable set of activities, routines, artifacts, values, and concerns that children produce and share in peer interaction" (Corsaro, 2017, 21). The teacher reads a folktale to pupils aged 9–12 and invites them to re-narrate it through writing and/or drawing, refraining from evaluations, corrections, explanations, or instructions. Children thus access the imaginary through their own paths and tools. The teacher gathers all the work and composes the collective version using exclusively the words and drawings produced by the pupils, preserving their original form. Children's re-narrations express interpretations and fantasies that find in the folktale both a framework and an expressive context (Carli et al., 2021).

How can teachers be trained in a method rooted in psychoanalysis (Bettelheim, 2005; von Franz, 1980)? And above all, how can they be supported in welcoming children's peer culture? We propose an online training program, “aimed at shaping and transforming educational and teaching practices, while fostering teachers’ reflectivity” (Asquini, 2018, 9), structured in two parts. The first includes eight video lectures and two exercises. Participants produce collective versions reviewed by experts, who discuss incorrect, improvable, and effective solutions during dedicated webinars. In the second part, teachers produce three collective versions with their class. The experts compare them with the children’s original work and add personalized annotations, later discussed in a webinar.

From the first exercise to the final work, the collective versions evolved from uncertain or poorly constructed texts into coherent and well-structured narratives. Teachers became more able to welcome children’s expressions in their immediacy and intensity, including unconventional or apparently incorrect work, recognizing their expressive meaning. The resulting narratives allow children to identify both the original and their own story.

Providing a solid theoretical framework together with practical guidance on how to let children’s culture emerge—and how to value specific formulations and drawings—has proven essential, as has providing detailed tools to accompany each phase of the process and a logbook to support observation and reflection (Chellini et al., 2025).

Two elements underpin the training’s success. First, the working group consists of three experts in the collective version method who share a psychoanalytic approach based on simultaneous listening to the other and oneself. Teachers thus experience in practice the stance they are invited to adopt with their students.

Second, the training is grounded in over twenty years of the experts’ direct work with children, combined with teacher training. This made it possible to observe teachers closely and identify deeply rooted professional habits, such as explaining everything without leaving “empty” spaces, prescribing what and how to produce work, or correcting errors in texts and drawings without grasping their expressive meaning. Our aim was thus directly focused on showing through practical examples how the method—thanks to its contrainte and drawing on the teacher's psychoanalytic approach—enables children's voices to find their own space as they are, without further adaptations, in a meaning-rich narrative that is collective yet individual.

School development depends on professional actors in schools in order to be effective, especially well professionalized teachers. Conversely, school development processes explicitly require teachers to become more professional, as they demand flexibility and a willingness to embrace complexity and uncertainty (Paseka et al., 2018). Links between school development and the professionalization of teachers are therefore discussed and problematized (Piccioli, 2022; Pomponi, 2020) but have not yet been extensively researched.

Starting from here, we assume that school development processes are shaped by institutionalized knowledge, however, individual processes of professional development are embedded in school cultures, shaped by knowledge-based discourses. This means that teachers are not just mirroring implicit knowledge but filling it with specific meanings which means that quality school development processes depend on ongoing interpretation and learning across heterogeneous actors.

Building on these premises, the paper reflects findings of an ongoing research project (Researching School Development: pathways to inclusive and quality education 2030/ GOODWILL; 2023–2026). The study focuses on 22 schools in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, all of which participate in a quality development programme driven by the school administration.

The project adopts a mixed-methods design with a qualitative approach: ethnographic observations in primary and secondary schools (Knoblauch & Vollmer, 2022), document analysis (Seitz, Consalvo, & Dell’Anna, 2025), group discussions with teachers and with students, and iterative feedback and dialogue sessions with school leadership and teaching staff, complemented by pre–post questionnaires.

In the qualitative part of the study, we draw on Grounded Theory strategies (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Charmaz, 2006). This theoretical-analytical approach is informed by a praxeological perspective that conceives practices as social configurations shaped by implicit norms and embodied criteria of appropriateness (Reckwitz, 2003). Attention is directed to ordinary mechanisms through which routines produce differentiation—for instance, tacit criteria of “good participation”, uneven distributions of speaking opportunities, and feedback practices that stabilize differential expectations—thus sustaining subtle forms of exclusion that remain compatible with an official lexicon of inclusion.

In the presentation, we discuss and reflect on the orientations of teachers reconstructed on the basis of group discussions to surface shared orientations, implicit criteria, and collegial negotiations around school development and inclusion. We identify recurring tensions (e.g., belonging vs. otherness, and compensation vs. exclusion) and show how they shape professional action (Consalvo et al., 2025).

We focus in particular on how professional acting is (re)configured in everyday practice through dilemmas, ambivalences, and differential expectations (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002), thereby showing that processes of professionalization are produced within—rather than outside—school cultures. In this sense, we suggest understanding “impact” less as linear, measurable change (Desimone, 2009) and more as shifts in interpretive repertoires and in the conditions of possibility for professional action.

Understanding the impact of Teacher Professional Development (TPD) requires conceptual frameworks able to link individual professional learning with school-wide quality processes. This paper proposes a peer-review-inspired intervention framework for school-based TPD, specifying its core components and an evidence strategy to document impact at both teacher and school levels.

Evidence from research on in-service training and formative assessment highlights that professional development is transformative when teachers engage in reflective practices, structured dialogue, and sustained inquiry supported by an evaluative culture (Cigognini & Parigi, 2024). Similarly, studies on the use of professional portfolios indicate that documenting practice over time strengthens teachers’ capacity to self-assess, construct professional meaning and connect individual learning with organisational priorities (Di Stasio et al., 2021).

At the international level, systematic reviews of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) indicate improvements in pedagogical skills, problem-solving capabilities and teachers’ readiness to adapt practices to learners’ needs, and quantitative evidence supports the value of coherent and sustainable professional development systems (Ambon et al., 2024; Kurteshi & Rrustemi, 2025). Furthermore, research on teacher agency demonstrates that meaningful change depends on teachers’ capacity to interpret, enact and negotiate practices within their organisational contexts (Cong-Lem, 2021). Taken together, these findings emphasise that TPD effectiveness emerges from the interaction between reflective individual learning, collaborative professional cultures and supportive organisational infrastructures.

Within this framework, the EQAVET peer review model provides a robust conceptual basis for strengthening TPD impact in schools. Designed for quality assurance in VET, peer review integrates self-evaluation, collegial external feedback and shared evidence-based inquiry, promoting transparency, dialogic reflection and participatory improvement processes (Evangelista & Fonzo, 2023). Guidance for VET providers further recognises that internal quality management should be systemic, collaborative and grounded in regular evidence use, while peer review manuals operationalise these principles through criteria and guiding questions that foster professional dialogue and organisational learning (CEDEFOP, 2015; ISFOL, 2012).

Transposing this logic to the school sector does not imply replicating VET procedures, but adapting the underlying principles (evidence use, shared criteria, external perspectives and dialogic feedback) to strengthen the professionalism and agency of teachers. The proposed framework outlines a cyclical intervention combining a school-embedded self-evaluation focus, reflective documentation (e.g., portfolios and artefacts), a structured peer feedback encounter, and an action plan with follow-up evidence checks aligned with school improvement priorities. By positioning teachers as co-constructors of quality, peer review is expected to enhance professional agency, enabling teachers to interpret challenges, negotiate solutions and contribute collectively to school improvement, in line with international evidence on agency as a driver of sustainable educational change (Cong-Lem, 2021).

A peer-review-inspired TPD framework thus reframes impact not as immediate behavioural change but as the development of a school’s collective capacity to sustain professional learning. Integrating reflective documentation, collaborative evaluation and structured feedback cycles strengthens coherence between professional development activities, school self-evaluation and improvement plans. In this sense, peer review offers a conceptual and methodological infrastructure for promoting evaluative culture, professional agency and evidence-informed decision-making—key conditions for long-term improvement in teaching and learning.

The paper presents a Research-Training (R-T) experience aimed at the professional development of teachers through a model of situated technological training, centered on the reflective integration of educational technologies, the systematic use of metaphors as heuristic knowledge devices (Strongoli, 2017; Pillera & Strongoli, 2025), and the employment of the Research-Training Self-Assessment Sheet (SARF). The intervention is situated within an epistemological framework that conceptualizes teacher professionalism as a complex and dynamic construct grounded in the interaction among disciplinary, pedagogical, and technological knowledge, consistent with the TPACK framework, which is adopted as an implicit theoretical and methodological reference for the training design (Mishra & Koehler, 2006; De Rossi & Messina, 2016; Mishra, 2019). The training experience was designed in accordance with the research-training paradigm, understood as a methodological device capable of linking the production of scientific knowledge, professional development, and the transformation of practices within authentic contexts (Asquini, 2018; Dodman et al., 2025). The research design follows a mixed-methods approach, integrating quantitative and qualitative instruments within a recursive and longitudinal framework. It includes ex-ante and ex-post surveys, co-design phases, classroom experimentation, and systematic reflection on teaching practice (Vannini, 2021), thereby configuring a cyclical model of professional learning.

A central role is assigned to the SARF - used here in an adapted version - tool, employed as a reflective and metacognitive device to support the critical analysis of practices, the evaluation of project feasibility, and the development of awareness regarding teachers’ decision-making processes. Beyond its function as an assessment tool, the SARF serves as an epistemic artifact that structures professional reflection, fostering the conversion of experience into shared and transferable pedagogical knowledge. At the same time, the study foregrounds the metaphorical device as a means of investigating latent beliefs, implicit representations, and mental models that inform teaching practices. Metaphors are understood as deep cognitive structures capable of rendering visible teachers’ practical epistemologies and documenting their evolution over time. The analysis of metaphorical trajectories reveals a shift from technocentric and instrumental conceptions of technology toward more complex, intentional, and design-oriented representations, in which innovation is framed as a structural process rather than an episodic occurrence. The findings indicate a significant reconfiguration of professional orientations, characterized by the transition from additive models of innovation to transformative ones, from the technical use of digital tools to pedagogically intentional design, and from the passive adoption of methodologies to forms of informed teacher agency.

Impact evaluation of teacher professional development (TPD) has become a central concern in educational research and policy debates. Several models have been proposed to conceptualise and assess the effects of professional learning, drawing on traditions of programme evaluation (Kirkpatrick, 1994; 2006) and their subsequent adaptations to the field of teacher education (Guskey, 2000). Within this framework, the impact of TPD has often been examined in terms of changes in teachers’ knowledge and instructional practices and in relation to student learning outcomes (Hattie, 2009; Yoon et al., 2007). However, the literature increasingly highlights that impact is an inherently multifaceted and multidimensional concept, involving interconnected levels of educational processes, including teachers’ professional learning, transformations in classroom practices, collaborative dynamics within schools, and students’ learning (Timperley et al., 2007; Kennedy, 2016). Despite this theoretical recognition of complexity, many empirical studies continue to operationalise impact through linear causal models and limited indicators, often relying on self-reported measures and post-intervention surveys.

Drawing on a scoping review of 159 international studies on the impact of in-service TPD - beyond student achievement-only metric - this contribution critically examines how impact is conceptualised, investigated, and measured in the research literature (Landi et al., 2025; Bosatelli et al., in press; Boscolo et al., in press). The review maps the main dimensions of impact considered in the studies, the methodological approaches adopted, and the actors involved. The analysis reveals a strong concentration on teacher-centred indicators—such as knowledge, beliefs, and perceptions—while other dimensions, including observable changes in teaching practices, student perspectives, organisational transformations, and long-term professional trajectories, remain comparatively underexplored.

The research further examines the reviewed studies through the lens of Ricerca-Formazione (R-F), a heuristic framework for inquiry-based teacher professional learning. The five R-F core elements are used as an analytical lens to explore the extent to which the PD initiatives described in the literature align with inquiry-based and collaborative learning processes. The analysis shows that most PD initiatives display a limited alignment. In particular, while contextual analysis and documentation-supported reflection appear relatively frequently, other elements—such as negotiated goals and structured collaboration between teachers and researchers—are rarely described. These findings highlight not only the partial integration of inquiry-oriented approaches within PD initiatives, but also the limited and often inconsistent reporting of key programme characteristics, which makes it difficult to connect impact evaluation with the specific features of the PD designs.

The contribution suggests extending this line of inquiry beyond English-language literature in order to identify adjacent traditions and non-Anglophone approaches that may share conceptual affinities with the R-F perspective while relying on different theoretical vocabularies. Further, this study highlights the difficulty of capturing the complexity of TPD within impact research, which often focuses on effectiveness as measurable output while paying limited attention to the structure and dynamics of the formative process itself. We argue that investigating the relationship between the design of PD and its impact requires moving beyond a narrow view of effectiveness toward a more contextualised, relational, and democratic understanding of professional learning and its effects.