Conference Program

Inspired by the principles of Educational Commons (De Lissovoy, 2011; Pechtelidis, 2020), this research explores the evolving role of libraries in fostering learning environments that extend beyond the traditional confines of the school. It’s an opportunity for us to think about Education not only within schools, but also in other places where children can learn, experiment, contribute and share. Libraries are increasingly becoming vital social hubs and incubators for innovation, offering spaces for children and young people to learn, experiment, contribute, and share. This proposal investigates how these libraries are echoing the ideals of an Educational Commons, creating opportunities for participatory learning and community engagement.

This proposal will focus on two cases in France where libraries are experimenting innovative approaches related to educational commons. Their experiments contribute to the transformation of libraries as a social hub, further from their traditional missions:

• With eXperium, Lilliad (Lille University Learning Center) is performing an important scientific mediation (more than 10 000 children were concerned) and transforming the way students are practising the library.

• From its start, the Petite Bibliothèque Ronde is about children's literature and how to create a space for them. By actively involving artists and with people under constraints (children/people in detention facilities), the library is working on key concepts like democracy, inclusion and access to reading.

Libraries are deeply related to their territory meaning that this place could be an opportunity to create space where the initial “doing things together” also means creating spaces to rediscover this “common moral and political socialization of all children and young people.”(Laval, 2006) In this perspective, we are working on a “learning territory” (Gwiazdzinski & Cholat, 2019) where education performs within and outside School.

This presentation examines educational commons as an alternative pedagogical and political paradigm that reconfigures learning as a collective, relational, experimental, and democratic process. Challenging individualized, competitive, and market-oriented models of education, it conceptualizes education not as a private good but as a common good and a shared social practice grounded in processes of commoning. Educational commons extend beyond the notion of shared resources to encompass dynamic practices through which communities collectively govern knowledge and learning, spaces, and social relations. Through horizontal decision-making, shared responsibility, and co-creation of knowledge, educational environments are transformed into sites of democratic experimentation, where learning becomes affective, collaborative, and socially embedded.

The presentation highlights the significant contribution of the Laboratory of Sociology of Education at the University of Thessaly in advancing the study of educational commons both theoretically and empirically. Drawing on European and national research projects, the Laboratory has systematically explored how practices of commoning emerge within schools, youth spaces, and cultural institutions such as museums and libraries. These projects investigate children’s and young people’s participation in collective governance, the potential of collaborative structures to address educational inequalities, and the ways institutional cultures can shift toward more inclusive and democratic forms.

Central to the presentation is the Libcommons project, which serves as the main empirical case study. Libcommons explores how public, school, and academic libraries can function as commons-based educational infrastructures, repositioning them from passive repositories of knowledge to active hubs of collaborative learning and democratic participation. By fostering structured partnerships between higher education institutions and libraries, the project bridges formal and non-formal education and promotes innovative pedagogical practices. Within this framework, libraries are reimagined as living ecosystems in which students, educators, librarians, and local community actors co-design learning activities, co-produce knowledge, negotiate shared norms, and cultivate collective stewardship. This approach supports the development of key competencies for contemporary societies, including civic engagement, participatory citizenship, intercultural dialogue, critical thinking, digital literacy, and lifelong learning.

At the same time, the presentation critically engages with the tensions between grassroots commons-based initiatives and macro-level educational policies. By situating Libcommons within national and European policy frameworks, and drawing from the theories of hegemony and post-hegemony, it examines how dominant policy discourses both enable and constrain the scaling of commoning practices. This micro-macro perspective allows for a nuanced discussion of the conditions under which educational commons can be sustained, institutionalized, or transformed without losing their participatory ethos.

Drawing on insights from childhood and youth studies, the presentation foregrounds children and young people as present political subjects rather than future citizens. In commons-based educational environments, participation moves beyond tokenistic inclusion toward shared authority and collective responsibility, fostering democratic subjectivities grounded in collaboration, mutual recognition, and care.

Overall, the presentation argues that educational commons operate as laboratories of democracy, where everyday practices of togetherness generate new imaginaries of learning, citizenship, and institutional life. By combining theoretical reflection with empirical evidence from Libcommons and related projects, it contributes to broader debates on how local practices of commoning can be connected to processes of systemic educational transformation.

This contribution examines an attempt to sustain pedagogical innovation through the deliberate integration of two complementary learning experiences situated at the intersection of formal and non-formal education in Reggio Emilia, Italy: the Delivery Museum (DM) and Scuola Diffusa (SD), a form of Widespread Education.

Research conducted by the Centro di Ricerca su Insegnanti ed Innovazione Didattica (CERIID) at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia has documented the effectiveness of out-of-school learning experiences in enhancing student motivation, promoting meaningful learning, supporting inclusion and democratic participation to learning, and fostering students' metacognitive awareness. However, a recurring challenge remains: the effects of such experiences tend to fade once students return to the routines of school life, and teachers find it difficult to sustain more participatory and democratic pedagogical approaches in classroom settings.

In December 2025, Reggio Emilia Civic Museums brought thirty objects to a primary school (DM), creating a freely accessible space in which classes were invited to organise learning activities around museum artefacts and to reflect on curatorial practices. In January 2026, one class subsequently participated in SD — organised by Officina Educativa, the educational department of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia — spending a week immersed in an architecture exhibition, engaging in observation, inquiry, and collaborative reflection alongside teachers and educators through processes of co-researching, co-designing, and co-teaching.

The educators from the Museum and Officina Educativa, the classroom teachers, and a CERIID researcher collectively designed the integration of the two experiences. To make the connection explicit for students, a mosaic from DM was brought into the SD exhibition space. Adults anticipated that students would recognise both experiences as inquiry-based, and anticipated reflection on "design" as a shared process across contexts.

Following SD, the researcher conducted two focus groups with students, investigating their perceptions of learning, peer relationships, and metacognitive strategies. The photovoice methodology was employed to explore students' representations of the wonder of learning, the beauty of knowing, the challenges of learning, and the strength of collaborative inquiry.

Results indicate that students recognised skills developed in DM — observation, inquiry, collaborative problem-solving — as directly transferable to SD. Both image sets were drawn upon in the photovoice activity, confirming the meaningfulness of each context. Notably, certain concepts, such as the beauty of knowing, were more frequently represented through DM imagery. Students demonstrated an emerging capacity to identify and articulate strategies for enhancing their own understanding. Moreover, they recognized the power of learning in groups, with both adults and peers. Exchanging ideas, changing points of view, asking and answering questions collectively, emerged as ways not only to enhance understanding and learning, but also to discover the marvel of knowledge and buster motivation for all.

For teachers, the collaborative design of research instruments deepened their understanding of students' learning processes and enriched their observational practices. Reflective dialogue among all adult participants generated renewed pedagogical insight into how teaching methodologies might be transformed to foster more participatory and democratic approaches to learning.

Bourdieu's theoretical perspective has almost always been employed to interpret the processes that reproduce inequalities. This contribution, however, aims to explore the possibility of applying the Bourdieusian model to the analysis of transformation processes, situating it within the paradigm of education as a common good (Laval and Vergne, 2021). In literature, the paradigm of education as a common good is understood as a process that redefines the educational experience, structuring itself through participatory and co-design practices that enhance subjectivization. The aim of this paper is to understand how practices of "educational commons" can foster youth activism (Conner et al. 2024) and foster individual and community change in rural areas affected by depopulation and community fragmentation. Using the categories of field, habitus, and cultural capital, we analyze how the transformation of the educational model produces a reconfiguration of the educational field through the attempt to subvert the rules of the game and the dominant doxa. This process involves a restructuring of young people's habits, challenging the hierarchies of epistemic and symbolic power and the vested interests of dominant social groups. This implies a shift in their positions as legitimate agents of knowledge capable of interpreting, producing, and disseminating processes of change.
The study applies this theoretical framework to a revealing case study of a school located in a rural community in southern Italy (Giardiello and Capobianco, 2026).
The research, based on a qualitative approach, analyzed the film club project using unstructured interviews with the teacher who conceived the project and with families, and focus groups with students. The results show that education as a common good can not only be a transformative tool, redefining young people's capital and habits, but also allows us to observe the emergence of forms of resistance stemming from an adult-centric culture and limitations related to the difficulties in creating synergistic and non-self-referential networks among community stakeholders.

Schools as Infrastructures for Community Commoning: Participation, shared spaces and community development in Norwegian municipalities

Educational research increasingly explores the idea of the commons as a way of understanding collective responsibility for learning, knowledge and democratic life. Yet less attention has been paid to how practices of “commoning” may emerge around schools as part of broader community development processes. Commoning is understood here as collective practices through which communities organise, maintain and govern shared resources and social relations (McGinnis & Ostrom, 2014). In the cases explored here, young students identify resources in their neighbourhoods and invite residents to participate in activities, collaboration, and collective stewardship of emerging community spaces. The paper asks under what conditions school-based participation processes led by children and youth can develop into collective practices resembling commoning in local communities.

The study draws on collaborative research with Norwegian municipalities that have experimented with asset-based community development (ABCD) (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993) approaches to strengthen child and youth participation in local communities (Agdal et al., 2019). Through participatory action research and long-term collaboration between researchers and municipal practitioners, the study analyses a set of initiatives where school pupils and youth groups engaged in identifying local resources, initiating activities, and mobilising residents around community projects.

The findings suggest that school-based participation processes can sometimes evolve into collective practices resembling commoning, where local actors jointly organise activities, develop meeting places, and take shared responsibility for maintaining community initiatives. Young people not only participated in decision-making but also mobilised peers and adults, organised activities, and contributed to the development of meeting places and shared initiatives in their neighbourhoods, bridging activities in and around the schools.

However, the cases also demonstrate that such processes are fragile and uneven. Sustained collective practices were more likely to emerge when three conditions converged: mobilization led by young people, connector roles and facilitation within municipal organisations, and access to accessible spaces where networks could develop through discussions and activities over time.

Schools and other public facilities often functioned as initial infrastructures that enabled these practices to develop. These conditions enabled the gradual formation of communities of practice around shared initiatives, a key feature of commoning processes.

The paper contributes to discussions on commons and education by highlighting how school-centred participation may extend into neighbourhood contexts and support emerging practices of commoning, linking educational participation with broader processes of democratic community development.

The cases also speak to broader debates on the drivers and constraints of commoning. While some perspectives emphasise commoning as emerging primarily outside or in opposition to formal institutions, others explore how institutional arrangements may support commons-based practices. The Norwegian cases suggest that in welfare-state contexts, public infrastructures and facilitative municipal roles may act not only as potential constraints but also as enabling conditions for children and youth-driven collective practices and emerging forms of commoning.

At a time of democratic backsliding, widening inequalities, and growing barriers to knowledge access, public institutions face the challenge of creating environments where participation and shared responsibility are experienced rather than proclaimed. This communication asks: how can public libraries function as commons-based infrastructures that embed democracy in everyday learning practices?

The analysis draws on findings from the European Union Erasmus + funded project LibCommon (Universities and Libraries as Commons-Based Innovative Environments for Learning, Civic Engagement and Democracy). Methodologically, the communication presents a qualitative case study from the Catalan context, combining semi-structured interviews with cultural policy experts and field visits to two contrasting library models: the Biblioteca Gabriel García Márquez in Barcelona and the Bibliobuses of the Xarxa de Biblioteques Municipals de Barcelona.

The comparative approach enables an examination of how commons-based principles are operationalised across fixed and mobile infrastructures. The Biblioteca Gabriel García Márquez exemplifies institutional openness through participatory and inclusive design. Initiatives such as Ràdio Maconda, a professional community radio studio enabling collective cultural production, demonstrate how libraries can redistribute cultural authority, lower symbolic barriers, and foster co-creation. Through project-based methodologies supported by professional equipment and staff facilitation, users create podcasts and radio programmes on cultural, social and literary topics. The studio collaborates with schools and local groups, hosting interviews, book-club productions and youth-led projects. This initiative expands literacy beyond traditional format, strengthens media literacy and fosters civic engagement, transforming the library into a platform for collective expression.Radio Maconda also increases participation among diverse groups and reinforce the library’s role as an inclusive, socially responsive cultural hub.

The Bibliobús model, by contrast, embodies territorial inclusivity by extending professional library services to small and rural municipalities lacking permanent infrastructure. Bibliobus are mobile library services operating in the province of Barcelona since 1995. They travel along pre-established routes to serve 152 small and rural municipalities, typically with populations with less than 3,000 inhabitants. Many of these towns lack the resources to maintain a permanent library. As a travelling cultural hub, it reduces geographic and economic inequalities while sustaining local participation through coordinated activities with schools and community actors.

Taken together, the cases reveal two interconnected dimensions of democratic culture: ensuring that institutions are open to diverse publics and actively reaching those otherwise excluded. That is, that public libraries understood as common goods can become “Palaces for the people” (Klinenberg, 2019). However, the findings also highlight a deeper governance question: democracy in libraries is not secured solely through universal access, but through participation in defining norms, priorities, and collective meanings. The public value of commons libraries therefore lies in their capacity to respond to collective needs, reduce social and cultural inequalities, and sustain shared civic spaces where differences are negotiated rather than segregated. That is, rather than simply providing access or support, libraries are called upon to cultivate commons-based infrastructures based on values of shared governance, co-creation, mutual care, and democratic participation. By conceptualising libraries as commons-based civic infrastructures, this research contributes to debates on public institutions, inequality, and everyday democracy