Conference Program

This study re-envisions the role of public school through the Pedagogy of the Commons approach (De Lissovoy, 2011; Pechtelidis, 2023; Pechtelidis et al. 2023). At its core lies the notion of conviviality, the art of coexisting in equality and reciprocal interdependence (Illich, 1973; Les Convivialistes, 2014; Bollier & Helfrich, 2019). The research sought out to explore whether, and to what extent, counter-hegemonic pedagogical practices and forms of commoning can unfold within public education, and how schools may function as sites that host such practices without abandoning their institutional character. Adopting a critical action-research design (Kemmis et al., 2014), nine sixth-grade primary school students participated in an extracurricular program where they co-designed Educational Escape Rooms. This collective endeavor fostered practices of co-creation, peer learning, and shared decision making. Data, collected through participant observation, reflective focus groups, a field diary, and pedagogical artefacts, were thematically analyzed (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Findings reveal the potential of convivial commoning as a pedagogical process within public school. Students cultivated collectivity, while conflicts served as opportunities for preserving and strengthening relationships, thereby establishing a positive and engaging atmosphere.

Pedagogue and philosopher John Dewey defined democracy as more than a societal system where citizens make choices and express their opinion (Dewey 1916). He defined democracy in terms of an ongoing co-construction of a communicative culture, “a way of life”, in education and society (Dewey 1939). In an important reading of Dewey's work, James Carey (1989) draws out the shared root of the words common, community, and communication: persons live in community by virtue of what they hold in common, and communication is the process by which they come to hold things in common. The task of early childhood education and care (ECEC) is thus to create a way of life that accommodates the ongoing, communicative co-construction of common culture, knowledge, and values across generations.

To promote such a way of life in ECEC today is challenging. Across large parts of the world, ECEC is since long subject to a forceful commodification that erodes democracy, equity and inclusion in education (Roberts-Holmes & Moss 2021; Vandenbroeck, Lehrer & Mitchell 2024). In Sweden, these values are now framed as problems to be solved through children's early acquisition of the national language – a logic that reduces communication to transmission, education to instrumental teaching of cognitive linguistic skills, and that, remarkably, lacks scientific grounding and risks undermining the very democratic, equitable and inclusive practices it claims to promote (Lecusay, Olsson & Nilsson, in press; Olsson, Lecusay & Dalsgaard 2023).

To counter this, we draw on an on-going government-funded project designed to study how children’s narratives and commons may be stimulated in what we call Aesthetic Literacy Events (ALEs) – playful explorations of language that activate both body and mind and that carry the potential of enhancing both children’s cognitive language-development and more equitable and inclusive education (Olsson, Lecusay & Dalsgaard 2023). We focus on one of the project’s constituent studies concerning the development and field-testing of a philosophical-pedagogical theory of ALEs. This includes educational commons theory (Pechtelidis & Kioupkiolis 2020; Cappello et al. 2024; Olsson, Lecusay & Nilsson 2024), philosophical perspectives on language and social formation (Bergson 1896/1988; Deleuze & Guattari 2004) as well as cultural-psychological theories of children’s narratives (Bruner 1991, Nelson 1996). These theoretical perspectives, we argue, make it possible to understand even the youngest children – toddlers’ – development of narratives and creation of commons as intertwined and co-emergent processes that may be stimulated in ALEs.

We make this case through examples from fieldwork in Swedish preschools where we engaged with toddlers’ everyday activities as a way of field-testing and refining our developing theoretical framework. Through vignettes of a group clay activity and a moment of playful, humorous interaction, we show how toddlers’ narrative activity and creation of commons constitute moments in which culture, knowledge, and values are communicated and co-constructed. This takes place in preschools that through including elements of ALEs in their daily activities have managed to create a way of life that may constitute a space of togetherness in which democracy is not taught but lived.

This paper engages with the debate on the relationship between education and democracy, arguing that the democratic relevance of educational processes cannot be reduced to individual outcomes alone, but also concerns participation, shared responsibility and cooperation within local contexts. From this perspective, the paper presents an evaluative study on the impact of the Comunità Educante Evoluta (CEE) project, implemented in the Zisa-Danisinni area of Palermo, to explore the conditions under which an educational intervention may generate transformations that outlast the project and open up the possibility of forms of educational governance oriented to the common good.

The case is situated in an urban context marked by structural vulnerability and educational poverty, understood not as immediate conditions, but as the outcome of layered historical, urban and relational processes. Theoretically and methodologically, the paper adopts a processual and relational perspective on social change, consistent with a theory-based, realist and qualitative approach to evaluation. Within this framework, impact is not conceived as a linear causal relationship between intervention and outcome, but as a complex, gradual and multilevel process reconstructed through plausible attribution, generative mechanisms and contextual conditions (Abbott, 2016; Archer, 2015; Giddens, 1984; Pawson, 2016; Westhorp, 2018).

Accordingly, the research design distinguishes between micro, meso and macro levels in order to capture transformations in the experiences of children and families, in the professional repertoires of educational actors, and in the network and governance configurations of the local area. The methodological strategy employs tools capable of capturing change in its experiential, symbolic, relational and temporal dimensions.

Findings show that the most relevant effects of the intervention do not primarily lie in measurable school outcomes, but in cultural shifts, relational transformations and reorientations of educational practices. At the macro level, the study highlights a process through which education is redefined as a shared responsibility, no longer understood in exclusively school-centred terms. At the meso level, stronger forms of collaboration emerge among schools, practitioners, families and local actors. At the micro level, change takes shape through processes of recognition, motivation, trust and empowerment, leading to shifts in the ways subjects relate to others, to themselves and to educational experience. The educative community thus emerges as a lived relational configuration.

At the same time, the study highlights the fragility of these processes. Change is recognised as real, yet not fully stabilised: it remains exposed to contextual discontinuities, actor variability and the lack of stable institutional arrangements capable of sustaining it over time. From this perspective, the paper reads the CEE case as a threshold between project-based educational action and educational commons. Rather than documenting an established commons, the evaluation makes visible the conditions under which practices of educational commoning may consolidate over time. In this sense, the case study shows how democracy is constructed within educational practices, and how participation, togetherness and shared responsibility may emerge within processes of building an educative community, while remaining exposed to the risk of reversibility in the absence of recognition and institutionalisation (Cappello et al., 2024; Cappello & Siino, 2023).

One of the main contemporary issues in education is facilitating every child to develop democratic citizenship, as it is important to have an active participation in decision making based on its maturity and interest in matters of its everyday experience (Correia et al., 2022; Pechtelidis, 2018). The importance of such participation and acquisition of democratic values is underscored in National Constitutions and Educational Curricula in alignment with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Participatory and democratic pedagogy is based on the notion of the “child as a citizen of today” supporting the idea that children can have a role in the development of community practices through not only becoming visible, but also being involved in decision-making processes.

Despite the rising interest in young children as active citizens, their participation in local authorities’ decisions is still limited. This paper presents an educational program, implemented in several early childhood educational settings in Alexandroupolis, Greece, as part of the teacher students’ internship program in the 4^th year of their studies in the Department of Educational Studies in Early Childhood, at Democritus University of Thrace. The intervention was based on an educational project-based scenario, which student teachers developed with their academic mentors and revised taking into account kindergarten teachers’ input and children’s ideas. Children were facilitated to be actively engaged in the life of their community, proposing ways to enrich the municipality’s carnival celebrations for the following year. Their proposals were sent to the mayor for consideration. This way, children embodied an alternative discourse of their agency, that constructing them as active, competent, informed and interested citizens. Being engaged in a lived practice of democratic participation within shared spaces of togetherness, they enacted democratic practices and were empowered to feel that they could make a difference to their community. The presentation concludes with suggestions regarding more inclusive interactions between children and local governing bodies.

European policies often frame urban public spaces as key sites for political and social development (European Commission, 2025). Space – and cities more specifically – it is argued, have become increasingly important to how we live, how economies work and how power functions. Furthermore, recent policy and theory-based frameworks on Adult Learning and Education (ALE) recognise citizenship education and civic participation as core dimensions of lifelong learning (UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, 2022; UNESCO, 2021). Urban space thus emerges as an environment for informal learning that is practical, embodied, and relational (Grummell, 2010; Livingstone, 2001, 1999). From this perspective, learning takes place, that means it always happens “in location” (Colley, Hodkinson, & Malcolm, 2003; Lave & Wenger, 1991), even beyond formal educational circuits and settings. Participatory-oriented theories in adult education further suggest that informal learning is inseparable from a sense of belonging. To learn entails being part of, becoming a legitimate participant and member, while belonging itself requires to learn norms, values, identities related to the context to which we belong (Lave & Wenger, 1991). However, according to a critical perspective space is never neutral, but rather an entagled network of historical, cultural and social relationships (Massey, 2005): understanding space therefore requires critically questioning how it is represented, who has access to it, and who holds the power to construct discourses and thus to construct knowledge about it.

Urban regeneration processes provide a particularly revealing key case in which to examine these dynamics, as they actively reshape the material, symbolic and normative conditions of (public) space. The contemporary phenomenon of regeneration is frequently framed in policy discourses as a participatory and inclusive process of spatial transformation, involving various actors in a multilevel engagement, fostering civic and democratic education. Yet experiences of belonging and legitimacy are unevenly distributed, and inclusion and participation often remain rhetorical (Barron, 2022; Trawalter et al., 2021; Fincher et al., 2014). My research aims to investigate the conditions under which belonging, or a sense of distance or alienation, is learnt and reconfigured in public spaces undergoing urban regeneration, and how this shapes perceptions to be part of, or marginal to, collective urban life.

The research is based on an in-depth interpretative case study (Yin, 2018; Merriam, 1989) combining ethnographic observation, walking interviews and focus groups with differently positioned participants involved in a regeneration process in a medium-sized city in northern Italy. Initial findings highlight a number of tensions: between the perceived openness of the space and its actual accessibility, between civic imaginaries of public space and forms of private management, and between rhetoric and effective participation in public affairs, resulting in the perception of limited influence and disengagement.

By analysing belonging as a form of informal learning embedded in spatial experience and transformation, this research contributes to rethinking urban regeneration as a public pedagogy (Biesta, 2012). In this sense, it becomes a formative setting in which to develop a language of critique and possibility and where dispositions towards participation and civic agency can be encouraged-learnt or discouraged-taught.

The present contribution suggests heritage education as a field for promoting citizenship practices among children. It highlights its potential to cultivate their awareness as social and cultural actors capable of generating change within their everyday environments, while encouraging their active participation in and engagement to the common good. In its most recent conceptualization, heritage education is understood as a participatory process, oriented toward the co-construction of knowledge about what is recognized as heritage, rather than the mere transmission of information (Del Gobbo et al., 2018; De Nicola & Zuccoli, 2016). Within this framework, heritage is no longer conceived as a set of fixed assets, but as a social and cultural process, continuously transformed and re-signified (Smith, 2006), shaped by the interplay between past, present, and future. Accordingly, heritage is not a self-evident given; rather, it acquires meaning in relation to the futures that are imagined and negotiated (Harrison et al., 2023). Also, international agendas (UNESCO 2003; CoE, 2005) attach central relevance to the role of society in identifying, meaning-making, and care for heritage, sustaining a progressive democratization in this field (Cirino, 2017). However, children’s voices regarding heritage remain significantly under-researched (Ginzarly & Srour, 2021; Smith, 2013), highlighting the need to explore their relationship with it. From a relational and intergenerational perspective (Moran-Ellis, 2021; Eßer et al., 2016), children are understood as competent social actors who actively participate in the co-construction of heritage in dialogue with adults (Sebastiano et al., 2025).

Based on these considerations, this contribution presents an interdisciplinary study that combines educational and design research, with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding of how children reflect and co-construct heritage. The methodological framework adopted is Educational Design-Based Research (van den Akker et al., 2006, McKenney & Reeves, 2012), which conceptualizes research objects as epistemic, processual, and unfinished, requiring iterative processes of shared exploration and reflection to co-construct knowledge. This perspective resonates with the understanding of heritage as a collective and socially situated phenomenon, continuously shaped through social practices between subjects as well as between subject and material (Reckwitz, 2003).

The ongoing empirical study, conducted in shape-by diversity area, within non-formal educational settings, involves children aged 8-12 in Real-World Labs (Parodi et al., 2023). These are conceived as creative and dialogic environments, where participants are engaged as active actors. Through material-based stimuli, introduced to render the otherwise abstract concept of heritage more accessible and tangible, children are invited to explore, negotiate, and co-construct their understandings of heritage in relation to shared individual and collective experiences. From this perspective, RWLs are framed as transformative and democratic spaces where heritage becomes a means to reflect on what is recognized as meaningful in the present, identify common goods, imagine possible futures, and experiment with practices of care (Sebastiano, 2025).

By including children’s perspectives within processes of heritage co-construction, this contribution proposes an understanding of heritage education as a democratic, participatory, and future-oriented practice, capable of nurturing situated forms of participation and citizenship in increasingly complex socio-cultural contexts characterized by superdiversity (Vertovec, 2023).

Democracy presupposes the recognition of others and participation in the decision-making and management processes of social life. For this to be achieved, intention in these directions and the concrete possibility of its occurrence are necessary.

Recognition of others is closely linked to cultural awareness, ethical solidarity, ongoing study, and an organic educational focus on these presuppositions.

Democratic participation refers to the involvement of the individual in their physical and spiritual reality. The democratic process therefore unfolds on two levels: the spiritual and the material-physical; these two levels intersect in continuous meaningful interactions.

Can it therefore be thought that learning democracy is, or should be, limited to a specific context? Rather, since it is a learning process that extends well beyond the time of "compulsory education", it requires methods, times, and places that can encompass the complexity of reality.

Transcending the narrow confines of formal education is an automatic consequence of this concept. Informal and non-formal learning thus come into play (Vezzola, 2020).

This new paradigm deconstructs the categories of learning times and life, and the places where they occur (Leali 2025).

The places themselves, both material and immaterial, are open to an educational-planning interpretation and use that positions them as providers of (democratic) meaning (Rossi, 2018).

The paper aims to investigate the adequacy of contemporary "material and immaterial spaces" within the context of the democratic evolution of societies (Augé, 2009).
At the same time, it will be illustrated how unschooling seams to be more suitable than others to develop the democratic presuppositions and the opportunities that informal and non-formal learning and “spaces of commons” can offer learners.