Conference Program

This contribution analyses how a kindergarten engaged in a Change Laboratory (CL) intervention navigated intertwined expansive and regressive learning cycles while attempting to implement an open-classroom model. Grounded in CHAT, contradictions are historically accumulated structural tensions that drive transformation (Engeström, 2015). Rather than surface conflicts, contradictions operate at different levels: primary within components, secondary between components, tertiary between old and emerging models, and quaternary between interacting activity systems. These tensions may generate transformative agency, yet they may also produce resistance and regression when not collectively worked through (Sannino, 2010).

The RQ is: How did layered contradictions, intertwined with staff mobility, shape expansive and regressive learning cycles during the implementation of an open-classroom model in a kindergarten?
After a two-year relocation due to renovation works, the school reopened in September 2024 in a building architecturally designed for open classrooms. Teachers initially attempted to implement open spaces but quickly reverted to closed sections. This revealed a secondary contradiction between spatial tools and entrenched organisational rules (Morselli & Weyland, 2025), confirming that architectural change alone does not transform pedagogical practice.

Between March and June 2025, the CL facilitated collective analysis of mirror data and surfaced primary contradictions embedded in the traditional model, particularly tensions between inclusive pedagogical values and segmented routines. Teachers jointly modelled an open-classroom object of activity, initiating an expansive cycle. However, staff turnover in September 2025 altered the subject collective, intensifying tertiary contradictions between the emerging model and residual habits. The arrival of new children further amplified secondary contradictions between object, rules and division of labour. A legionella outbreak in November caused a quaternary contradiction between the school and public health authorities.

When the school reopened in February 2026, tensions deepened. Divergent pedagogical models—particularly different child’s conceptions and the newly arrived children’s acclimatisation—clashed with the practical management of everyday routines. In February 2026, a decisive refusal to reopen shared spaces marked a regressive turning point. In agreement with three teachers strongly committed to the model, it was decided to suspend further implementation and resume CL sessions in September, when a central opponent of the reform would retire.

This case demonstrates that expansive learning is fragile when contradictions around the pedagogical object remain only partially elaborated. Architectural redesign and procedural innovation cannot substitute for explicit negotiation of the underlying image of the child and the corresponding pedagogical model. Second, the study highlights that staff mobility can intensify contradictions by destabilising collective memory and fragmenting transformative agency (Haapasaari et al., 2016). Sustainable democratic innovation requires sustained dialogical spaces in which competing pedagogical visions can be made explicit and worked through. The findings suggest that more sustained CL cycles and explicit discussion of the image of the child are necessary conditions for consolidating expansive learning in early childhood education. Rather than viewing regression as failure, the study reframes it as part of the historical movement through which educational change unfolds.

This paper examines the realisation of official school disaster preparedness directives through principals' practices, framed by an educational commons perspective to discuss the formulation of disaster governance in schools. Theoretically, this paper aims to contribute and develop the evolving argument related to educational commons (Pechtelidis, 2020) by focusing on the areas of disaster education and policy related realisation. Focusing on the Greek policy context, at the commencement of each academic year, all primary and secondary schools are furnished with an official directive entitled "Implementation of Civil Protection and Civil Defense Guidelines in School Units." (MofERAS, 2024) School units are thereby obligated to operationalize these guidelines, with principals charged with formulating, executing, and enacting emergency protocols addressing critical incidents, such as fires, extreme weather events, technological disasters, and Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) incidents. Drawing on qualitative data from eight purposively sampled principals at public primary and junior high schools in flood-affected areas (diverse by location, size, and socioeconomic profile), this study explores how they interpret, adapt, and implement national guidelines. Data from two 2.5-hour focus groups fostered discussions on policy comprehension, enactment, leadership efficacy, and support gaps, structured around four themes: policy implementation, performance, responsibility/emotions (readiness, efficiency, effectiveness), and recommendations. Inductive thematic analysis (Creswell, 2014; Bryman, 2016) revealed educational commons as a performed but not recognised practice by the school principals, refocusing the discussion from bureaucratic policy implementation and policy realisation to enacted practices based on educational commons, even though they are not recognised as such. The data highlight the shifting focus from bureaucratic compliance to emergent, collective governance in disaster preparedness governance.

The Change Laboratory (Virkkunen & Newnham, 2013), developed within the theoretical framework of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), is an interventionist methodology aimed at promoting expansive learning, collective transformation, and organizational innovation in complex social and work activity systems (Engeström, 1987; Engeström & Sannino, 2021; Engeström et al., 1999). It supports collective processes of analysis and transformation through the surfacing and elaboration of structural contradictions that traverse object-oriented activity systems (Engeström et al., 2024), while also functioning as a dialogic, reflective, and democratic space for adult learning.

This contribution presents an experience of the Change Laboratory implemented within the Working Table/Groupon Severe Social Marginalization of the Municipality of Varese (Bonometti & Ferri, 2025). The process involved approximately thirty actors engaged in services for individuals at high risk of marginalization, providing a context for adult education grounded in informal and interprofessional exchange. From this perspective, the laboratory served not only as a device for organizational development but also as a democratic learning space in which subjects from diverse organizations negotiated meanings, made systemic contradictions visible, and constructed a shared object of work.

The intervention, conducted between November 2024 and February 2025, consisted of six sessions facilitated by five researchers from the University of Insubria and the Catholic University, under the scientific supervision of A. Sannino. The primary objective was to transform the local approach to severe marginalization through the co-design of innovative solutions, grounded in a systemic and historically situated analysis of emerging issues. The process aimed at a reconceptualization of the shared object of activity, redefining marginalization no longer as an individual condition to be addressed fragmentarily, but as a systemic, relational, and territorially constructed object. This cultural and conceptual reconfiguration fostered the emergence of a collective agency—understood as the subjects' capacity to take control of their activity—oriented toward transforming practices and inter-service relations.

A central methodological pillar was the principle of double stimulation: selected empirical data (critical episodes, problematic cases, documentary evidence) were returned to participants to make systemic contradictions visible and stimulate reflective processes oriented toward change (Sannino, 2016). Participants identified tensions between established practices and complex, changing needs, highlighting service fragmentation, weak interorganizational integration, and the absence of a shared strategic vision. Historical analysis and examination of concrete cases clarified the systemic nature of the issues, while the activity triangle model enabled analysis of relations among subjects, tools, rules, community, division of labor, and object.

On this basis, the group outlined a zone of proximal development and co-designed innovative responses: a dynamic mapping of territorial resources, a multidimensional and multi-agency team, and a physical coordination space among public and private actors. These outcomes can be read as concrete mediations of collective agency and as indicators of a new democratic capacity for interorganizational action. Overall, the Varese case illustrates how the Change Laboratory, in interprofessional contexts of adult education, can support processes of conceptual redefinition akin to concept formation in the wild, democratic learning, and the construction of new territorial coalitions.

Background

In the Italian child protection system, Pronto Intervento Minori (PIM) offers the first response to emergency situations involving children and families (homelessness, undocumented families, transition to residential care for children in severe risk).

Bronfenbrenner (1979; 2005) connects learning and development to ecological transitions. In the bio-ecological model, changes in relations, roles, and activity have a high developmental potential. However, the critical point experienced by professionals in the PIM’s activity is the risk to operate in a routine, merely reactive way, and to reduce both children and family agency, and creative space for professionals.

Following a major reorganization of emergency social interventions in the municipality, the PIM working group has launched a Change Lab (Virkkunen, Newnham, 2013) with two researchers to better define its approach and function within the welfare system in Milan.

Aims

The research aims to explore the reconceptualization of the motive of PIM during a Change Lab using the lens of expansive learning and concept formation in the wild (Engestrom, 2024).

Methods

The data collection and analysis followed two interconnected lines.

1. An ethnographic research using observation of team meetings, document analysis, interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders (PIM team, social workers from the municipality, psychologists, coordinators, local welfare manager, consultants from the municipality, educators and psychologists working in residential care, and a mother) was aimed at both describing the organizational culture of PIM and identifying key elements that could be used as second stimuli during the Change Lab sessions.

1. The Change Lab sessions, recorded and analyzed through content analysis aimed to identify the emerging conceptualizations of PIM’s work. CL entailed:

• the historical analysis of PIM and its changes due to new global phenomena (migration, wars…) that have shaped the identity and functions of PIM over the years;

• analysis of current professional practice and its challenges.

Results

During the Change Lab sessions, professionals recognize a distance between their work and the current representation of themselves and their organization as “emergency experts” whose intervention is limited to responding quickly to immediate, mostly instrumental needs. Exploring the actors’ experience and trajectories during this phase led the group to work on a new conceptualization: while previous narratives defined PIM as an “emergency room” focused on providing first aid and referring the “patient” to a social care service once stabilized, the new conceptualization describes PIM professionals as actors who take care not only for individual needs but also for the developmental potential of systems during transitions, thus re-defining their motive and positioning from an individually-targeted, reactive and deficit-focused model to an activity system that is participatory and “collaboratively responsive” (Edwards et al., 2009). This concept engages professionals in a reconceptualization of their work as a systemic action that can sustain a democratic reconfiguring of the social care system in the city, starting from the most challenging transitions experienced by children and families.

Cities facing socio-ecological crises increasingly rely on civic initiatives to articulate alternative developments. Venice exemplifies these dynamics. Over recent decades, overtourism, environmental degradation, and the commodification of public spaces have threatened the social and ecological survival of the Venetian lagoon. In response, civic movements have sought to reconfigure the relationship between the city and its wetland ecosystem. Yet these initiatives often remain fragmented and face resistance from institutional and commercial actors. In Venice and elsewhere, research rarely examines the learning processes through which civic actors develop heterogeneous coalitions capable of addressing such complex challenges. This study therefore investigates how democratic processes emerge through expansive learning in civic movements confronting socio-ecological crises.
The research draws on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), particularly its fourth-generation focus on coalitions of activities addressing shared societal challenges. Empirically, it is conducted as a formative diagnosis of Venice’s civil society, combining participatory engagement with qualitative analysis. An embedded case design focuses on three civic movements addressing interconnected issues: Coordination No Incinerator (environmental health and industrial pollution), Poveglia for Everybody (commoning of abandoned public islands), and High Residential Tension (housing justice and opposition to touristification). Data include documentary materials, observations in sixty-one meetings, and twenty-five interviews. The analysis reconstructs how these movements organise around contested socio-ecological challenges and how their activities expand through coalition-building across social sectors and governance levels.
The findings show that civic activities emerge in relation to distinct object regions such as environmental degradation, housing unaffordability, and the mismanagement of public assets. Civic engagement often begins through the contestation of public policies and economic interests affecting common goods and the ecosystem. These conflicts reveal systemic contradictions in local governance and stimulate collective learning. Civic movements initiate expansive learning by reframing local problems as cross-sectoral and multilevel challenges, enabling cooperation with scientists, public officials, and policy advocates. Through these processes, heterogeneous coalitions form and develop shared understandings of the challenges they confront.
Across the cases, democratic dynamics become visible through three interconnected processes: activation, as civic actors mobilise around shared socio-ecological concerns; deliberation, as coalition partner remodel problems and solutions; and advocacy, as these coalitions coordinate action to influence institutional agendas and public debate. By sharing contradictions and co-developing new practices, civic and institutional actors progressively align their work around emerging collective objects. Examples include collaborations on environmental biomonitoring, proposals for the co-management of public islands, and civic campaigns addressing tourism regulation. These developments show how expansive learning within civic movements can generate new democratic capacities and contribute to the transformation of socio-ecological governance.
Building on this diagnostic work, the research outlines prospective formative interventions aimed at supporting the long-term development of these coalitions. The proposed post-doctoral project advances this agenda by examining how fourth-generation formative interventions can support new models of socio-ecological governance. It seeks to examine and sustain the civic movement advocating the legal personhood of the Venice Lagoon. The study focuses on heterogeneous coalitions of civic, institutional, and scientific actors learning to represent ecosystems politically and legally, enabling democratic innovation in socio-ecological governance.

This contribution examines how children and adults exercise political and democratic agency within schools through Reggio Emilia-inspired pedagogical experiences. Central to this idea is recognizing also children as active citizens whose questions encourage reflection and reveal their capacity to influence social life and regenerate the desire to learn.

The investigation involves three Italian public primary school classes where children engaged in inquiry-based processes on identity, inclusion, and democratic participation. Their projects highlight the visible impact of children’s voices and actions beyond the school community.

The main focus is how democratic values, such as recognition of the uniqueness of every voice, respect for diversity, interdependence, and the right to take risks and revise one’s thinking, are enacted in daily classroom life. Teachers, inspired by John Dewey’s principles, create environments in which democracy is experienced rather than merely described. Adults support children’s playful inquiry and reflective discussions, enabling experimentation and dialogue as legitimate ways of learning. This approach recognizes children as active participants in meaning-making and social negotiation, capable of influencing micro-societies within classrooms and broader school communities.

Methodologically, this study adopts a practice-based, qualitative approach focused on teachers’ experiences. By analyzing materials shared by teachers, it explores how democratic values are enacted in everyday classroom activities. Besides relying on direct observation or intervention with children, the research draws on teachers’ accounts of inquiry-based projects on identity, inclusion, and democratic participation, underlying both the strategies employed and the ways children’s agency and participation were perceived and supported.

The findings reveal that democracy emerges in everyday school life: children observe differences, ask questions, negotiate meaning, and recognize the legitimacy of multiple voices. Playfulness and shared inquiry are central pedagogical tools, fostering creativity and collaborative decision-making. In addition to this, intergenerational dialogue enables children to articulate concerns and develop capacities for collective agency and give adults the opportunity for a deeper understanding of different perspectives. These experiences challenge assumptions that political participation and civic competence arise later in life, showing that intentional pedagogical choices can transform schools into microcosms of democratic society.

By situating children as co-participants in civic life, this work contributes to positioning the role of schools in democratic engagement. It makes visible how participatory and reflective educational practices cultivate active citizenship for both students and educators, showing that democracy can be both learned and enacted through everyday classroom experiences.