Conference Program

Inclusive education is widely recognised as a democratic imperative, requiring schools to support participation, recognition of difference, and equitable learning opportunities for all students. Yet inclusive practice increasingly takes place within educational environments marked by epistemic fragmentation, including contested knowledge claims, polarisation, performative accountability pressures, and growing uncertainty linked to digital technologies and social change (Biesta, 2021; Gamote and Hyman, 2025). In such contexts, teachers are not only pedagogical practitioners but key epistemic actors, required to exercise judgement about evidence, values, emotions, and competing interpretations of need. This paper argues that teachers’ capacity to enact inclusive education as a democratic practice depends critically on the alignment between professional agency, emotional labour, and the epistemic conditions shaped by leadership and organisational design.

Drawing on the framework of democratic intelligence, the paper conceptualises inclusion as a system-level achievement rather than an individual disposition. Democratic intelligence refers to the capacity of educational systems to reason, learn, and act wisely under conditions of complexity and difference, and emerges from the interaction between individual epistemic capacity and organisational epistemic infrastructure (Brown, 2018). From this perspective, teachers’ emotional experiences - such as uncertainty, moral tension, care, frustration, or professional vulnerability - are not peripheral to inclusion but central to how judgement is exercised in practice. Emotional labour becomes particularly salient in inclusive contexts involving neurodiversity, disability, and cultural difference, where procedural guidance is insufficient and teachers must interpret ambiguous situations while sustaining relationships and trust.

The paper introduces epistemic stewardship as a leadership and organisational responsibility: the deliberate shaping of cultures, routines, and governance arrangements that enable teachers to engage productively with evidence, disagreement, and uncertainty without emotional overload or erosion of professional agency (Edmondson, 2019; Smith, 2020). It is argued that when accountability and evaluation frameworks prioritise compliance over collective sense-making, teachers’ emotional strain intensifies and their capacity for inclusive judgement diminishes. Conversely, when schools operate as epistemic infrastructures - supporting psychological safety, structured professional dialogue, and participatory decision-making - teachers are better positioned to integrate emotional awareness with inclusive practice (Brown and Poortman, 2023).

The paper further considers the implications of emerging technologies for inclusive education, suggesting that their democratic potential depends less on technical capability than on whether teachers are supported to interpret, contest, and use them confidently within shared epistemic norms (Biesta, 2021). The analysis concludes by outlining implications for teacher education, professional learning, and evaluation, arguing for a reorientation toward emotional competence, dialogic capacity, and epistemic judgement as foundational to inclusive schooling within democratic societies.

Democratic schooling depends not only on formal participatory structures but on the professional capacity of teachers to enact public purposes within politically and economically demanding reform environments (Biesta, 2011). While scholarship increasingly foregrounds teachers’ emotions and agency as central to inclusive practice (Zembylas, 2007; Priestley, Biesta, & Robinson, 2015), these dimensions are often framed as individual or dispositional attributes rather than as governance-mediated democratic capacities. This paper advances the concept of democratic professionalism, arguing that teacher agency is structurally conditioned by institutional legitimacy (Evetts, 2009), relational trust and professional capital (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012), and broader political-economic contexts that shape the public purposes of education (Gramsci, 1971).

Teachers may be understood, in Gramscian terms, as public intellectual actors situated within civil society whose work mediates between state reform agendas and lived community realities. Their ability to exercise democratic agency depends not only on technical competence but on emotionally sustainable professional environments that reinforce dignity, belonging, and relational accountability. From this perspective, teachers’ emotions constitute part of the affective infrastructure through which democratic commitments are sustained, negotiated, or weakened.

Drawing on scholarship in social-emotional learning (Elmeski & Bentahar, 2024), professional collaboration (Romiti, Florek, & Elmeski, 2025), and systems thinking in educational leadership (Elmeski, 2021), the paper develops a three-level analytical framework. At the micro level, teachers’ social-emotional competencies and sense of professional dignity shape their engagement with inclusion as a civic practice. At the meso level, relational governance—collaborative cultures, shared norms, and distributed expertise—mediates the translation of policy into practice. At the macro level, governance coherence determines whether reform discourse, accountability mechanisms, and institutional supports align in ways that enable agency rather than produce compliance.

The urgency of this analysis emerges from reform contexts where education is central to renegotiating the social contract. In Morocco, large-scale reforms are unfolding amid persistent youth unemployment pressures and human capital challenges (World Bank, 2022), territorial inequalities in educational access and outcomes (OECD, 2018), and heightened expectations of institutional accountability articulated in Framework Law 51.17 and the New Development Model (Commission Spéciale sur le Modèle de Développement, 2021). In such political-economic conditions, education systems are tasked simultaneously with promoting inclusion, improving measurable outcomes, and restoring public trust. These pressures intensify the emotional terrain of teaching.

Rather than presenting a national case study, this contribution mobilizes reform dynamics as a comparative lens to illuminate structural tensions observable across systems confronting social fragmentation and institutional strain. The paper concludes by proposing indicators of democratic professional capacity that complement performance metrics with measures of relational trust, emotional sustainability, and perceived governance coherence. In doing so, it seeks to open dialogue between evaluation institutions, policy scholars, and teacher education programs committed to renewing democratic schooling through structurally supported professional agency.

An education capable of going beyond technical and incomplete frameworks, focusing on the importance of the relationships it creates, is essential to building meaningful connections that foster authentic human exchange, enriching both the individual and the community. This is possible because education is not just an intellectual endeavor, it is also a social endeavor. However, if education begins with the intention of opening spaces, it sometimes ends up closing them. What brings education back onto the tracks of its natural process is an invisible thread, silently unfolding around us: empathy. Friedrich Nietzsche reminds us of this when, with his critique of the culture of passive knowledge, he warns against an education reduced to mere transmission. Because without emotion, education is reduced to a sterile exercise, incapable of truly impacting the lives of individuals and the well-being of the community.

Without emotion, there is no true understanding, nor change. If education remains limited to methodological skills alone, it loses its most profound dimension: that of forming individuals capable of thinking, feeling, and transforming the world. Emerging technologies could help in this regard, offering the potential for more responsive and differentiated teaching. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and emotional intelligence represents the real challenge for contemporary education. If AI represents the ability to process information and provide responses, emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, manage, and value one's own and others' emotions. It is not a choice between opposites, but a balance to be cultivated. Educating both intelligences: this is today's challenge to make education inclusive, a fundamental condition for a democratic society.

Although sociology became institutionalised in the nineteenth century within industrial and patriarchal societies (Jedlowski, 2009), women actively contributed to its early theoretical, methodological, and empirical development (McDonald, 1994). However, as the disciplinary canon took shape - privileging predominantly male figures (Deegan, 1991) - their contributions were marginalised according to a logic of “gender and knowledge politics” (Lengermann and Niebrugge, 1998). Sociology thus constructed its presumed epistemological neutrality from a male standpoint, removing gender as a foundational category (Arango, 2005).

Since the 1970s, a systematic rediscovery of the Early Women Sociologists (EWS) has taken place (Santagati et al., 2023), progressively expanding beyond the Anglophone context and reconstructing a more inclusive genealogy of the discipline. Much of this recovery has been promoted by scholars working within academia, who have conducted archival research, edited volumes, and revised university curricula.

This study explores the pedagogical implications of this canon revision by asking: what is the effect on university teaching of the recent introduction of the EWS into sociology programmes? Beyond adding new content, does their inclusion reshape teachers’ professional agency, emotional engagement, and capacity to enact inclusive and democratic pedagogies?

An international literature review identified 106 scholars specialising in the EWS. An online survey explored their research-teaching activities and professional networks. Network-analysis items enabled the identification of 13 key professors involved in disseminating EWS scholarship. These professors (from Spain, Italy, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, and the United States) were interviewed through semi-structured interviews, including a section devoted to teaching practices and professional experiences.

Preliminary findings highlight three main dimensions. First, the EWS articulated a conception of the subject as situated and particularised rather than abstract. This epistemological orientation appears to foster more inclusive pedagogical approaches attentive to lived experience and social positioning. Professors report strong processes of identification with these authors, describing how teaching their texts enhances their sense of professional meaning and reflexivity. This emotional involvement supports their capacity to sustain participatory learning environments.

Second, students similarly display processes of identification, recognising elements of their everyday experiences in these texts, which are then reframed within a collective and theoretically grounded perspective. This results in at least three effects: (1) increased interest and enthusiasm for the discipline; (2) higher levels of emotional engagement and participation; and (3) the emergence of further educational demands.

Third, the introduction of the EWS appears to foster a rethinking of teaching practices among university lecturers. It is not merely a matter of adding new texts or new names to the syllabus, but of transforming the mode of teaching itself: the hierarchical dimension of the classroom is attenuated in favour of greater horizontality; circular seating arrangements are preferred; materials produced by the EWS (writings, letters, experience-based texts) are used to stimulate students’ sociological imagination.

In this sense, revising the canon becomes not only an epistemic intervention but also a professional and emotional resource for teachers. The classroom is reconfigured as a more inclusive and democratic space, where theory and lived experience interact and knowledge is co-constructed through participatory practices.

This contribution presents an empirical study conducted at Roma Tre University that examines Circle Singing as an inclusive methodology for developing disciplinary and socio-relational skills and student wellbeing, while also functioning as a teacher-training tool within higher education (Pantano & Rizzo, 2025). Framed within a critical reading of postmodernity (Lyotard, 1985), the pervasive influence of social media (Lancet, 2024), and the fragmentation of identities (Wang, 2022), this study proposes an embodied practice which fosters the emotional and relational development of both teachers and students, while simultaneously supporting the acquisition of linguistic and musical skills. Given the challenges posed by contemporary society “professional education is not education for understanding alone; it is preparation for accomplished and responsible practice in the service of others” (Shulman, 2005, p. 53). Indeed, in educational contexts such as schools and universities, educators bear the responsibility of guiding students toward recognising the other as a value, preventing tendencies toward exclusion, and instead fostering pathways of openness, understanding, and dialogue. Confrontation with alterity renders an inclusive orientation of educational action indispensable. In schools, this implies fostering the full expression of learners’ potential by embracing plurality and difference through the creation of social bonds grounded in shared affinities (Benasayag & Schmit, 2003), while also drawing on the transformative potential of arts-based learning methodologies. Within this framework, music can serve as a privileged instrument for promoting interculturality and fostering inclusive educational environments (UNESCO-KACES, 2010), while also proving particularly effective in arousing and regulating emotions (Juslin et al., 2010) and in supporting the development of socio-relational and reflexive competences. The musical laboratory particularly fosters the experience of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 2003), especially in collective improvisation (Sawyer, 2012), which offers a privileged setting for continuous shifting between self and other. Moreover, singing has been shown to enhance mood (Clift & Hancox, 2010), generating feelings of euphoria or “singer’s high” (Jacob et al., 2009), and helping to build a sense of community and friendship among all participants, including teachers (MacDonald, Kreutz & Mitchell, 2012). Community music also fosters lifelong learning, especially in the presence of students with special educational needs, enabling both personal and collective wellbeing to flourish alongside the development of musical disciplinary competences. Widely disseminated through the work of Bobby McFerrin, Circle Singing positions difference as a resource, intentionally directing the educational focus toward the plurality of individuals involved in generating a collective, engaging experience. In particular, the present quali-quantitative study investigates a Circle Singing laboratory conducted at Roma Tre University between October and December 2025 (Pantano & Rizzo, 2025). The intervention involved 104 students and employed standardised digital tools (PROMS, SpeechAce) to assess musical and linguistic outcomes. Questionnaires and focus groups were used to evaluate socio-relational dimensions and wellbeing indicators. Preliminary analyses underpin statistically significant improvements in musical and linguistic competences, which correlate with an increased sense of belonging, reduced performance anxiety, and enhanced bodily awareness. Focus groups and questionnaires further highlighted students’ positive engagement with the methodology, with the majority indicating that they intend to incorporate Circle Singing into their future teaching practice.

When examining the teaching profession and professionalism to observe the qualitative nature of action—alongside aspects of competence, knowledge, care, pride, and a sense of belonging—a pivotal role is played by the effective interpretation of educational practice. This becomes the primary focal point for new perspectives in study and research. In this sense, the context in which teachers operate daily is constantly evolving, encompassing diverse cultures and existential conditions. This requires calibrated, person-centered planning that extends beyond mere knowledge acquisition toward the attainment of a generative, competent, and enabling agency capable of increasing methodological-didactic awareness. The teacher as an agent of change and an "expert-in-action" in active and laboratory-based methodologies emerges as one who takes responsibility for their role within the school institution. They become a true resource within a complex organization that constantly needs to enhance its level of skills and internal capabilities to address emerging and unforeseen challenges. In synthesis, capacity-in-action is interpreted as functioning (agency) and as a necessary condition for determining human specificity and freedom of action. On this subject, the leading scholar Amartya Sen defines capability as this human faculty to utilize the dense network of relational resources, often identified as social capital: 'competence to act, hybridization, and dense synergistic interaction between material and immaterial forms of the man-world, person-life context relationship.' In other words, drawing also from Martha Nussbaum’s definition, the capability approach focuses on the uniqueness of the person, their dignity, and the real spaces of opportunity available to them. Thus, a new dimension of educational and didactic action takes shape, implying the need to rethink the meaning and purpose of the teacher's professional practice. In this direction, a central role is played by the quality and well-being of teacher training, whose profile must be defined as inclusive. Indeed, the possibility of navigating the complexity of the current educational system lies in adhering to the values that define the inclusive teacher's profile, as updated in 2022 by the European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education (TPL4I). Consequently, within this work—starting from the guidelines developed by the European Agency regarding the 'Profile of Inclusive Teachers'—a National exploratory survey was conducted following the primary research paradigm on original data. The objective is to investigate the quality of the profile and the professional competences/capabilities of the inclusive teacher, aiming for a substantial renewal of teaching practices and inclusive planning processes for a school truly dedicated to developing the talents and potential of each and every student.