Conference Program

Democratic education is grounded in the idea that initial differences can be transformed into genuine learning opportunities (Dewey, 1916; Sen, 1999). Yet, school contexts may nonetheless function as sites where inequalities become entrenched (Freire, 1970), particularly when educational pathways formally diverge, as in the transition to upper secondary education, when students are channelled into distinct tracks (Boudon, 1974). As the limits of a purely formal “giving everyone the same” notion of equality have become evident over time (Sen, 1999; Nussbaum, 2011), SDG 4 of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda (United Nations, 2015) promotes a shift towards equity as the education system’s capacity to transform uneven/different starting points into effective learning opportunities by adapting time, tools, and forms of linguistic, instructional, and relational support. Among the differences shaping today’s classrooms, students’ migrant background makes particularly visible the risk that diversity is interpreted as a limitation rather than a resource (Lüdemann & Schwerdt, 2012; Sprong & Skopek, 2023). In Italy, in the 2024/2025 school year, students without Italian citizenship accounted for 12.2% of the school population (864,425 students), almost four times higher than in 2002/2003 (2.7%) (Save the Children, 2025). These numbers reflect different biographies, ranging from migration trajectories to language transitions, and they may face inclusion conditions that are not always equivalent (Dronkers & de Heus, 2012). Moreover, these dynamics often intersect with students’ socio-economic and cultural background (ESCS), a key driver of inequality that does not simply overlap with migrant background but interacts with it (Dronkers et al., 2012). When initial differences risk turning into inequalities, mathematics often brings competence gaps into sharper relief, because it builds cumulatively and relies on language as well as the formalisation and interpretation of symbolic notation (National Research Council, 2001). To map the size and the direction of these gaps in Italy, this work draws on IEA TIMSS 2023 mathematics data. TIMSS assesses mathematics achievement in three cognitive domains – knowing, applying, and reasoning (Philpot et al., 2021) – and enables achievement to be linked to student background characteristics collected through the Student Questionnaire, including socio-economic and cultural status (ESCS) and migrant status. Focusing on Italian Grade 8 to capture the migrant gap immediately before students enter different upper secondary tracks, the study aims to (i) estimate the migrant-background gap across the three mathematics cognitive domains, (ii) assess whether it persists after controlling for ESCS, and (iii) test an ESCS-by-migrant-status interaction within each domain. Confirming the positive association between ESCS and achievement, our preliminary findings shows that the migrant-background gap persists across all domains even after controlling for ESCS, and that it is more pronounced in reasoning than in knowing. Interaction models further suggest heterogeneity in the strength of the association across migrant groups, with a wider gap observed in reasoning. Although these findings require replication and further analysis, they offer a strating point for identifying areas of greater vulnerability and for informing reflections on the instructional and organisational conditions needed to make mathematics learning more accessible and equitable.

General description on research questions

Special educational support and special needs educators are commonly separated from work with students in the intersection of migration and special educational needs. While the Salamanca Statement on Special Needs Education of 1994 introduced the imperative of accommodating all children regardless of conditions, including those related to language and related marginalized positions, as part of an updated approach to special education, this has not been the case. In Sweden, where this study is situated, staff supporting newly arrived students, such as multilingual classroom assistants (MCAs), are organized separately from the team supporting students with special educational needs (Tajic & Bunar 2023; Tajic, 2024). Previous research, moreover, show how half of the special needs educators do not get involved with newly arrived students in Sweden, while many would like to (Johansson et al. 2021). The aim of this study is to explore how responsibilities for students situated at the intersection of migration, multilingualism and special educational needs are organised and negotiated across multilingual and special educational support practices in Swedish schools. The study builds on interviews with school staff across four municipalities in Sweden. Results make visible how responsibilities are displaced between multilingual support and special educational support, resulting in students’ needs at their intersection remaining insufficiently addressed. Findings are analysed through Nancy Fraser’s tripartite critical social justice theory (Fraser, 1995, 1998; Fraser et al., 2004; Fraser & Honneth, 2003), interpreting segregating deflection as a manifestation of structural inequalities related to recognition, redistribution and representation within broader societal stratification and discrimination, highlighting how such dynamics may contribute to uneven conditions of support for students with migration backgrounds.

Methodology

The study draws on semi-structured interviews with 18 special needs educators, principals, and multilingual classroom assistants across four Swedish municipalities with comparable demographic profiles. The empirical material is examined through reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022), enabling attention to patterns of meaning across participants’ accounts concerning how responsibilities for students situated at the intersection of migration and special educational needs are articulated, negotiated and organised.

The analysis is theoretically informed by Nancy Fraser’s tripartite critical social justice theory, which conceptualises justice as parity of participation across cultural, economic and political domains. Fraser’s framework directs attention to processes of misrecognition, whereby certain groups are positioned as culturally devalued; maldistribution, referring to unequal access to resources and professional support; and misrepresentation, concerning limited participation in decision-making and institutional voice. Attention to these interconnected dimensions supports an understanding of segregating deflection as a multidimensional institutional phenomenon situated within structural conditions shaping practice. Fraser’s framework thus provides a lens for examining how organisational arrangements within Swedish special education may reproduce differential conditions for participation, shaping the provision of support for students with migration backgrounds. From this perspective, problematisations of migration evident in school practice can be understood as conditioning micro-level decisions on educational support, contributing to limited assessment and provision for students from migrated families despite articulated needs (Rojas, 2026).

This paper examines the role of children’s education in the lives of migrant families. The study includes both low- and high‑skilled migrants who moved either to secure better futures or to improve their career prospects abroad. Ten parents from four Asian countries, all living in the UK, participated in in‑depth interviews. Guided by migration network theory and concepts of social and ethnic capital, the study is framed around four UN Sustainable Development Goals: living conditions in the host country (Goal 1), quality of education (Goal 4), girls’ education and opportunities (Goal 5), and expectations for children’s future employability (Goal 8).

Findings show that parents value the UK’s student‑centred, inclusive approach, which they see as superior to the exam‑driven systems in their home countries. Families benefit from free, high‑quality public education, which would often require costly private schooling back home. Children’s schooling also strengthens parent‑child relationships and expands families’ social networks through school engagement, enhancing their family and community belonging. Overall, regardless of socioeconomic background, children in migrant families become globally oriented learners equipped to compete in the global economy.

In Italy, school population is increasingly reflecting and amplifying the unequal distribution of population across urban areas, particularly with regard to ethnic composition. School segregation has therefore emerged as an issue of scientific and political debate, guiding local policies, interventions and innovative educational programs focused on combating educational disadvantages or attracting white, middle-class families.

Rarely has the very definition of the problem been questioned, nor how it may contribute to reinforcing a negative representation of schools considered to be segregated.

The present study is part of an ongoing action research aimed at addressing the so-defined condition of segregation in five comprehensive school institutes located in the Turin northern area. This district has the highest share of non-Italian residents in the city and it’s linked in public discourse to images of urban decay and insecurity. Schools located here suffer from the territorial stigma associated with the neighbourhood, compounded by the specific stigma of being schools mainly attended by pupils with a migrant background, “frontier schools”, considered to be of lesser quality and unsuitable for native Italian students.

Drawing on an emancipatory social science perspective, the action research employed a community-based approach that integrated participatory methodologies; the voices of those living these school contexts were foregrounded, with the aim of eliciting their definitions of the situation and supporting a process of collaborative knowledge production.

The research combined in-depth interviews and focus groups with principals and teachers, participant observation, and participatory workshops conducted within Communities of Practice to investigate their representations of the marginalised position they occupy within the Turin school system and the symbolic resources through which this position is negotiated and contested. The label and framing of segregated schools as a problem is rejected by school actors, along with the countermeasures that typically follow from it. From schooling daily practice, a self-representation emerges that conflicts with the external narrative: moving from a deficit-based to a strength-based view, multilingualism, intercultural communication and life skills become resources to be enhanced both in school practice and narrative, asserting their social relevance. These counter-narratives were articulated in the “Manifesto for an Intercultural and International School”, the result of collective reflection carried out in the Communities of Practice. Here, alternative values and principles are translated into actions aimed at supporting intercultural teaching, fostering global citizenship competences, strengthening pupils’ voice and agency and promoting the certification of non-EU languages. By mobilising the framework of internationality, schools' practical and symbolic resources seek to gain legitimacy in the public discourse, overturning the hierarchy to which they are currently confined.

In this process of recognition, however, students in intercultural and international schools keep clashing with a standardised system of knowledge and skills assessment, which continues to disadvantage their life paths.

Although the right to education is formally guaranteed for unaccompanied minors (UAMs) (Thiene, 2018), access to age-appropriate schooling can be undermined by recurrent administrative and school-level practices (Augelli et al., 2018; Ferrari et al., 2025). This contribution reports findings from a bottom-up inquiry initiated by six social workers employed in an ordinary reception facility for UAMs in Friuli Venezia Giulia (Italy), under joint academic coordination. The study asked whether repeated failures to secure educational pathways reflected isolated contingencies or systemic mechanisms linked to the implementation of existing policy frameworks—particularly salient given that compulsory schooling applies up to age 16, while educational continuation between 16 and 18 often depends on guardianship decisions and institutional capacity.

We first constructed an “ideal pathway” for enrolment and educational placement through a step-by-step process map derived from national and regional policy documents and benchmarked against a Ministerial vademecum. We then compared this pathway with the documented educational trajectories of 152 UAMs hosted between 2022 and 2025, triangulating case files (including enrolment documentation, individual plans, and correspondence with schools) with structured reflective journals. The usage of such documentation draws on recommendations by Terzera and Bonomi (2024; Evans et al., 2018).

The analysis produced a typology of exclusionary mechanisms recurrent across cases, which is discussed vis-à-vis extant literature on the subject matter: delays in the appointment or effective activation of legal guardianship (Peres Cancio, 2025); technical and administrative barriers in digital enrolment platforms when personal identifiers do not match standard formats (Ferrari et al., 2025); pre-enrolment requirements around Italian language certification despite the absence of a clear mandate and proportional capacity (Santagati, 2016); and bottlenecks in the fragmented and regionalized VET provision (Ince-Beqo & Barberis, 2025).

While the dataset is drawn from a single facility, the recurrence and policy-proximate nature of these mechanisms suggests transferability of risk beyond the case. Consistently with previous studies (Lombi et al., 2018), we conclude by outlining a practicable enrolment workaround protocol (theory of change-styled) for reception facilities and a complementary advocacy strategy targeting implementable points of policy and practice to reduce inequality in educational opportunities for migrant-background youth.

The emergent development of Adaptive STEM Learning and Assessment Research focuses on advancing our knowledge and understanding of learning and assessment in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) through computer-adaptive systems. While the primary aim is improving learning, retention, and degree completion opportunities among students, it also aims to enhance intercultural collaboration and dialogue (Cantle, 2012), and social equality and justice (Pica-Smith, Contini, Veloria, 2019).

Integrating research on computer-adaptive learning (CAL), computer-adaptive assessment (CAA), psychometrics, and socio-semiotic should permit a better understanding of how real-time, data-driven feedback supports both student learning and faculty instructional design and delivery across socially diverse populations via technology. Computer adaptive learning (CAL) and computer adaptive assessment (CAA) systems offer the opportunity to expand the scientific understanding of how students develop conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive competencies and tolerance. The work contributes to evidence-centered design (ECD), multidimensional psychometric modeling, socio-cognitive learning theory, and student success. The proposed research will be guided by learning theory (Bandura, 1986), and the socio-cultural experiences of students (Aronson et al., 2002; Steele, 2010).