Conference Program

The educator operates as a conscious political actor, rejecting neutrality to become a promoter of a more just and democratic society (Milani, 1965). His task is to adopt a critical pedagogy that deconstructs prejudice, interrogates power structures, and amplifies marginalized voices through dialogue and the co-construction of meaning. Within this framework, education assumes the role of an ethical and civic commitment aimed at autonomy and emancipation, transforming pedagogical practice into a tool for social justice and active participation (Fabbri & Soriani, 2021).

This contribution illustrates the evolution and pedagogical objectives of the “Newspaper Reading and Writing Workshop”, integrated into the Digital Citizenship Education course within the Degree in Educational Sciences at the Suor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples. The project builds upon the “Newspaper in the University” Workshop - active for over a decade within the same department - adapting its theoretical and methodological framework to the challenges posed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the fragmentation of the contemporary information ecosystem (Panciroli & Rivoltella, 2023).

Why incorporate the “daily” newspaper into a professional training path for educators? Reading the news in a university setting does not merely address an informational need, but rather a formative urgency: to transform the “news consumer” into an “interpreter of the present”. In an academic context, the newspaper serves as a training ground for critical thinking and a device connecting theoretical knowledge with social complexity (Rivoltella, 2020). The ambivalence of the Italian term “quotidiano” - which simultaneously denotes the “everyday” emergent reality and the “daily” medium (newspaper) that traditionally gathers diverse perspectives to shape public opinion - underscores the necessity of placing this concept at the heart of professional training. For the future educator, the “quotidiano” (understood both as everyday experience and as the daily newspaper) represents his “daily bread”, the primary tool for inhabiting the public sphere with awareness and overcoming disciplinary isolation (Rivoltella & Rossi, 2019).

This challenge, however, must inevitably confront the transformation of journalism in the “age of fragmentation” (Roncaglia, 2018) and AI (Agrusti, 2023). The laboratory analyzes the transition toward algorithmic information characterized by content fragmentation, where artificial intelligence acts as an ambiguous agent capable of fuelling echo chambers through personalization (Bentivegna & Boccia Artieri, 2021) and introducing critical issues regarding synthetic content (Talia, 2024). By deconstructing news production mechanisms, the course highlights how automation influences news hierarchy and the perception of truth itself (Mosca & Ruoto, 2024), defining the educator’s profile as an intellectual mediator capable of promoting digital citizenship based on the defense of judgmental autonomy (Ferrari & Pasta, 2023). By guiding users through an information-saturated world, the educator facilitates the transition from functional literacy to “digital wisdom” (Floridi, 2022). This involves not merely the technical use of AI, but learning how to “educate for AI” (Bellisomo, 2025) through the critical reading and rewriting of the news as a necessary civic rite for safeguarding critical thought.

In a global context where a neoliberal economic structure and an individualistic culture prevail, achieving quality inclusive education is the goal that should guide school practice. Thus, the training of future teachers must be more sensitive to the challenges posed by the inclusive educational model (Pérez-Castejón & Vigo-Arrazola, 2022). Therefore, addressing diversity is a task that requires committed teachers with social awareness who respect differences (Torres-Santomé, 2019). University faculty must foster critical thinking in students, enabling them to challenge attitudes and perceptions regarding diversity and inclusive education (Vigo & Dieste, 2019).

In this regard, the report Universities without walls prepared by the European University Association (2021), emphasizes that the educational mission of the University should be oriented towards student-centered models, critical thinking, creativity, and active citizenship. From this perspective, educational research is presented as a bridge between theory and practice (Carr & Kemmis, 2005) that allows university professors to conduct research within the school setting to renew the knowledge they will later transmit to future teachers.

From the perspective of Massey (2005), the school setting is interpreted as a lived, dynamic, and constantly changing environment, in which scenarios of encounter and conflict are configured, structuring pedagogical practice. This practice, from a critical perspective (Giroux, 2013), must recognize the needs, potential, and interests of students in order to build knowledge about the context and facilitate didactic proposals for change and transformation (Jull et al., 2017). In this sense, Arandia Loroño (2004), from a Freirean perspective, points out that committing to a critical and liberating education means being able to understand and analyze reality in order to act upon it.

Within this framework, this research, as part of the R&D&I Project (PID2030-148480B-I00), presents an analysis of the use of digital media in the teaching-learning process from a creative and inclusive perspective (Jeffrey, 2006), paying attention to students' voices and promoting dialogue, and transformation in the school environment. Based on this study, undergraduate teacher training students receive training aligned with current challenges (digitalization, diversity, etc.).

This ethnographic study (Eisenhart, 2017) has allowed for a contextualized illustration of the close relationship between school climate and creative practices with digital media. The aim is to identify contextualized pedagogical actions using digital media that incorporate student voices, in order to analyze how these practices can modify and transform their immediate environment.

The analysis of the identified teaching practices shows that, based on students' interests and experiences, transformative processes have been developed that connect with an improved school climate. In this sense, the documented practices (such as photovoice, school radio, or the creation of digital stories) not only promote meaningful learning but also create an emotional and relational environment conducive to well-being and positive school climate. From a transformative and critical perspective, educational practice can be rethought and restructured through research. This collaborative work between university-school, strengthening the link between academic knowledge and teaching practice, not only reinforces initial teacher training but can also transform classroom realities, opening new lines of research geared towards a more inclusive school.

Rather than approaching memory as archival preservation or commemorative ritual, the project conceptualized the memory of suffering as a living, dialogical, and contested space (Petit, 2023). Within digitally mediated environments, students were invited to reinterpret historical traces, testimonies, and educational artifacts, transforming them into shared objects of inquiry (Rivoltella & Panciroli, 2019). In this process, memory became a civic practice: a site where narratives are negotiated, responsibilities redistributed, and meanings collectively produced (Trione, 2022; Medrado & Rega, 2023).

The digital spaces of MOdE (Museo Officina dell’Educazione) functioned not merely as repositories of content but as epistemic infrastructures enabling collaborative authorship, critical debate, and reflexive positioning (Panciroli, 2016). Through structured pedagogical design, students enacted forms of participation that blurred the boundaries between learning and civic engagement, between research and political agency. Teaching thus operated as a form of activism by creating the conditions for public reasoning, while research became activism insofar as it generated situated knowledge oriented toward democratic re-signification (Rancière, 1991).

The study argues that engaging with the memory of suffering (Sontag, 2003) in digitally mediated cultural spaces can foster forms of citizenship grounded in relational responsibility and critical remembrance (Stern, 2010). In doing so, it contributes to ongoing discussions on how higher education can reimagine democracy not as a fixed institutional arrangement but as a practice continuously co-constructed through acts of shared interpretation and ethical engagement.

This contribution explores the expression of intentionality in teaching design and implementation as a form of pedagogical resistance within democratic education, with particular attention to multicultural, non-Western, decolonial curricula and feminist pedagogical methods. The paper positions teaching not as a neutral or technical activity, but as a deeply political practice embedded in relations of power, inequality, and knowledge production within contemporary schooling and higher education systems (Apple, 2019; Giroux, 1988).

Drawing on bell hooks’ conception of engaged pedagogy—where education is articulated as a practice of freedom and collective transformation—the paper argues that intentionality constitutes a key mechanism through which educators resist hegemonic curricular norms, neoliberal governance of education, and epistemic injustice (hooks, 1994, 2003; Santos, 2014). For hooks, teaching requires the educator to be accountable for their choices, to make visible the ethical and political commitments that shape classroom practices, and to cultivate learning spaces grounded in dialogue, care, and critical consciousness. Intentionality, in this sense, becomes an explicit refusal of pedagogical neutrality and a commitment to democratic and emancipatory education (hooks, 1994, 2003).

The paper conceptualizes intentionality across three interrelated dimensions. First, epistemic intentionality refers to the deliberate selection and organization of curricular content that challenges Eurocentric canons and legitimizes marginalized, Indigenous, and non-Western knowledge systems. This dimension aligns with decolonial curriculum scholarship that emphasizes curriculum as a site of struggle over recognition, voice, and historical responsibility (Mignolo, 2011; Santos, 2014; Tuck & Yang, 2012).

Second, relational intentionality concerns the design of pedagogical relations through feminist methods that destabilize hierarchical teacher–student roles and promote participation, reflexivity, and shared authority—core principles of democratic schooling (Freire, 1970; hooks, 1994; Weiler, 1991).

Third, institutional intentionality addresses how educators negotiate structural constraints such as standardized assessment regimes, accountability mechanisms, and political backlash against critical and decolonial perspectives, while sustaining commitments to equity and social justice (Apple, 2019; Giroux, 2014).

Methodologically, the paper proposes analyzing intentionality through pedagogical artefacts—syllabi rationales, assessment design statements, reflective teaching journals, and collective classroom agreements—to trace how resistance is enacted in everyday educational practices. This approach resonates with critical pedagogy’s emphasis on linking micro-level pedagogical action with macro-level social and institutional dynamics (Freire, 1970; Giroux, 1988).

The paper concludes by arguing that making intentionality visible is itself a democratic act. By articulating the why behind teaching choices, educators open pedagogical spaces to critique, negotiation, and collective responsibility, reinforcing education’s role as a public good (Biesta, 2013). Intentionality thus emerges not only as a personal stance, but as a form of pedagogical praxis that connects decolonial and feminist theories with the project of democratic education.

Through an intersectional lens (Collins, 2019), the paper analyses the growing alienation of students in Western schools. The hypothesis is that what is often described as disengagement (Reeve, 2025), cultural distance (Willis, 1999), misrecognition (Honneth, 2014) or vulnerability (Butler, 2015) are differentiated expressions of a broader structural and ontological condition of alienation (Rosa, 2010, 2014; Jaeggi, 2014, 2018), intensified by processes of proletarianization of attention (Stiegler, 2010, 2019).

Power domains and some forms of social exclusion (e.g. racism, sexism, ableism) redefine life and knowledge access (Mladenov, 2016) and are symptoms of a much bigger social injustice that works on economic (wage labor), cultural (self-sufficiency), and political (national democracy vs transnational power) levels (Fraser, 2013).

In the paper, we will analyse different domains to identify their intersection.

The first domain is cultural. The dominant Western culture in schools (Santos, 2016) is based on a linear, top-down disciplinary structure that assumes cumulative sequences and strict prerequisites. However, contemporary experience of all students is characterised by fragmentation, information overload, and methodological plurality, which produce personal patchy cultural backgrounds.

The second domain is generational. The rarefaction of physical spaces of autonomy among peers and adults' organisation of time limit the possibility of developing autonomous and self-conscious forms of experience and knowledge. In a context of demographic decline among under 25, the collective generational dimension weakens while the asymmetry between students and institution increases.

We also believe it is important to take into account the digital domain, not mentioned by Collins. The digital domain widens previous fractures. In addition to the digital divide in terms of access and algorithmic control, digital technology introduces topological, reticular, and associative logics that diverge from the causal and deductive structures typical of disciplinary teaching. While schools keep operating according to an analogical and sequential paradigm, students experience increasingly distributed, socio-material, and collaborative social practices of knowledge.

In this picture, institutional response focuses on “abilities” and translates structural and political tensions into “individual pathology” (Mladenov, 2016), naturalising inequality. Mainstream discourse speaks of support only for the most vulnerables. Actually, we all are “deficient beings” (Gehlen, 1988) and school itself is a support, and it works especially for “able” students. A school that chooses interdependence over self-sufficiency contributes to a just society. Society is just when it allows people who are burdened by the global economy and transnational violence to speak out about the policies that have affected them (see Fraser, transnationalisation of democracy).

Adopting an intersectional lens allows us to overcome linearity and take responsibility for individual patchy backgrounds, even through the dialogue with technology.

To open up microspaces of transformation within the school system, we believe it is necessary to adopt an intersectional, interactive, and interconnected perspective. This entails activating interventions that simultaneously engage multiple domains: the cultural domain, through a decolonial and relational approach; the generational domain, through co-design practices; the ability domain, through interventions fostering interdependence; and, lastly, the digital domain through forms of co-agency among human, non-human, and artificial agents.