Conference Program

In the context of school in hospital (SIO), illness constitutes a biographical fracture that challenges the narrative, relational and educational continuity of the student. The SIO is therefore an institution that recognises the importance, alongside the clinical aspect, of personal stories and the meaning attributed to illness by the patient (Bosisio & Cavalletto, 2025), intending to allow the individual to remain the protagonist of their own educational journey, even in times of crisis, of “a disruption of the existing balance” (Torre, 2014, p. 19), and to “promote the well-being [...] of children in hospital and prevent feelings of anxiety, boredom, loneliness and depression” (MIM, AGIA, & AOPI, 2020). This contribution fits into this context and offers a theoretical reflection that lies at the intersection of philosophy, pedagogy and narrative medicine, addressing the theme of writing and creativity as an exercise in well-being in times of crisis and taking Nietzsche's concept of great health as a central interpretative category. The establishment of a dialogue between these different perspectives stems from the definition of philosophy as Erlebnis, life experience (Nietzsche, 1967/1887, p. 1), or as a practical, therapeutic path (Faustino, 2017; Long, 1990), which enables one to navigate through crisis. This definition aligns with the literature on well-being, which understands the latter as the ability to cope with reality (Diener, Lucas, & Oishi, 2002; Karademas, 2007). In hospital settings, it also encompasses the capacity to manage one's illness (Bosisio & Cavalletto, 2025). This concept of wellbeing as overcoming, rather than eliminating, negative states is linked to Nietzsche's concept of great health – the health of the convalescent – a state of “human-superhuman wellbeing” (Nietzsche, 1967/1887, a. 382) that incorporates illness, as it must be continually regained. Great health is, therefore, a dynamic and transformative process that finds a condition of possibility in the exercise of creativity and, more specifically, in autobiographical writing, a tool for healing and understanding the self. Nietzsche states that his writing arises not from a theoretical intent but from the need to overcome a crisis felt first and foremost as something that concerns him personally: “My writings speak only of my overcoming: within them is «me», with everything that was my enemy” (Nietzsche, 1967/1886, p. 1). These words resonate with contemporary reflections on the formative power of autobiographical writing as “taking oneself by the hand and retracing [...] even the fractures of life” (Sofia, 2024, p. 105). This multi-perspective dialogue gives rise to the proposal to understand writing as an exercise in externalising suffering, which allows it to be analysed and then re-accepted. In this way, writing becomes a practice that enables authentic care “that opens up the possibility for others to find themselves” (Torre, 2010, p. 574) and which can therefore take the form of a path of education towards wellbeing capable of enhancing the awareness and transformative abilities of the individual, to overcome oneself (Nietzsche, 1965/1886) and find oneself even in crisis (Demetrio, 1996).

Hospital schooling and home instruction operate at the intersection of education and healthcare systems, where educational continuity represents a fundamental condition for ensuring the right to education for students undergoing medical treatment. In these contexts, teaching must contend with variable clinical schedules, frequent interruptions, and the need to maintain constant coordination with students’ schools of origin. Previous research has shown that working in such situations requires specific professional competencies and effective collaboration among professionals belonging to different institutional systems (Aquario, 2017; Benigno et al., 2017; Ferrari et al., 2022). However, empirical analyses of the professional and organizational conditions that shape the quality of educational responses in care contexts remain limited. Within this framework, teacher self-efficacy assumes particular relevance, as it influences the ability to manage unstable and complex educational situations (Bandura, 1997; Sharma et al., 2012) and can be interpreted as an indicator of the systemic coherence of educational action. This contribution presents an exploratory mixed-methods study with convergent data integration conducted with 47 teachers working in hospital schooling. The questionnaire investigated professional competencies, teacher self-efficacy through the Teacher Efficacy for Inclusive Practices (TEIP) scale, and perceived professional development needs. In parallel, interviews were conducted with school principals responsible for coordinating hospital and home instruction services in order to explore the organizational conditions within which teaching activities take place. Quantitative analyses were conducted using non-parametric tests and bootstrapping procedures, complemented by linear regression models aimed at examining the association between declared competencies and levels of self-efficacy. Thematic qualitative analysis made it possible to relate perceptual data to the dynamics of interinstitutional coordination. The results show medium-to-high levels of perceived self-efficacy (median TEIP = 4.11; median ACP = 4.39 on a six-point scale). Declared professional competencies are significantly associated with self-efficacy, whereas age and professional experience do not emerge as determining factors. These findings suggest that perceptions of efficacy are not automatically linked to years of service but depend more strongly on the specificity of professional competencies and on the quality of the organizational context in which teachers operate. The interviews confirm the central role of coordination with students’ schools of origin and healthcare professionals, as well as the need to adapt educational planning to students’ health conditions, in line with findings from European and Italian studies (Fabre & Labrell, 2024; Faraoni & Melchiori, 2024).Overall, the findings indicate that self-efficacy in care contexts cannot be interpreted as an isolated individual trait but rather as the outcome of an interplay between professional competencies, organizational arrangements, and the quality of interprofessional relationships. Strengthening specialized professional training and establishing stable coordination models therefore does not represent a secondary intervention but a necessary condition for ensuring educational continuity and equity in learning opportunities for students experiencing illness. The study allows teacher self-efficacy to be interpreted as an expression of institutional responsibility in guaranteeing educational continuity, offering empirical evidence that may contribute to rethinking training, coordination, and organizational structures in hospital and home instruction services.

Hospital schooling represents one of the most challenging contexts in which education systems are called to guarantee continuity, inclusion, and educational justice. Students undergoing severe medical treatment often experience prolonged isolation, fragmented learning trajectories, and significant emotional vulnerability. Within this framework, pedagogical care becomes central to sustaining participation and maintaining meaningful connections with learning. This paper explores the introduction of reading aloud as a pedagogical and relational strategy within hospital education, particularly for secondary school students affected by serious illness, whose educational pathways are frequently interrupted at a critical stage of identity and cognitive development.

In the Italian context, the Scuola in Ospedale and Istruzione Domiciliare services aim to ensure the right to education and prevent school disengagement among students unable to attend traditional classrooms. National guidelines highlight the importance of personalized teaching practices and relational support in these environments. Despite the growing recognition of narrative practices in educational research, reading aloud in hospital schooling remains an underexplored field, especially in relation to teacher professional practices and inclusive pedagogical frameworks in secondary education, where curricular pressures and disciplinary specialization often limit the adoption of shared reading practices.

Drawing on literature on shared reading, pedagogical care, and democratic education, the paper argues that reading aloud can function as a low-threshold, flexible, and inclusive didactic strategy capable of fostering emotional safety, narrative identity, and continuity of learning even in highly fragile contexts. The contribution outlines a teaching proposal designed for lower and upper secondary school settings, emphasizing dialogic pauses, interpretative discussion, and the teacher’s voice as a stabilizing relational presence. In this perspective, reading aloud becomes not a compensatory activity but a structured pedagogical practice that allows students-patients to remain intellectually engaged while participating in a shared cultural experience despite clinical constraints.

The contribution situates reading aloud within a broader framework of democratic education, interpreting it not only as a literacy practice but also as a space of encounter, recognition, and participation. By focusing on the professional culture of teachers working across school, hospital, and home environments, the paper highlights how reading aloud can reshape pedagogical relationships, enabling teachers to balance curricular goals with care-oriented practices. Particular attention is devoted to the secondary school context, where dialogic reading may support critical thinking, interpretative agency, and relational continuity during periods of medical vulnerability.

The study contributes to current debates on educational continuity and pedagogical justice by proposing reading aloud as an accessible and sustainable practice capable of rehumanizing educational experiences in contexts of illness. It also identifies future research directions, including qualitative investigations on teachers’ reflective practices, students’ narrative engagement, and the development of inclusive reading protocols tailored specifically to hospital secondary schooling.

The project “Gentle Fairy Tales” is conceived as an educational initiative currently under development, inspired by the memory of Matteo Losa, journalist, writer, and photographer who passed away in 2020 after fourteen years of oncological illness. His personal experience and literary production fostered a profound reflection on the pedagogical value of storytelling and, in particular, on the fairy tale as a symbolic narrative device capable of making complex experiences accessible through the language of emotions. This perspective also echoes the long pedagogical tradition that has attributed a formative and symbolic value to storytelling in educational processes. Within the broader tradition of the history of pedagogy, narrative and fairy tales have long been recognized as formative tools capable of mediating the understanding of human experiences and emotional development.

In the book Piccole fiabe per grandi guerrieri, published by Mondadori, Losa presents fairy tales as a narrative space for exploring and recognizing emotions related to fear, fragility, change, and illness. Within this perspective, storytelling emerges as a tool for awareness and emotional re-elaboration, potentially supporting both children and adults in situations of vulnerability. This view aligns with pedagogical reflections on the formative function of narrative, widely developed within the tradition of the history of pedagogy, and provides the theoretical foundation for the project.

The initiative aims to develop, in the future, creative reading workshops within pediatric hospital wards, configuring itself as an educational intervention in non-formal contexts closely connected to processes of growth and learning. The project intends to introduce reading aloud and narrative reworking as practices capable of fostering emotional, linguistic, and relational competences, while also contributing to psychological well-being during the experience of care.

The project design envisages the involvement of children, parents, and caregivers in structured activities integrating shared reading, creative writing, and expressive sensori-motor practices. In this framework, reading is conceived as a shared space for meaning-making, in which symbolic elaboration can support the recognition and verbalization of complex experiences. Reading would therefore be promoted as an emotional, relational, and embodied experience, encouraging active listening, dialogic interaction, and creative expression, potentially culminating in the creation of a collective narrative product.

The project is situated within the framework of expanded school education, understood as an integrated system of formal and non-formal contexts contributing to the holistic development of the person. From this perspective, narrative assumes a transversal function, connecting emotional literacy, linguistic competences, and active citizenship, in coherence with the person-centered care guidelines promoted by the World Health Organization.

Although not yet implemented, the project is envisioned as a replicable educational model capable of integrating cultural and care dimensions, while enhancing Matteo Losa’s narrative and pedagogical legacy. In this light, the forthcoming film adaptation of Un altro giorno insieme, Losa’s second book, may further amplify the cultural impact of the initiative, strengthening the dialogue between education, health, and community and consolidating storytelling as a shared practice of care. In this perspective, the project also invites further pedagogical reflection on the educational potential of narrative practices in contexts of care and vulnerability.

Article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 November 1989, recognises the right of all children and adolescents to enjoy the highest attainable standard of health and to benefit from medical and rehabilitation services, so that no child is deprived of the right to access such services. Paediatric palliative care (PPC) is an integral part of children’s right to healthcare; it represents the evolution of the healthcare system towards an increasingly bio-psycho-social approach, characterised by interdisciplinary and highly relationship-based work within the social and healthcare sector, which includes the pedagogical and educational dimension. CCP offer all children with chronic and incurable conditions requiring highly complex care the right to experience the various stages of psychological, emotional, communicative, relational, spiritual and social development, tailoring ongoing care to the different needs associated with their growth (Maruzza Foundation). L’OMS definisce le cure palliative pediatriche come l’attiva presa in carico globale di corpo, mente e spirito del bambino e comprende il supporto attivo alla famiglia (OMS 1998). L’obiettivo è migliorare la qualità della vita del piccolo paziente e della sua famiglia e il domicilio rappresenta, nella stragrande maggioranza dei casi, il luogo scelto ed ideale di assistenza e cure. Le cure palliative pediatriche sono un ambito della Medicina ormai affermato e riconosciuto (Legge 38/10), in continuo sviluppo come testimoniato dal progressivo incremento numerico degli hospice e dei servizi di cure palliative domiciliari. Thanks to scientific advances in recent years, the number of children with life-threatening or life-limiting conditions has been steadily increasing in Italy and throughout the Western world. We wish to present the scientific findings of a study on paediatric palliative care at home in the city of Bari (Italy), a pilot project launched in 2022 by the ‘Ad Curam’ Social Cooperative which, in partnership with the Local Health Authorities, has established a specialist team providing paediatric palliative care at home throughout the Puglia region. The work is carried out by a multidisciplinary team comprising a palliative care specialist, an anaesthetist, nurses, psychologists, a priest and an educationalist. The concept of care (Mortari, 2026) and of caring (Calaprice, 2020) is expressed in socio-health, psycho-educational and spiritual terms, based on a highly integrated, synergistic and complementary approach by the entire team. This methodology is the cornerstone of a continuous approach to healthcare, psycho-educational and spiritual support, which optimises the management of complex family dynamics characterised by feelings of anger, helplessness and guilt, and, in many cases, depression arising from the perception of loss, separation and the possibility of death. In this process, the scope of care and emotional support extends not only to the child and the family but also to the entire team through multidisciplinary supervision.The emotional impact and high levels of stress affect the entire team, either implicitly or explicitly; they need support and the opportunity to express and share any limitations, fears and needs they may have.

Hospital Schooling and Home Education represents one of the most challenging contexts for contemporary educational systems, as within it the right to education confronts daily the discontinuity of studies and the complexity of needs of students who, in their everyday lives, undergo medical treatments, rehabilitative interventions and long periods of hospitalisation. Illness creates a rupture in school and daily routines, distances the student from their peer group and reduces learning opportunities at a developmental stage already characterised by a particularly delicate phase of life. In this scenario, the function of the educational system is to ensure a formative continuity that depends both on access to learning opportunities which all students should be able to access and on the quality of relationships among the various actors involved: teachers, families, healthcare teams and students themselves.

This contribution offers a theoretical and interpretive reflection, grounded in international literature, on the role of teachers in interprofessional collaboration processes between school, family and healthcare team in Hospital Schooling and Home Education contexts. In particular, it analyses interprofessional collaboration processes, understood as a necessary condition for ensuring educational continuity and the well-being of the student in care.

The interpretive framework focuses on the importance of the work carried out among the various actors involved, who co-construct interventions for students in care, each with different competencies, knowledge and institutional mandates. The literature review highlights how, at times, the fragmentation of services and the ambiguity of professional roles can represent structural barriers to educational and pedagogical continuity. When teachers, psychologists, doctors and families fail to respect their respective roles, boundaries become unclear and undefined, and the child may experience a sense of loneliness and abandonment.

International research on interprofessional collaboration (WHO, 2010; Reeves et al., 2017) highlights how professionals' ability to communicate through a shared language ensures higher quality teamwork, building professional alliances aimed at promoting the psychophysical well-being of the student in care. Clear role boundaries and shared educational goals are key to interprofessional collaboration. The contribution adopts the concept of the mesosystem (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) to analyse the conditions that make possible an educational intervention centred on and structured within the daily practices of care contexts, characterised by interprofessional collaboration, through the interrelations among the various microsystems in which the patient is embedded: family, school, hospital. It is therefore of fundamental importance to establish an adequate collaborative alliance among these microsystems, grounded in the recognition of the institutional actors involved as both holders and recipients of knowledge aimed at the psychological, physical and educational well-being of the student in care.

In conclusion, this contribution aims to stimulate reflection on interprofessional collaboration processes between school, family and hospital as a necessary condition for promoting the right to education of all students, even when illness arises and prevents regular school attendance. In Hospital Schooling and Home Education, the networking of various professionals does not represent an extraordinary mode of operation, but rather a habitual to ensure that students in care have equal opportunities and continuity in their educational pathways.