Conference Program

This contribution begins with a central question in the educational field: in what ways might the choices and attitudes of adults contribute—sometimes unconsciously—to the consolidation of stereotypes and the reproduction of forms of structural marginality (Galtung, 2006; hooks, 2020). Recent literature highlights how teachers may pay greater attention to, or grant greater recognition to, learners perceived as belonging to the dominant group—that is, those who share the prevailing cultural and social references (Fallon et al., 2023). This mechanism may disadvantage those who are perceived as “others” or “different” (Dell’Anna, Parisi, Pedron, 2024). Such dynamics are linked to cognitive processes of belonging and social categorization, through which people tend to distinguish between an in-group, toward which stronger identification and appreciation develop, and an out-group, which is more exposed to forms of exclusion or devaluation. bell hooks (2020) emphasizes the need for teachers to recognize the value of situated knowledge and to adopt a reflective stance regarding their own positionality, highlighting how awareness of one’s standpoint and its identity implications are necessary conditions for creating educational spaces that are genuinely critical and inclusive. From this perspective, inclusion is conceived as a dynamic process, constructed also through everyday relationships, choices, and practices (Booth & Ainscow, 2014; Mitchell & Sutherland, 2020).

This contribution aims to focus attention on picture books, considered narrative tools of great narrative and pedagogical power—symbolic spaces for encountering otherness, but at the same time potential vehicles for stereotypical representations (Beseghi, 2003; Zizioli, 2017; Terrusi, 2024; Coll-Planas & Garcia-Castillo, 2025). Starting from the question: in what ways do the representations found in picture books contribute to the reproduction of stereotypes and forms of discrimination in educational contexts? The paper intends to critically reflect on the role of visual and textual narratives in the processes of identity formation and the shaping of children’s imaginaries. In line with bell hooks’ perspective (2020), which conceives education as a practice of freedom and as the construction of communities capable of valuing the plurality of experiences and voices, the paper will explore the possibility of using picture books as pedagogical devices for the deconstruction of stereotypes and for the reactivation of plural perspectives on identity, fostering practices of intersubjective recognition and critical dialogue (Coll-Planas & Garcia-Castillo, 2025). In this direction, reference is made to the idea of engaged pedagogy proposed by bell hooks, in which theory and practice intertwine in the construction of educational contexts capable of supporting forms of democratic and transformative participation (Bocci & De Castro, 2022; Bianchi & D’Antone, 2024). The picture book thus emerges not only as a cultural object, but as an educational device capable of promoting awareness, inclusion, and critical thinking within educational settings. An intersectional lens provides the conceptual framework for understanding how more conscious educational practices and choices can help build plural and welcoming spaces for learning, participation, and encounter, within the perspective of a critical and transformative pedagogy.

This ongoing study examines the role of civil society organizations in advancing the right to Early Childhood Care and Education (hereafter ECCE) (Beiter, 2025; Bianchi et al., 2022; Boly Barry, 2022; Lee et al., 2015; UNESCO, 2022). This research adopts a critical qualitative inquiry (Denzin, 2017; Denzin & Giardina, 2010; Skarstad, 2024) conducting with professionals working or people engaging as volunteers in a civil society organization – including NGOs, associations, foundations, workers unions, etc – within the early childhood sector. Early childhood education and care is inherently multisectoral and holistic integrating education and the care part that includes protection, health, well-being (Marope & Kaga, 2015). The perspective based on evidences emphasizes the interconnectedness of these dimensions in fostering child development.

The intersectional dimension of this research was not immediately apparent. However, through the movement of Deconstruction as theorized by Jacques Derrida (Derrida, 1972, 1979; Ina Culture, 2002; Ramond, 2008; Ramond & Adami, 2011) about the role and action of civil society organizations in the advancement and realization of the right to education and early childhood care. This deconstructive approach revealed the intersectionality inherent to the research topic. It was further reinforced by empirical research with the target audience (interviews, questionnaires) and after having myself undertaken a critical study of my position (self-reflection work and immersive experiences).

Deconstruction, like Complex and Systemic Thinking (Dielbot, 2025; Morin, 1991, 2014), forms a key component of the study’s epistemological foundation. Contrary to common misconceptions, deconstruction is neither a prescriptive method nor a nihilistic endeavor. Instead, deconstruction seeks to question, highlight, and analyze hypotheses of binary oppositions that include: the balance of power between valued and devalued poles, tensions, absences, implicit and unspoken elements and concepts within discourse but also, practices as bell hooks already done (1994).

The deconstructive process also evaluates its own feasibility, as not all phenomena are equally open to deconstruction. Eight hypotheses of binary oppositions have been identified: (1) between the public sector and the private sector, and between private non-profits, community-based; (2) between the collective and the individual like organizations/individuals; (3) between theory and practice like de facto/de jure right to ECCE; (4) between the universal and the local, including universal right to ecce/ right to local, contextual and objectivity/subjectivity; (5) between men and women including professionals in early childhood and care; (6) between observer-knowing versus observed-participating (about my position); (7) between education/protection/health sectors in ECCE and finally (8) between childhood and adulthood.

Through the gesture of deconstruction throughout the study and enriched by empirical research in a socio-constructivist (Rinaldi, 2021) and praxeological approach (Lhotellier & St-Arnaud, 1994), this study reveals the intersectoral feature of the subject. This complexity manifests at different levels: individual, micro, macro, exo, meso (Bronfenbrenner, 1977) intersecting with gender, age, social class and nationality, origins dimensions.

Intersectionality, as conceptualized by Crenshaw (1989) and further developed within educational research by scholars such as Davis (2015; 2023), provides a powerful framework for examining the compounded effects of social identities including ‘race’, gender, class, and disability. These foundational texts underscore intersectionality's role in exposing how overlapping oppressions shape educational inequities, challenging monolithic analyses that fail to represent lived experiences. Recent scholarship, including Nichols and Stahl's (2020) systematic review of higher education applications and OECD reports on policy implications, highlights its urgency (2023): without it, research risks perpetuating simplistic categories, invalidating findings, and failing to inform equitable practices.

Using as a research object a study carried out in the recent past by one of the authors on teachers’ conceptions of intercultural education, the paper explores how intersectional blind spots can arise in the design and analysis of educational research. The analysis unfolds in two phases: the first re-examines the original study to identify where intersectional dimensions were overlooked. The analysis focuses on how the research framed participants and interpreted their perspectives through singular analytical categories. This framing risks overlooking how intersecting identities shape teachers’ conceptions and may conceal power relations present in diverse educational contexts. The analysis is conducted through two complementary standpoints: the insider perspective of one researcher who participated in the original study, and the analytic distance of a second researcher who was not involved in the data collection. This dual perspective is used to identify methodological blind spots and tensions that emerge when attempting to apply intersectionality in empirical research.

The second phase identifies concrete points in the research design where an intersectional perspective could have been introduced. Methodological components, including participant selection, data elicitation strategies, and thematic coding, are examined to determine where intersectionality was ignored, where it could have been incorporated, and which specific methodological choices could have supported it.

Based on this two-step analysis, the paper develops a set of methodological guidelines for designing and reviewing research that help researchers develop intersectionality-informed studies, avoiding reducing complex identities in simplified social categories by recognizing where and how typical gaps may emerge throughout their research process. These guidelines translate intersectional theory into concrete research practices, addressing participant recruitment, conceptual operationalization, data analysis, and reporting procedures. They are formulated as practical design principles that can guide future studies examining teachers’ conceptions and similar educational phenomena. .

The tools presented shall support a practice coherent with the fundamental understanding that intersectionality should be treated not as an additional analytical layer, but as a fix methodological requirement when studying complex educational realities. In particular, the paper shows how intersectional realities can become methodologically invisible when research relies on conventional categories and examines social positions through singular lenses, rather than approaching social positioning as relational, dynamic, and shaped by power relations.

Germany is a comparatively diverse post-migrant society, shaped by transcultural formations and growth, while simultaneously carrying historical and cultural continuities of atrocity and dehumanization. Yet its educational systems still rank among the most segregating in international comparison, systematically reproducing inequities along the lines of multiple interlocking dimensions of social inequalities. ­This tension is nowhere more visible than in the field of gifted education (Begabungsförderung), where structural barriers continue to obstruct the recognition and development of talent among marginalized children and youth.

A systematic review (Winter, 2026) confirms what practitioners have long sensed: intersectional perspectives are virtually absent from German gifted education research. Existing scholarship largely adopts monoaxial frameworks, addressing gender OR migration background OR socioeconomic status in isolation, or solely applies implicitly intersectional notions without explicitly naming them as such (Stamm, 2009). This conceptual gap is consequential: it renders invisible the compounded disadvantages experienced by children whose identities sit at the intersections of marginalized positions.

This contribution argues that gifted education research urgently requires what Boger (2019) terms an intersectional corrective lens – a reorientation that moves beyond additive thinking toward an understanding of how overlapping systems of oppression shape access to talent recognition and support. Drawing on Harris and Leonardo (2019) and Mayes, Goldsmith Jones and Hines (2018), we propose that intersectionality functions not merely as a descriptive tool but as a generative epistemological framework capable of exposing and challenging the structural mechanisms that produce glass ceilings in educational opportunity.

We situate this argument within the conceptual architecture of the Leistung macht Schule (LemaS) research initiative in Germany – a collaborative endeavor bringing together researchers, schools, and educational administrations - whose understanding of giftedness offers a productive point of departure. Aligned with Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, LemaS conceptualizes “gifts” as dynamic, fluid, and multidimensional and foregrounds potential-oriented, diversity-sensitive, and transformative approaches to learning (Gardner, 1999; Weigand, 2021). Crucially, it understands giftedness as a construct encompassing transformative knowledge and adaptive capacity for shaping a sustainable world in transition. This vision is inherently democratic in its aspirations: it demands inclusive learning environments in which all children’s potentials are recognized and reinventing school architecture in a literal and figurative way, particularly in post-migrant societies where structural barriers most acutely foreclose opportunity.

Methodologically, we draw on intersectional inquiry frameworks that foreground social complexity and resist reductive categorization. The contribution presents a qualitative research design following Winker and Degele’s (2010) intersectional multilevel framework that examines how intersecting categories – including race, class, gender, body and others – shape access to gifted education programs in Germany integrating the levels of identity, structure, and symbolic representation.

Finally, we explore structural pathways toward greater equity, engaging Stojanov’s (2011) concept of compensatory as a possible foundation for policy recommendations. We argue that realizing the democratic promise of gifted education in post-migrant Germany requires not only recognition of diverse potentials, but actively dismantling the structural conditions that render those potentials invisible.

My PhD project investigates the relationship between adult migrant students’ fostering of belonging and institutional practices in Finland; more precisely, how education mediates between migrants and broader societal structures thereby facilitating social participation and change.

The research engages with much-debated issues related to migration and societal dynamics in Finland. Frequent media discussions report on the tension between, on one hand, the need to attract workforce to fill in key employment positions and to support the national welfare system and, on the other, the structural barriers to the labour market that significantly impact migrants.

Although in integration policies adult education is promoted as a vector of economic inclusion, my interest lies in adult migrant students’ socio-economic participation and life design. This study draws on an intersectional approach to investigate how overlapping structures of power shape adult migrant students' lived experiences in Finland. Through qualitative analysis of school observations and interviews, it shows how intersecting inequalities manifest in the students' life design in different spheres of their experience, in relationship-building and career plans.

Theoretically, I adopted a Nordic postcolonial and intersectional framework to analyse social ties in relation to belonging (see Anthias 2008; Brah & Phoenix Collins 2019; Collins 2019; Keskinen 2019; Lähdesmäki et al. 2016; Yuval Davis 2006); and applied affect theory to examine the effect of institutional and affective practices on students' career plans (Ahmed 2004; Berlant 2010).

I carried out ethnographic observations and semi-structured interviews in vocational education and training and Finnish language courses in general upper-secondary education. The study focussed on the participants’ educational and work trajectories, social connections and career plans. Teachers and career counsellors were also interviewed as part of the study.

By using an intersectional lens, I analysed adult migrant students’ social connections through school and employment. The data suggested that, from an institutional perspective, structural systems in adult education and the labour market often restrict opportunities for engagement with the majority population, thereby reinforcing segregation along racial and class lines. From an interpersonal angle, racialisation contributes to disconnection and exclusion. The interplay of race, nationality, and class defines who forms connections with whom, in what contexts, and with what outcomes.

Finally, I investigated adult migrant students’ life designs and affective practices, departing from the notion of hope as affect and result of contextual and institutional dynamics. The findings show that institutional promises of inclusion and career development remain unfulfilled, especially in the case of non-white and racialised students, from outside the EU, working in low-status jobs. Over time, students experience recurring cycles of hope, as this is continually produced, sustained, lost, and reconstructed.

This paper proposes game design and testing as a democratizing, intersectional pedagogy through which learners explore the systemic and individual configurations of inequality that shape life in post-migrant societies. In an era marked by growing hostility toward diversity, equity, and inclusion, the paper argues that game design and experimentation cultivate empathy and foster belonging, cooperation, and critical awareness. Drawing on Collins’ (2019) framework of intersectionality as critical social theory, it emphasizes that intersecting identities do not simply add up but overlap in ways that produce qualitatively different experiences of privilege and oppression. Hands-on, participatory methods make this relational understanding visible by showing how power operates through interconnected structures rather than isolated categories.

Building on Wilcox’s (2024) ludic theory of cognition, the paper demonstrates how intersectionality games illuminate the ways in which social position shapes perception, mobility, and possibility. Games allow learners to temporarily inhabit alternative social logics, deepening their understanding of intersectional experiences, particularly when they involve reflexive, cooperative, or role-based elements. As de Castell (2023) argues, ludic epistemology treats play as a legitimate form of knowledge-making; thus, designing intersectionality games becomes a way to experiment with and critically reflect on the power systems that organize social life.

The empirical foundation is a university course in which students prototyped and tested games to make intersectionality accessible to diverse audiences. These games—ranging from board games to obstacle courses—require players to navigate scenarios where multiple disadvantages (such as linguistic exclusion combined with gendered or religious discrimination) overlap, or where hidden privileges shape outcomes. By translating theory into embodied experience, these games reveal how structural barriers and epistemic injustices persist even when legal frameworks proclaim equality, thereby bridging the gap between abstract theory and lived realities.

Analysis of student reflections indicates that gamification facilitated a shift from “visibility” to “reflexivity,” making systemic inequality emotionally tangible and demonstrating that outcomes are not solely the result of individual effort but depend on structural conditions. Participants reported moving away from reductionist understandings of identity, echoing hooks’ (1994) call for engaged pedagogies grounded in lived experience and collective responsibility.

Ultimately, the paper argues that playful, practice-based encounters are essential for cultivating educational environments that are democratic in practice, not merely in principle. Through active engagement with elements of play, learners co‑create and deepen theoretical understanding while developing inclusive, reflexive, and socially just orientations toward the world.