Conference Program

This presentation shows the Italian experience of the two editions of the European project Applying Safe Behaviours, aimed at preventing and responding to peer violence among children and adolescents, with a specific focus on school settings. Peer violence represents one of the most widespread forms of violence experienced by young people, particularly those living in conditions of social vulnerability, and poses significant challenges for educational institutions and child protection systems.

The project adopts a participatory, rights-based and multi-sectoral approach, recognising children and young people as active agents in the construction of safe, inclusive and democratic environments. Grounded in the Safe Behaviours and Protective Behaviours methodologies, and informed by an ecological and relational framework, the intervention integrates prevention, capacity building and advocacy.

In Italy, the project has been implemented in lower and upper secondary schools in three local contexts: Milan, Turin and Bassano del Grappa. The intervention combined peer-to-peer training activities for students with targeted training programmes for teachers, educators, social workers and other child and youth care professionals. The objective was to strengthen life skills, awareness of power dynamics, recognition of different forms of peer violence (including bullying, cyberbullying and gender violence), and professionals’ capacity to respond in a balanced, child-centred and supportive manner. By training both minors and professionals, the project methodology establishes a dual layer of protection: while children gain the tools to protect themselves, professionals improve their capacity to identify and respond to violence in a way that always prioritizes the best interest of the child.

A preliminary scoping exercise, based on qualitative interviews, focus groups and surveys conducted with young people and professionals across nine European countries, informed the development of training materials and practice guidance. Particular emphasis was placed on the voices and experiences of children and adolescents, highlighting the importance of participation, trust in adults, and safe spaces for reporting violence.

The project relies heavily on peer education as a tool for effective content delivery and meaningful exchange, while also involving adults in a positive dialogue. Workshops for children are conducted by peer trainers (young adults aged 18-21). This near-peer dynamic breaks down traditional adult-child hierarchies, making the content more accessible and authentic. Also, the methodology specifically includes the participation of care-experienced young adults (care leavers) as peer trainers. Their first-hand understanding of the care system provides them with unique credibility and allows for a deeper level of trust and exchange with participants.

The Italian experience suggests that participatory educational practices can enhance young people’s agency, promote respectful relationships, and foster shared responsibility among schools, services and local communities. This approach promotes the creation of a culture of positive “partnership for change” between children and adults, where children’s participatory and decision-making skills evolve while adults support, advise, or help them implement their ideas. The presentation discusses the implications of these findings for educational policies and school practices, arguing that schools can play a crucial role as democratic spaces for the prevention of violence, the promotion of inclusion, and the protection of children’s rights.

Over recent decades, many rural and inner areas of Southern Europe (San-Martín and Vaya, 2024), and particularly of Southern Italy (Pugliese, 2002), have been affected by progressive depopulation and what has been described as anthropological desertification. Despite its profound impact, this phenomenon has remained largely marginal in public debate, often overshadowed by media and political attention focused primarily on incoming migration flows and securitized border management. Yet, a closer look at regional dynamics reveals a significant hemorrhage: a continuous and systemic outflow of young people toward the more developed areas of the Global North. This process deprives local territories of their youngest, most educated, and potentially innovative population.

Southern Italy represents an emblematic example of this crisis. According to the 2024 SVIMEZ Report, approximately 200,000 university graduates left the South over the past decade in search of better opportunities in Central and Northern Italy. Despite territorial rebalancing initiatives, such as the National Strategy for Inner Areas, public policies appear largely incapable of counteracting a trend that has become increasingly structural and deeply rooted.

Alongside this critical scenario, however, recent ethnographic research conducted in Sicily within the project A European Desert? has highlighted a countervailing phenomenon: a growing number of young people consciously choose to remain in their places of origin. This choice does not amount to passive resistance but rather takes the form of active political and cultural engagement. Such practices resonate with the concept of Restanza, developed by anthropologist Vito Teti (2011, 2024). Restanza does not imply renouncing the future; instead, it represents a way of building it by anchoring it in the present and in sites of memory. It constitutes a generative and resilient response to experiences of marginality.

The “right to remain$” thus entails the creation of concrete conditions that make it genuinely possible to choose to live and build one’s future in one’s place of origin. This perspective does not moralize the decision to leave or remain but rather claims a form of real freedom: the ability to leave or return without being driven by economic necessity or a lack of alternatives. From this viewpoint, the right to mobility must be accompanied by a right to rootedness.

Experiences of restanza in Sicily reveal young people engaged in cultural, agricultural, artistic, and cooperative projects that combine tradition and innovation. Through these practices, an “alternative modernity” emerges, challenging symbolic hierarchies between North and South. The Mediterranean, often conceived as a margin or borderland, is thus reconfigured as a vibrant political and cultural space in which categories such as belonging, development, and marginality are profoundly renegotiated. Far from being an inert area, Southern Italy appears as a laboratory for new forms of modernity grounded in care, creativity, and permanence.

We are living in a historical period of profound transformations, and educational institutions cannot ignore this scenario, given their responsibility to educate and train competent students capable of facing the emerging challenges that demand problem-solving and critical analysis skills. There is an urgent need to innovate teaching practices rather than focusing exclusively on the acquisition of content that is “already established and provides the basis for understanding a certain sector or subject” (Gazzetta Ufficiale dell’Unione Europea, 2018, p. 7). Instead, it is essential to design learning pathways that foster the development of competences “to act or react to ideas, people or situations” (Ibidem). According to Fiorella & Mayer (2015), generative learning is an activity in which students actively seek to make sense of the material presented by engaging in cognitive processes such as selecting, organizing, and integrating, along with the following strategies: summarizing, mapping, drawing, imagining, self-testing, self-explaining, enacting, and teaching. Studies that examined students who prepared to explain material to others highlighted that those who prepared for teaching (without actually teaching) achieved better results than those who prepared for an immediate comprehension test, regardless of the lesson format (Fiorella & Mayer, 2014, 2013). This underscores the necessity of rethinking the teaching-learning process (Lave & Wenger, 1991), giving rise to new perspectives, particularly that of situated learning, which allows the learning experience to intertwine with the construction of plural forms of thought (Cappuccio & Maniscalco, 2020). Improving teaching practice will enhance the students' learning process and, consequently, the expected outcomes (Hunde & Tacconi, 2018). Participatory and workshop-based methodologies allow for the reproduction of “experiences similar to those of the real world in a protected and controlled environment, offering students the opportunity to act and learn from the consequences of their actions” (Bonaiuti, 2014, p. 72).Generative methodologies transform the learning environment into a true laboratory of democracy, promoting the development of critical and collaborative thinking “to support students in constructing their own professional identity through the development of soft skills” (Tore, 2024, p. 133). These methodologies activate processes of thought and action, giving rise to dynamic and contextualized knowledge where theoretical and operational dimensions intersect, dimensions that are necessary to promote change through innovative approaches (Castoldi, 2024). Knowledge is not encapsulated within disciplines but “moves from real contexts and returns to them, in a recursive relationship between experience and knowledge, theory and practice” (Castoldi, 2020, p. 42); this can only be achieved through constructive, socio-cultural, and situated learning (Ivi, p. 32). In this perspective, through cognitive elaboration, individuals engage in thinking processes that enable them to become active and aware of their role in daily life, and to experiment with and embrace innovation. Generative methodologies are capable of making people aware and capable of participating in democratic and social life “in order to promote social cohesion, inclusion, and active citizenship” (Tore, 2024, pp. 131-132), rendering education a social and civic experience.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development identifies the realization of all children’s rights and the inclusion of those furthest behind as essential prerequisites for sustainable progress worldwide (United Nations, 2015). Against this backdrop, education is increasingly called upon to contribute not only to knowledge acquisition but also to children’s empowerment, participation, and capacity to engage with societal challenges. The planned presentation introduces the research project STEPS, which addresses issues of sustainability through an innovative, child-centred approach. Rather than treating sustainability as an abstract or exclusively normative concept, STEPS seeks to approach it from the perspectives and lived experiences of primary school children. In doing so, the project not only gives children a voice but explicitly aims to enable experiences of self-efficacy and agency – key foundations for meaningful participation in democratic school communities..

The theoretical framework integrates Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body (1945/2005) and Bernhard Waldenfels’ responsive phenomenology (2006; 2010), both of which emphasize lived experience, perception, and relationality as central to meaning-making processes. In addition, STEPS is grounded in the paradigm of Childhood Studies (Clark & Moss, 2001; 2005; Schütz & Böhm, 2021), which conceptualizes children as competent social actors, rights-holders (Butschi & Heddrich, 2021; Clark & Moss, 2005) and experts of their own lifeworlds (Langsted, 1994).

Building on these assumptions, the presentation outlines the project’s methodological approach, which seeks to establish strong connections to children’s lifeworld (Lebenswelt) and social realities (El-Mafaalani, 2021). This focus aims to address the well-documented gap between pro-sustainability attitudes and actual behaviour, which persists even when individuals endorse sustainability goals but struggle to translate them into concrete action (Ajzen, 1991; Stern, 2000). Methodologically, STEPS follows a Participatory Social Justice Mixed-Methods design (quan + QUAL; Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018). The qualitative strand is informed by the Mosaic Approach (Clark & Moss, 2001; 2005) to access children’s perspectives through participatory, flexible, and inclusive methods sensitive to diverse experiences. (Clark & Moss, 2001, p. 5; Schütz & Böhm, 2021) The quantitative strand – central to the planned presentation – examines individual differences in children’s values and their relationship to pro-environmental behavior.. Grounded in the Value–Belief–Norm (VBN) theory of environmental behavior (Stern, 2000), the study conceptualizes children’s environmental orientations as multidimensional psychological resources that may support early forms of civic engagement. While substantial empirical evidence links values and sustainable behavior in adulthood (e.g., Steg, 2016; Bouman & Steg, 2020; Wang et al., 2021; Jacobs et al., 2018), research in childhood remains limited. The project therefore investigates associations between children’s values (PBVS-C; Döring et al., 2010) and environmental orientations, including emotional affinity toward nature (CEPS; Larson et al., 2011), nature connectedness (NCI; Richardson et al., 2019), and self-reported pro-environmental behavior (PEB; Collado & Corraliza, 2015).

By examining the relationships between sustainability-related values and children’s environmental orientations, STEPS seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of the foundations of sustainable behavior in childhood. The planned presentation will report on the results of the pilot questionnaire testing and discuss their implications for the final refinement of the instrument.

The Rita Borsellino school in Palermo has cultivated a collaborative relationship with the surrounding area for almost twenty years. From 2007 until today, many participatory planning and urban regeneration paths have been created. From anonymous space to shared space, from individuality to collectivity, from aggression to maieutics. By collaborating with stakeholders, the school took charge of the needs of pupils, families and the neighbourhood, through shared medium and long-term choices and actions of belonging: the Children's and Mothers' Museum (2007/09), the redevelopment of the football field and the creation of the playground (2016/17), the creation of the playground (2019/20), the pedestrianisation of "Via Libera" (2024); the creation of LipDub (2024), the referendum on the school apron (2025).The school, among the planning methods, is also able to include educational spaces among the variables subject to educational planning, together with contents, teaching strategies, supports and educational tools. After all, making art implies leaving signs and, more precisely, signs of community:

https://addiopizzo.org/attivita/consumo-critico/investimento-colletivo/anche-il-comune-firma-il-patto-per-il-territorio-stazione-magione-kalsa/;

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n0RJNYgmRCJUYOoaQlSucJMY3RwyJxR0/view

https://www.giornalelora.it/patto-per-il-territorio-stazione-magione-kalsa-orlando-e-mattina-recuperiamo-lorgoglio-di-appartenere-a-questo-territorio/https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=referendum+grembiule+ritaborsellino+palermo&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ObyhiGLiNyhq7N4uvmvoBCQ2t32f9NEY/view?usp=drivesdk

https://altreconomia.it/prodotto/214/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXRsem1i7-c

https://www.forumdisuguaglianzediversita.org/presentazione-del-rapporto-di-ricerca-patti- educativi-territoriali-e-percorsi-abilitanti-unindagine-esplorativa

This contribution is situated within the framework of a critical pedagogy that adopts complexity as its meta-model, within which epistemological, ethical and value-based, and political issues can be contextualized (Cambi, 2025). It is in this perspective, with the tensions it nurtures, that the problem of cultural poverty, related to fundamental human rights, must be contextualized. A democratic community is one in which people participate and concretely contribute to the life of the community (Dewey, 1916), however, participation today - perhaps more than in the past- requires a sense of being recognised, of feeling like an active part of a common history and destiny. Common goals and shared interests, in fact, promote cohesion among individuals, communities, and cultures.The ethical dimension underlying democracy therefore continues to play a central role today, because many unresolved issues require overcoming uncertainties and difficulties, negative conditions, and limitations that hinder citizens' participation in community life: a weak socio-cultural position (Biasin, 2021), increasing inequalities accentuated by job insecurity, economic instability, hardship, insecurity, and uncertainty create a vulnerability that is also a source of anxiety and suffering for people (Han, 2024), of apathy and alienation from what is happening. People increasingly live as indivisible monads, lacking authentic contact; most relationships arise from random and accidental collisions (Chomsky, 2014), without real interest, with a loss of faith in opportunities for redemption that can instead arise from the sense of belonging and spirit of sharing necessary to understand the meaning of existence (Biasin, 2022). Furthermore, the absence of common goals inevitably contributes to the impoverishment of the relational space, with important repercussions on democratic and civil life, because the sense of co-belonging crumbles: individuals feel alienated, detached, and with resignation mixed with passivity, they ‘choose’ to remain on the margins of human interaction, losing the profound sense of human togetherness (Bauman, 2010). If we understand citizenship as an expression of involvement and recognition within a community of belonging, we must also consider the skills that enable people to act actively in these life contexts (Parricchi, 2019, 2021; Fabbri & Soriani, 2021). Added to this widespread feeling of unease and vulnerability is the cognitive gap relating to information and knowledge. This gap is accentuated by disinformation that generates post-truth dynamics based on partial beliefs and opinions, founded on prejudices and fallacious premises. In this ecosystem, it is difficult for people to interpret, decode, and understand what is happening: words are misunderstood, languages are lost in a Tower of Babel, and superficiality reigns, obscuring the value of symbolic and ethical-relational dimensions (Dominici, 2026). This is where education that cultivates analytical, critical, and systemic thinking skills (Goleman & Senge, 2014) can turn educational institutions, communities, cultural associations, meeting centers, and youth spaces into places of humanization capable of generating the future (D'Aprile, 2025), promoting development, and encouraging social participation.