The 4th International Conference of Scuola Democratica will host five workshops addressing key challenges in contemporary education. These sessions are curated and pre-organised (they are not open for submissions) and are developed in collaboration with, and supported by, leading national and international organisations.
Workshops will be conducted in Italian and/or English. Whenever possible, slides and supporting materials in English will be provided to ensure accessibility for an international audience.
A.00 Separated At School: Which Challenges for Policies? (Presentation of SD Special Issue suppl/2025)
Promoted by Associazione "Per Scuola Democratica"
Amphitheatre A
Wednesday, 05/June/2024, 2:30-4:30pm
Chairs Marta Cordini, Costanzo Ranci Ortigosa (Polytechnic of Milan, Italy)
Keywords school segregation; desegregation policies; educational inequalities
Over the past twenty years, the high concentration of students from socioeconomically disadvantaged households or with migrant backgrounds in Italian schools has prompted scholars to reflect on the issue of school segregation. Some studies have identified the main characteristics of this phenomenon, highlighting the need to deepen its analysis and to develop targeted policies.
School segregation is not only a consequence of structural, social and territorial inequalities, but also a factor that contributes to perpetuate disadvantages. The special issue presents some of the main emerging findings and explores methodological and analytical challenges in the study of school segregation in Italy.
The collected contributions examine the combined factors that contribute to school segregation, including the residential distribution of the population, institutional configurations, and households’ choices. They also address the effects of school segregation on academic outcomes and opportunities for social mobility, with particular attention to the intertwined factors that influence educational trajectories (e.g., peer effects or school effect).
The overall aim of the special issue is to contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon, while also laying the groundwork for reflections geared toward public policy. In this Workshop, we propose to open a discussion not only on the contents of the issue but also on the main policy challenges that this topic poses. A brief presentation of the special issue by editors and authors will be followed by a roundtable discussion with invited academics and stakeholder.
D.00 Learning on the Margins: Early School Leaving, Educational Inequalities and the Politics of Place
Promoted by ActionAid Italia & IREF – Istituto di Ricerche Educative e Formative
Amphitheatre A
Wednesday, 05/June/2024, 2:30-4:30pm
Chairs Claudia Cicciotti (ActionAid Italia), Luca Fanelli (ActionAid Italia), Gianfranco Zucca (IREF – Istituto di Ricerche Educative e Formative)
Keywords early school leaving; territorial inequalities; educational governance
In recent years, early school leaving has re-emerged as a key indicator of the deep social and territorial inequalities shaping urban life. Its persistence in the metropolitan peripheries of Italy reflects not only the limits of the educational system but also the changing relationship between school, territory, and citizenship. As research on spatial and educational inequalities has shown (Benadusi & Giancola, 2016; Wacquant, 2008), peripheral areas are not merely geographic spaces but social formations where exclusion, stigma, and institutional weakness converge, affecting both access to and the quality of education.
Schools located in such contexts often act as welfare institutions of last resort, compensating for fragile family networks and weakened public infrastructures (Ballarino & Checchi, 2006). This generates a growing tension between the educational and the social mandates of schooling—one that risks overburdening educators while narrowing the school’s emancipatory potential.
The Workshop explores this tension from a sociological and policy perspective, analyzing how early school leaving is defined and governed within contexts of urban marginality. It focuses on three key questions:
how spatial segregation and territorial deprivation affect educational trajectories;
how schools, often stigmatized or isolated, can become spaces of civic resistance and social innovation;
which forms of multi-level governance—linking institutions, the third sector, and local educational communities—can sustain inclusive and democratic education in fragile territories.
Drawing on the case of Rome’s VI Municipality, the project BELLA! Fateci spazio (promoted by ActionAid International Italia ETS) and IREF – Istituto di Ricerche Educative e Formative) offers an empirical lens on the interplay between inequality, school orientation, and educational wellbeing. The findings feed a broader reflection: school dropout is not merely an individual failure but a structural manifestation of territorial injustice (Dubet, 2011), calling into question the capacity of democratic systems to guarantee both the right to education and social cohesion.
The Workshop, held in Italian, builds on the participatory learning process promoted through ActionAid’s educational inequalities programme, and invites a transdisciplinary dialogue between empirical research, public policy, and civic engagement to reimagine educational justice policy in peripheral urban contexts.
Provisional agenda
- Introduction – Education, Territory and Democracy: Why Early School Leaving Is a Political Issue
Claudia Cicciotti (ActionAid Italia) and Gianfranco Zucca (IREF) - Learning on the Margins: Educational Inequalities and School Trajectories in Rome’s VI Municipality
Leonardo Piromalli (IREF), Sabina Licursi (University of Calabria), and Emanuela Pascuzzi (University of Calabria) - Building Educational Communities in Fragile Territories. Local Policies and the Multi-Level Governance of Early School Leaving
MariaSole Piccioli (ActionAid Italia), Claudia Pratelli (Municipality of Rome – Councilor for Education, Training, and Employment), and Federico Neri (Scaro Community) - Roundtable. Beyond Early School Leaving: Educational Justice, New Forms of Citizenship and Policy Recommendations
Fabrizio Barca (Forum Disuguaglianze e Diversità), Giuseppina Jose Mangione (INDIRE), Marco Rossi-Doria (Con I Bambini ETS), and Katia Scannavini (ActionAid Italia)
E.00 Citizenship Education and International Pupil Mobility
Promoted by Fondazione Intercultura ETS
Amphitheatre A
Wednesday, 05/June/2024, 2:30-4:30pm
Chairs Mattia Baiutti (Fondazione Intercultura ETS), Piero Valentini (ISTAT), Giuseppe Ricotta (Sapienza University of Rome)
Keywords citizenship education; international student mobility; intercultural competence
Adjectives such as active, responsible, intercultural, and global outline a concept of citizenship that aspires to broaden the definition of citizenship established with the birth and development of nation states. From a pedagogical and didactic perspective, what skills are associated with this expanded citizenship? What teaching methods can be used to develop and assess them?
Internationally, some contributions offer proposals in this direction. For example, consider the European Union’s key competences (2018), the Council of Europe’s competences for a culture of democracy (2018b), the OECD’s global competence in PISA (2018), and UNESCO’s global citizenship (2014, 2018). In Italy, the introduction of civic education (Law 92/2019) had, in some respects, revitalised the debate on citizenship education, although it has revealed gaps regarding the intercultural and international dimension (Scuola Democratica 2021).
Are there opportunities to develop civic and citizenship education in schools that effectively combine democratic values with international and intercultural dimensions? Individual international pupil mobility is recognized as a resource for developing young people’s intercultural competence (Barrett 2018), but how can its potential be integrated into citizenship education through innovative teaching approaches that engage not only the student participating in mobility but also the rest of his school class?
The workshop will present the research project “Civic Education and International Student Mobility” by Fondazione Intercultura and Associazione “Per Scuola Democratica”. The project included variuous activities: a background study, a pilot study involving a group of schools and teachers, and a survey.
The provisional agenda is as follows: One speaker will introduce the background research, providing a critical review of the scientific and policy landscape on civic and citizenship education, internationalisation and international student mobility, intercultural democratic competence. Two speakers will present the research underpinning the pilot project to be proposed to schools. Two speakers, based on the concrete experience of the pilot project carried out in schools, will share insights into the teaching approaches and organizational conditions that help schools integrate internationalization into civic education. Two further speakers will discuss the survey, examining the values of students who studied abroad with Intercultura. The workshop offers a coordinated overview of how international mobility and democratic citizenship can strengthen each other, and provides insights into the obstacles that schools face in this context.
H.00 Framing School-to-Work Programs: Evaluation, Voice and Social Justice
Promoted by Fondazione Intercultura ETS
Amphitheatre A
Wednesday, 05/June/2024, 2:30-4:30pm
Chairs Donatella Poliandri (INVALSI), Mauro Palumbo (University of Genoa), Alessandra Decataldo (University of Milano-Bicocca)
Keywords school-to-work programs; evaluation; voice and recognition
School-to-Work Programs (SWPs) are increasingly promoted as policy responses to the challenges young people face in accessing meaningful learning and work opportunities. Yet, evaluations often focus on immediate functional outcomes, capturing only part of their significance. Their democratic and distributive implications also depend on how SWPs are framed, evaluated and governed—on the assumptions they embed, the opportunities they open to different groups of students, and the forms of recognition and participation they enable or constrain. Drawing on capability and social justice perspectives, this panel examines SWPs as policy instruments whose design can either broaden opportunities or reinforce stratification.
We welcome contributions that investigate SWPs through evaluation lenses capable of making issues of justice, recognition, and voice visible. Proposals may explore:
(a) how SWPs distribute learning and work opportunities across social groups;
(b) how teachers, school leaders, educational and company tutors, families and host organisations negotiate responsibilities and expectations in contexts of institutional change;
(c) how students interpret and articulate their SWP experiences, bringing their voice to the forefront;
(d) how evaluation and monitoring tools illuminate the mechanisms linking local practices to broader regimes of inequality and precarious work.
During the panel, the Special Issue Learning for Democracy, 2/2025, “School-to-Work Programs: an Opportunity for Social Justice?”, will be presented, providing a shared framework for discussing its conceptual contributions and empirical insights. This presentation will support a broader exchange on comparative and international perspectives, upcoming research, and future directions for advancing work on SWPs, democratic evaluation, and educational justice.
M.00 Navigating Techno-Futures in Education: Artificial Intelligence and Temporality (Presentation of SD Special Issue 1/2026)
Amphitheatre A
Wednesday, 05/June/2024, 2:30-4:30pm
Chairs Danilo Taglietti (Createck S.c.a.r.l.), Leonardo Piromalli (IREF – Istituto di Ricerche Educative e Formative)
Keywords artificial intelligence; temporality; datafication; algorithmic governance
In contemporary education, Artificial Intelligence no longer operates merely as an external tool or a future promise: it constitutes a temporal dispositif, actively reshaping the rhythms, compositions, and scores through which learning is organized and governed. From data-driven prediction systems to generative models like ChatGPT, the insertion of AI into pedagogical and institutional educational life introduces a shift from feedback-based to “feedforward temporalities” (Tulchinsky & Mason, 2023), where the present is increasingly governed as if the future was already known and actionable (Adams et al., 2009).
This symposium stems from the Special Issue Navigating Techno-Futures in Education (Scuola Democratica 1/2026), and stages a collective inquiry into the temporal reconfigurations prompted by AI in education. It asks: how are time, agency, and decision-making being reassembled under algorithmic regimes? What does it mean to teach, learn, and research within assemblages where temporality becomes fluid and the lever of governing? How do these shifts affect professional subjectivities, institutional molarity, and future imaginaries?
Organized as a dynamic “fishbowl” session, the symposium invites the contributors to engage in a sequence of short “provocations” drawn from their respective papers. These interventions will open a dialogue on the socio-technical entanglements of AI and education, focusing on:
- the transformation of classroom interaction and professional reflexivity;
- the rise of algorithmic governance and risk-based educational decision-making;
- the impact of generative automation on the temporal economy of research and authorship;
- the emergence of new figures of epistemic citizenship shaped by probabilistic reasoning and datafied futures.
Rather than offering prescriptions or technological endorsements, this symposium invites participants to stay with the trouble (Haraway, 2016): to confront, reflect, and collectively navigate the new chronopolitics of education.
Provisional agenda
Format: Dynamic roundtable in a “fishbowl” format
- Introduction. Governing Education through Time: AI, Anticipation, and the Crisis of the Present
Danilo Taglietti (Createck S.c.a.r.l.) & Leonardo Piromalli (IREF) - Provocations by the Authors. Temporal Regimes and AI in Education
2.1. Focus: Classroom, Interaction, and Professional Agency
2.2. Focus: Algorithmic Governance and Logics of Anticipation
2.3. Focus: Epistemology, Subjectivity, and Educational Futures - Roundtable among Authors. Entangled Temporalities and the Politics of Educational Futures
- Closing Thoughts. AI, Temporality, and the Oracular Turn of Education
Cosimo Accoto (MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia – to be confirmed) - Audience Discussion. Critical Reflections and Open Questions