Search Results (366)

This theoretical article considers a case where a chief subject-area superintendent within the Ministry of Education issued a policy, and teachers implemented it more radically than intended—extending it in a way that eliminated core elements of the original mandate. Applying ecosystem theory to the case, the article advances the conceptual theorization of ecosystem theory principles—with respect to teachers’ leadership acts—by refining key components (proximity between actors and interconnectedness, roles in ecosystems, and democratization), adding nuances that the case highlights but existing theory leaves underdeveloped. It further engages with Weberian bureaucracy, street-level bureaucracy, and Weick’s loose-coupling theory as alternative frameworks, establishing ecosystem theory’s distinctive explanatory power for the leadership appropriation dynamics the case reveals. The Discussion delineates the article’s conceptual contributions and outlines research directions that further elaborate the refinements and theoretical differentiation (ecosystem theory vis-à-vis related theories) into areas beyond the scope of this article. Full article

The intensification of the global ecosocial crisis has exposed the structural incompatibility between continuous economic growth and the biophysical limits of the planet, prompting increasing interest in degrowth as a framework for ecological sustainability and social justice. Despite the growing development of degrowth theory within ecological economics and political ecology, its educational implications remain underexplored. This article examines the role of education in the transition toward post-growth societies through a critical review of the literature and a conceptual analysis informed by critical pedagogy, ecofeminism, environmental education, and degrowth scholarship. The study identifies how contemporary educational systems reproduce growth-oriented subjectivities through human capital theory, neoliberal governance, competitiveness, and productivist curricular frameworks. The analysis demonstrates that dominant models of sustainability education frequently remain embedded within the assumptions of green growth and fail to address the structural drivers of ecological degradation and social inequality. As a result, the article develops an integrated framework for a pedagogy of degrowth structured around ecosocial literacy, democratic participation, care ethics, cooperation, critical civic engagement, curriculum transformation, technological sovereignty, and commitment to the commons. The main contribution of the study lies in articulating a comprehensive educational model that connects pedagogical transformation with broader processes of post-growth social change, positioning education not merely as a tool for environmental awareness but as a strategic arena for cultivating the values, capacities, and collective agency required for ecosocial justice. The findings suggest that a transition toward sustainable and equitable societies requires a profound reorientation of educational aims, contents, institutions, and practices beyond the paradigm of economic growth. Full article

The terms democracy and the pedagogy of the possible name an approach imagining schools as sites where more just, inclusive and participatory collective life can be practised, particularly in early childhood. The entry brings three traditions into dialogue. (a) Critical pedagogy, particularly in its post-structuralist, Foucauldian, and post-Marxist readings, engages with Rancièrian critiques of pedagogical mastery and offers a vocabulary for examining how power, knowledge, subjectivity, and hegemony are produced and contested within educational life. (b) Freinet pedagogy, extended through Fernand Oury’s Institutional Pedagogy, contributes a politically grounded, practice-first repertoire of cooperative techniques, classroom institutions, and democratic forms of organisation. (c) Educational commons approaches frame knowledge, space, time, and pedagogical relations as shared goods, collectively produced, cared for, and democratically governed by a community of teachers, children, and families. In this perspective, the child is approached as a commoner and agent in the here and now. The educator, in turn, is understood as a fellow commoner and reflexive practitioner, capable of acting beyond the logics of both the state and the market. Together, they co-shape the everyday life of education. Eight shared dimensions, namely the relational, the political, praxis, agency, anti-enclosure, prefiguration, community, and the schoolized mind, traverse all three traditions, with care as their transversal thread. The framework is conceived as a hospitable theoretical and practical space, not as a self-contained doctrine. It is heuristic in orientation, bringing these traditions into conversation because each contributes a complementary layer to democratic educational life. Full article

This paper offers a theoretical-interpretive contribution to the sociology of lifelong learning (LLL), exploring a sociological reframing of lifelong learning through the concept of social love as an analytical framework for reading the institutional practices of universities in the domain of LLL. Drawing on classical and contemporary sociological traditions (including recognition theory, French pragmatic sociology, and relational sociology), the paper develops the argument that lifelong learning, when understood as a relational and generative practice, can be interpreted through the four dimensions of social love: overabundance, care, recognition, and universalism. The paper proposes what can be interpreted as a theoretical and educational transposition of the World Love Index (WLI) framework: a shift in scale, from the nation-state to the university, and in domain, from general social policy to educational practice, that preserves the core logic of the WLI while adapting it to the context of higher education. This transposition responds to a gap explicitly identified within the WLI research program and contributes to the debate on the civic and relational dimensions of higher education. Empirically, the paper draws on a national survey conducted within the Italian University Network for Lifelong Learning (RUIAP), which mapped lifelong learning services across 27 universities between 2022 and 2023. The survey data are used not as a basis for hypothesis testing but as exploratory empirical material through which to illustrate and develop the proposed framework, following a logic of theory elaboration. The findings reveal a heterogeneous and evolving system, characterized by uneven levels of institutionalization across the four dimensions: recognition practices are most widely present, though concentrated on formal pathways; care emerges in dedicated services for vulnerable and non-traditional populations; universalism remains largely unrealized in terms of territorial outreach; and overabundance (institutional investment exceeding regulatory compliance) is present in limited but analytically significant cases. The study concludes that understanding LLL as a practice of social love offers new insights into the civic mission of universities and their contribution to fostering social cohesion and democratic participation. It further proposes the need for observatories of institutional social love in higher education (such as RUIAP) and identifies directions for future research and policy oriented toward the generation of relational goods and the common good within university systems. Full article

This article develops a symbolic hermeneutic framework for interpreting contemporary socio-educational phenomena within the horizon of decolonial thought and Liberation Theology. It begins from the assumption that symbols are not merely decorative forms of representation but fundamental structures of meaning that shape both individual experience and collective life, especially through their educational effects. From this perspective, the article examines how the symbols circulating in social communication reveal the ideological underpinnings of imagination, authority, exclusion, and resistance. The essay then places this symbolic analysis in dialog with decolonial theory, arguing that the enduring epistemological legacy of colonialism continues to organize hegemonic forms of knowledge, subjectivity, and power. Particular attention is devoted to the concept of the frontier, first understood as a modern device of exclusion and then reinterpreted as a space of epistemic resistance, ethical encounter, and democratic confrontation among differences. The discussion further engages key authors of Liberation Theology and the philosophy of liberation—especially Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, Enrique Dussel, and Paulo Freire—in order to show how religious discourse and pedagogical practice intersect in processes of emancipation. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative, interpretative approach grounded in philosophical hermeneutics and critical conceptual analysis. It reconstructs and compares major theoretical positions rather than presenting empirical data. The article argues that the integration of symbolic hermeneutics, decolonial thought, and liberationist theology offers an original framework for rethinking education as a transformative practice grounded in ethical responsibility toward the Other. By bringing the concepts of frontier, sentipensamiento, communality, and pluriverse into a single analytical constellation, the paper contributes to current debates in religious studies, critical pedagogy, and epistemic justice. In the context of contemporary global crises—migration, ecological devastation, social fragmentation, and the weakening of democratic participation—it proposes a renewed role for religion as a critical and generative force capable of opening new educational spaces for dialogue, liberation, and the reconfiguration of knowledge. Full article

Generative AI tools are increasingly being adopted in education, where they function as collaborators that can provide feedback, suggest alternatives, and scaffold learning. In this paper, I conducted an autoethnographic study by examining my experience as a teacher-researcher integrating generative AI tools as a More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) within the context of game design education. Drawing on Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, this study documents how generative AI can facilitate creative learning by extending learners’ capacity to ideate, iterate, and reflect on their design processes. This study further reflects on instructional practices and observations of learners engaging with AI-supported creative activities across workshops and training programs. My reflections reveal that generative AI tools enhance feedback loops, accelerate prototyping, and democratize access to mentorship by providing context-aware guidance. However, they also introduce challenges related to illusions of competence, a lack of internalization, and reduced iteration design depth. Future work will explore structured pedagogical models that balance human mentorship with AI-assisted guidance, aiming to establish ethical, adaptive, and creativity-centered frameworks for using generative AI in game design education. Through this lens, this study contributes to an emerging understanding of AI-enabled learning partnerships and their implications for cultivating innovation and talent in the creative industries. Full article

This paper examines the intersection between digital learning environments and multilingual education policies, with a focus on the linguistic integration of migrant students in Europe. It explores how technology, particularly mobile-assisted learning, artificial intelligence, and immersive tools, can strengthen language acquisition and promote social inclusion. Drawing on European and Greek policy frameworks, the study shows how digital pedagogies operationalize multilingualism as both an educational objective and a social justice priority. Based on a qualitative review of contemporary research and institutional reports, the findings indicate that digitally enhanced learning environments act as catalysts for equity, intercultural dialogue, and active participation when supported by coherent pedagogical design. The paper concludes by outlining policy recommendations for the development of multilingual digital ecosystems that align technological innovation with democratic, inclusive, and human-centred education. Overall, the analysis highlights that technology-mediated multilingualism can effectively reinforce participation, inclusion, and linguistic integration when embedded within robust policy structures and sound pedagogical practice. Full article

Questioning is widely recognised as a key dimension of learning in science education, yet learner questioning has often been treated as a secondary aspect of classroom participation rather than as a central pedagogical and epistemic practice. This article offers a conceptual examination of questioning in relation to science education for sustainability, informed by a critical interpretive engagement with literature on questioning, participation, classroom dialogue, engagement, and science education. It argues that science education for sustainability requires more than the transmission of scientific knowledge, calling instead for pedagogical spaces in which learners can engage with complexity, uncertainty, interpretation, and the ethical and social dimensions of socio-scientific issues. The article’s main contribution lies in repositioning learner questioning as a central condition of science education for sustainability and in showing that questioning is shaped not only by knowledge and motivation, but also by participation, hesitation, silence, and broader dynamics of voice, legitimacy, and power. In this perspective, fostering questioning becomes essential to more inclusive, dialogic, reflexive, and transformative approaches to science education for sustainability. The article further argues that fostering questioning in this way contributes directly to the educational ambitions embedded in SDG 4, SDG 13, and SDG 16—making questioning-centred pedagogy not merely a methodological choice, but a condition for more democratic, just, and transformative science education for sustainable development. Full article

The European Union’s Farm-to-Fork (F2F) Strategy sets an ambitious agenda for a socio-ecological transition, positioning agriculture as a critical sector for achieving sustainable food systems. However, its implementation faces significant systemic barriers that hinder its transformative potential. This paper applies a diagnostic framework, derived from the H2020-funded PHOENIX project, that identifies six key challenges to democratic innovations in environmental governance: prolonged timeframes for tangible results, the complexity of environmental issues, the need for transcalar cooperation, the imperative to foster behavioural change, limited deliberative dialogue, and the need to build mutual trust. Through a review of public policies and scholarly literature, this analysis evaluates how these challenges manifest within the F2F Strategy, impacting farmers and the broader agri-food system. The findings demonstrate that barriers to F2F implementation are not solely technical or economic but are deeply linked to governance fragmentation, uneven knowledge flows, and deficits in trust relations. Crucially, the study reveals that Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS) and associated Education and Training (ET) consistently emerge as pivotal enabling mechanisms to mitigate these constraints. The research generates actionable recommendations to reinforce F2F by redefining the roles of innovation, education, and multi-level collaboration in building resilient and sustainable EU agri-food systems. Full article

This study analyzes the impact of socio-demographic factors on citizens’ perceptions of the functioning of local-level inclusion mechanisms, focusing on four dimensions: information, participation, transparency, and effectiveness. A mixed-methods approach is employed, combining: (1) a large-scale survey with 885 residents in three municipalities (Patos, Elbasan, and Mat) and (2) in-depth interviews with mayors, municipal councilors, and social service managers. The quantitative analysis was conducted through binary logistic regression models in SPSS version 27, as well as ordered logistic regression, examining the impact of socio-demographic factors such as age, education level, gender, employment status, and area of residence on the four dimensions of the study and the Inclusion Index. The qualitative component analyzes how local officials address citizen inclusion in key social policy areas such as employment, education, housing, social assistance, and social services. The results show that residence is the strongest predictor, with citizens in urban areas reporting higher levels of information, transparency, and effectiveness of participatory processes. Employment status is also associated with more positive perceptions, while gender and educational level show limited and inconsistent effects. Qualitative findings suggest that these differences are mediated by structural and institutional factors, such as infrastructure, administrative capacity and access to information. The study contributes to the literature on democratic innovation and participatory governance by showing that the impact of demographic factors on civic engagement is mediated by institutional and territorial conditions, particularly in developing countries. Full article

This study examines how individual political predispositions and national mobilisation contexts jointly structure protest participation in contemporary Europe across the pre-pandemic, pandemic and post-pandemic periods. Using data from Rounds 9, 10 and 11 of the European Social Survey (2018–2023), the analytical sample includes 106,106 respondents from 33 countries. Descriptively, protest participation remains a minority behaviour, yet displays pronounced cross-national heterogeneity, with participation rates ranging from below 3% in several Central and Eastern European countries to nearly 20% in the most mobilised contexts and remains remarkably stable across rounds at approximately 8.5%. Building on resource mobilisation theory, political process approaches and New Social Movements perspectives, the analysis conceptualises protest participation not as an isolated behavioural act but as the outcome of interactions between individual resources, evaluative orientations toward democratic institutions and broader mobilisation environments. Logistic regression models, country fixed-effects specifications and multilevel models with random intercepts are used to assess these relationships. At the individual level, political engagement emerges as the strongest predictor of participation: higher political interest is associated with substantially higher protest propensity, while ideological self-placement indicates lower participation among respondents positioned further to the right. Younger age and higher education also increase participation. Lower satisfaction with democracy and stronger perceptions of inequality are consistently associated with protest behaviour, supporting grievance-based interpretations linked to democratic evaluations rather than material deprivation alone. Country fixed-effects and multilevel models confirm that these individual-level associations are robust within countries, while significant between-country variation persists (random-intercept SD = 0.554), indicating that national mobilisation environments shape baseline levels of protest participation. Multilevel results further reveal that protest participation was significantly lower during the pandemic period (Round 10) relative to the pre-pandemic baseline, with only partial recovery in the post-pandemic period. A cross-round comparison demonstrates that the core individual-level associations are stable across all three periods, indicating that these relationships reflect durable structural patterns rather than dynamics specific to any particular mobilisation cycle. Beyond this overall stability, the analysis identifies two theoretically informative exceptions: subjective financial difficulty is significant only in the pre-pandemic period and gender differences in protest participation attenuate over time—patterns consistent with broader shifts in protest repertoires during and after the pandemic. These findings make three contributions to the comparative literature on contentious politics. First, by extending the analysis across three ESS rounds, the study demonstrates the temporal robustness of individual-level determinants of protest—an empirical question rarely addressed in the existing literature. Second, the multilevel design with round fixed effects allows for direct estimation of pandemic-related suppression and post-pandemic recovery in protest activity at the aggregate level. Third, the cross-national scope and temporally structured comparison provide new evidence on how individual political predispositions interact with shifting mobilisation environments across a period of exceptional socio-political strain in Europe. Full article

The present study seeks to synthesize the scientific evidence from the last decade (2015–2025) regarding the transition from inequality in technological access toward social stratification mediated by automated decision-making systems. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines and the SPIDER model, a corpus of 74 high-impact records from Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest, and PsycINFO was examined. The results reveal an exponential growth in scientific production since 2018, marking a shift from infrastructure-based inequality toward a systemic stratification mediated by algorithmic opacity. Three critical sectors of exclusion are categorized: the socio-health nexus, the labor market, and the educational ecosystem. Methodologically, quantitative algorithmic auditing predominates (58%), although mixed sociotechnical approaches have increased by 25% since 2021 to capture experiences of intersectional vulnerability. The study concludes that AI acts as an active agent of social reproduction, necessitating a transition toward “Algorithmic Justice” and “Human-Centric Governance.” Finally, a “Reinstating AI” framework is proposed to democratize technological development and mitigate systemic biases, offering a roadmap for researchers and policymakers in the pursuit of technological sovereignty. Full article

This paper advances a theoretical argument that generative AI is accelerating the democratization of computational thinking and, in turn, reshaping education, professional practice, and the nature of computing itself. Traditionally, computational thinking has been closely tied to learning to program, thereby limiting who could effectively employ it. The emergence of large language models (LLMs) challenges this linkage by decoupling many forms of computational problem solving from direct programming. In response to this shift, the paper explores the implications for curriculum design and workforce roles through a theoretical and interpretive lens. Drawing on prior literature, historical context, and illustrative examples from recent scholarship and practice, we develop a conceptual account of AI-augmented computing. We argue that LLMs lower barriers to entry by abstracting away much of manual coding and reallocating effort toward problem framing, prompt engineering, oversight, and validation. We further argue that this transition is redistributing computational skills across disciplines, positioning prompt engineering as an emerging engineering practice, and increasing pressure on universities to redesign curricula around AI literacy, fluency, and mastery. Full article

In a media ecosystem marked by misinformation and disinformation, democratic resilience requires new strategies for digital and media literacy and participation. In the proposed model, the University, through transnational Cooperation Partnerships, activates applied research laboratories that generate high-social-impact communication prototypes. The European case studies Respectnet and DigiFunCollab demonstrate that the conscious use of digital media, transforming students from passive users into conscious creators, reduces vulnerability to cognitive biases, filter bubbles, and echo chambers, thereby limiting manipulation in democratic processes and stimulating civic participation. The imitative diffusion of such practices generates virtuous circles of collective learning. The theoretical framework combines institutional isomorphism, reinterpreted as a virtuous isomorphism of best practices, with democratic resilience and the UNESCO MIL and DigComp 2.2 frameworks. The methodology adopts a mixed-methods design with a quantitative prevalence. The qualitative phase includes focus groups with national stakeholders and a national report (regulatory analysis, training needs, SWOT on social entrepreneurship) preliminary to course design. The quantitative phase involves monitoring training pathways (online course and project work) and a final questionnaire. Indicators include the number of participants, certifications, projects developed, and engagement levels. By systematically implementing this approach, the Academy fuels multi-stakeholder institutional dialogue. Knowledge transfer creates communicative culture and strengthens the democratic capacity of communities. This approach confirms the role of Visual Education as a tool to integrate the University’s three missions, thus structurally reinforcing democratic resilience. Full article

Hybrid role-playing games are increasingly used to support democratic learning, yet there is limited empirical evidence on how such hybrid designs function across contexts. This study analyses the pedagogical and deliberative effects of Empaville, a hybrid role-playing game designed to simulate a green participatory budgeting process by embedding deliberation, competition, and voting within a fictional urban setting. We analyse six implementations conducted between 2023 and 2025 in the United Kingdom and Morocco (N = 118), combining participant observation with post-game survey data. The analysis examines role activation, phase-level enjoyment, and participants’ reported learning and deliberative experiences, using descriptive statistics, non-parametric tests, effect size measures, and qualitative thematic analysis. Across contexts, participants report that the game supports perspective-taking, intellectual humility, and constructive engagement with disagreement, while perceived learning and participation intensity vary more substantially across individuals and sessions. Cross-national comparisons reveal some statistically detectable differences in how specific phases are experienced, particularly voting, but effect sizes are generally small or trivial, indicating limited substantive divergence overall. These findings suggest that hybrid role-playing games can foster deliberative learning outcomes in short educational interventions, while highlighting the importance of distinguishing between enjoyment, engagement, and perceived pedagogical value. The study contributes an exploratory but systematic mixed-methods evaluation suitable for small-N pedagogical interventions without causal claims. Full article