Panel G.09 — Inclusive societies and equity in education: experiences and opportunities through Service Learning for cultural change
Convenors Silvia Guetta (Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy); Patrizia Lotti (INDIRE); Lorenza Orlandini (INDIRE)
Keywords service learning, social justice, school democracy, peace education, critical thinking
In recent years, the topic of fairness in education has been a major policy issue at supranational and national levels. At the Gothenburg Social Summit (2017), the priority of every person’s right to quality and inclusive education, training and lifelong learning was reaffirmed, and the following year, the Council of Europe confirmed the need to ensure ‘effective equitable access to quality inclusive education for all students as an indispensable factor in achieving more cohesive societies’.
The need to reaffirm these principles tells us that political, social, and cultural interventions for an inclusive education, one that promotes cultural change and respects the talents of students, are still struggling to come to fruition. The numerous and diversified emergencies of recent years, from the pandemic to the environmental issue, from war scenarios to the economic crisis, have put the system even more in crisis and strengthened the need to propose and experiment inclusive and innovative teaching and training proposals, aimed at making the school an environment where knowledge and know-how meet social and cultural needs and interested in preventing and combating phenomena of school drop-out, abandonment and educational poverty. Intervention proposals strongly consistent with the goals of Agenda 2030. Fostering personal well-being, active citizenship, and the acquisition of the skills necessary to promote sustainable development through human rights, gender equality, the promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship, and the valorization of cultural diversity not only fundamental democratic values, but also educational practices necessary to deconstruct violent realities that consume us daily. Goals renewed by the United Nations through Our Common Agenda (2021), which proposes a shift from globalization to multilateralism and from cooperation to solidarity.
Within this problematic framework, the call therefore aims to initiate a discussion in the field of Service Learning to identify pedagogical and policy choices aimed at reducing social inequalities and investing knowledge for the benefit of the community. The call intends to welcome reflections, proposals and co-designed experiences that are the result of fruitful collaborations between formal, non-formal and informal contexts and between different knowledge and expertise. Proposals, projects, experiences and good practices are invited to be discussed in panel, aiming to:
– promote or improve fairness and inclusion in educational processes,
– successful service learning. experiences to counter school and social marginalization and educational poverty
– cutting-edge educational designs with learning environments built with a networked approach to knowledge and based on forms of collaboration and cooperation that stimulate the discovery of knowledge.
– developing inter-professional collaboration, mentoring, and networking to collaboratively intervene on the criticalities of the education system and the needs dictated by the spread of educational poverty,
– intervene on the current weakening of the values of democracy, the increase in verbal and physical violence, and the safeguarding of talents.