The ethical and community challenges that the current society poses to new generations are proving to be increasingly complex. Therefore, the role of schools in identifying effective proposals aimed at fostering the harmonious growth of students as individuals and as global citizens has become crucial. In line with this need, an educative and research project that focused on friendship as an ethical virtue was set up, aimed at promoting ethics for citizenship at a primary school. The project was conducted according (...) to the educative research approach, offering children good educational experiences and evaluating their effectiveness. The article, after a presentation of the project and its theoretical principles, discusses the results of the qualitative analysis of the data that emerged from two particular activities implemented. The results are discussed in light of the connections between ethics education for citizenship and Social and Emotional Learning, highlighting the implications for educational and teaching practice. (shrink)

The paper investigates, first of all, the epistemological status of one of the most elusive, yet vital, genres of literature, that aimed at childhood and adolescence. The “for” or “of” with which reference is made to the literature also known as ” youth” risks, in fact, to preserve the status quo of a discipline that has struggled (and still struggles) to find its own validity and legitimacy, discounted over time with an “invisibility” or a derubrication to derivative literature, secondary, weak (...) in its artistic and aesthetic canons. On the contrary, the aim here is to confirm, as witnessed by the most recent scientific studies, the total autonomy of literature for childhood and adolescence which, relying on at least two codes, iconic and verbal, boasts considerable expressive freedom, lending itself also as a faithful interpreter of post-modernity. One theorises, therefore, the possibility of speaking of a literature ‘from’ childhood and ‘from’ adolescence, underlining the need to consider the specification in the same way as a geographical and cultural location. Since we are dealing with works written and illustrated by individuals who are not boys or girls by birth (since the latter are not yet masters of iconographic writing), the most relevant will be those that faithfully draw on the physical and metaphysical region of childhood, restoring its complexity and expression, as a direct emanation of that other culture, which still and always exists and resists in us. (shrink)

Educational practices are affected by the dominant paradigm in the belonging context, which influences the representation of the human being, the idea and the purposes of education. Consequently, as a connecting science between the human sciences, pedagogy is called upon to be a critical instance. This article examines the issue of educational poverty — and of possible actions to prevent and combat it — in light of the cultural frameworks in which it is conceived. The responses to variations of the (...) phenomenon could benefit from contaminations or from the openness to different epistemological and cultural paradigms, capable of enriching educators’ professionalism and nourishing their motivation. In order to deal with today’s Western society typical forms of poverty, it is proposed to draw from both the emerging systemic holistic paradigm and the epistemology of complexity, as well as from proto-holistic practices and guiding principles deriving from neurosciences. The reader is supported in reflecting on the foundations of an integrating education which, taking advantage of sciences from East to West, favours the flourishing and expression of human multidimensionality. (shrink)

The relevance of the problem under study is due to the need to improve the practical skills and competencies of students in the course of training in order to prepare them for competition with other job seekers in employment. In this regard, this article is aimed at identifying the expediency of students’ participation in competitive selections and grants as a factor that creates conditions for effective practice-oriented learning. The leading method for the study of this problem is a pedagogical experiment, (...) which allows us to comprehensively consider the relationship between students’ participation in competitions and their further self-realization and development as young professionals. The article presents the results of monitoring the behavior of students who received an offer to participate in the university-wide competitive selection of student projects, implemented as part of the Program for Supporting Applied Research and Development of Students and Postgraduates of Petrozavodsk State University. The materials of the article can be useful for teaching staff in building a scheme for teaching students and services involved in the recruitment of personnel for large and medium-sized companies that require young professionals to have practical work skills, teamwork skills and creativity. (shrink)

Starting from a phenomenological reflection, the contribution deals with the theme of risk as an aspect inseparable from human nature, as uncertainty and precariousness are constitutive parts of the existence itself. Reflecting on the concept of beneficial risk and the role that education, adults and the whole society should have with regard to risk, it is highlighted how, on the contrary, overprotection generates negative effects in the long run. This conviction is supported by researches involving overprotective parents’ children, or the (...) implications of zero risk in playgrounds. The natural task of education at different levels, micro- meso- eso- and macro-system, consists in equipping boys and girls in order to become acquainted with risk, providing children with appropriate strengths and means, making their lives not as safe as possible, but as safe as necessary. (shrink)

Vignette research is a phenomenological approach that attempts to access the experiential basis of knowledge by examining lifeworlds in educational or social contexts, going ‘to the things themselves’ (Husserl). The vignette methodology enables researchers to capture their own experiences with the experiences of others as they occur in the field by adopting a stance of ‘co-experiential experience’. The vignette aims to provide a depiction of pedagogical events as close as possible to lived experience. The focus is on experiential circumstances that (...) affect researchers in the field. A vignette, as a linguistically condensed text, presents a short, concise narrative in which something surprising, special, or peculiar emerges. The final vignette is subjected to phenomenological analysis, a process known as ‘vignette reading’, wherein processes of categorisation or operationalisation are set aside, and the vignette is approached by the reader without drawing conclusions from the experience. (shrink)