Elisabetta Biffi

• Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca

Approaches to human and children’s right are in many European countries politically interlinked with human rights and democracy. Human rights are considered as an essential ethical tool to secure sustainable democracies through enhancing cultures where people protect the rights of others. However, the relationship between rights and democracy in ed...

The contribution presents the results of a study on the meanings and practices of juvenile participation in decision-making processes in guardianship, using the collage approach. As made explicit in several policies, participation is crucial for the protection of minors and one of the main prevention strategies. In this framework, within broader qu...

Arts-based approaches and languages are valuable resources for the field of education, with the potential to enhance both educational work [10] and educational research [2]. In educational research specifically, Arts-Based Research Methods (ABR) [1], [3] – understood here as a range of approaches that recognize the artistic process itself as a mode...

The paper presents and discusses data from a qualitative study carried out in April and May 2020 with families under lockdown in Italy (N = 319) and Greece (N = 297). The research examined how confinement and restrictions on movement had impacted families’ everyday geographies (with a particular focus on ‘liminal’ places located between homes and p...

The paper presents and discusses data from a qualitative study carried out in April and May 2020 with families under lockdown in Italy (N = 319) and Greece (N = 297). The research examined how confinement and restrictions on movement had impacted families’ everyday geographies (with a particular focus on ‘liminal’ places located between homes and p...

The pandemic made childcare a major challenge for parents globally, both in the short and longer term. In this context, it is plausible that emotions and general distress experienced by parents have had an impact at multiple levels in their relationships with their children, potentially increasing their vulnerability. The present study focuses on t...

As stated in Article 29 of the UNCRC, the goal of education is to prepare children for a responsible life in a free society. However, recent international agendas and strategy documents (such as the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development) have emphasised the need to develop a more equal and just – more so than a freer – society, whi...

This contribution aims to explore and reflect, from a pedagogical perspective, on the home as a place of education for the children who live there, from the perspective offered by the current pandemic emergency. In early childhood, the family home is the place where children begin to become aware of themselves (Leccardi et al., 2011), and to exist...

Each year an estimated one billion children (one out of two children worldwide) suffer some form of physical, sexual or psychological violence or neglect (Hillis, Mercy, Amobi, & Kress, 2016). Being a victim of violence in childhood has lifelong impacts on education, health, and well-being. Exposure to violence can lead to poor academic performance...

This paper explores aspects of parenting during COVID-19 lockdown, analyzing the international literature and presenting a study conducted in Italy during the initial period of social isolation (March-May 2020). The pandemic has made childcare challenging for parents globally, compromising the well-being and mental health of caregivers themselves (...

The United Nations Decade on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) expanded the epistemological and methodological debate on sustainability and education. Currently, ESD encompasses a broad spectrum of socio-political issues (including global citizenship and social justice), while “place-bonding” is seen as key to fostering citizen advocacy i...

Within article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989), it states the ‘best interest of the child’ is the primary goal to every action taken related to children. It is specified that: “State Parties undertake to ensure the child such protection and care as is necessary for his or her well- being”. In these terms, the ‘well-being’...

The impact of current trends in technology, digitalization and mass media on our global culture raises questions regarding the responsibility and ethics of research decisions in contemporary social and health sciences. Embedded in the dominant paradigms, these trends subtly affect our worldviews, our valuation of the human condition, and the nature...

In early childhood education and care services, documentation is seen as an instrument for ‘giving children voice’ and for engaging children in their educational process (Formosinho and Pascal 2016; Kroll and Meier 2018; Robertson et al. 2017). At the same time, documentation plays a key role within the decision-making process in which children sho...

This paper aims at highlighting the role of arts, referring specifically to graphics, in creating participatory learning experiences for young children and as a mean for professional development of teachers, focusing in particular on the use of arts in pedagogical documentation. Graphics are viewed as a reflective practice that can generate signifi...

The present contribution offers a pedagogical reflection on the meanings of childhood and democracy through the ages, taking the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as a culmination point, a turning point and a starting point for considering these concepts. Childhood is a socio-cultural construct originating from a twofold movement...

In recent decades, art-based methods of formulating research questions, collecting data, and documenting research processes and outcomes have played an increasingly important role in educational research. The current paper calls for a review of art-based research tools, with a particular focus on digital environments. Within this framework, we pres...

Over the last decades, the representation of children, of their competencies and rights, has profoundly changed at socio-cultural and political level, as well as in academic research. In the wake of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and thanks to the contribution of the ‘new sociology of childhood’ (Qvortrup, 1987; Corsaro, 1997), childr...

This paper will present a critical reflection about using NVivo software for the analytic process in qualitative research. It was aimed to explore the interaction between medical and pedagogical knowledge in healthcare professional practice. Framed in a qualitative approach, the project was based on phenomenological-hermeneutical method and on case...

Based on a reflection on forms and meanings of the childhood protection in our contemporary era, this paper aims at proposing the analysis of some international strategies of intervention to tackle the emergency of violence against children. The report 10 years on: Global Progress and Delay in Ending Violence Against Children – the Rhetoric and the...

The Evaluation of Adult Education Staff EDUEVAL Handbook vol. 3 The EduEval - Evaluation for the Professional development of adult Education Staff is a project (n. 538743-LLP-1-2013-IT-GRUNDTVIG GMP) supported by the LifeLong Learning Programme of the European Commission. EDUEVAL Handbook is the third of three volumes, based on the results of th...

The present paper offers a reflection on the interconnections between pedagogy and psychoanalysis as interpreted in the phenomenological pedagogy of Piero Bertolini. Interest in the topic is justified by the fact that throughout his work (especially in Bertolini, 1988; 2005) this author himself repeatedly argued for the existence of such links. In...

This paper will present a methodological reflection on how some artistic techniques can became for the individuals the opportunity to think of themselves in an auto-­‐biographical way. In particular, this paper will focus on the collage. Collage is a technique based on a mixing of images, verbal text and other elements that starts with the analysis...

Il presente contributo intende riflettere sull’utilizzo di una tecnica artistica, il collage, all’interno della formazione degli insegnanti e degli educatori. Si tratta di una differente modalità di azione da parte dei formatori che è inserita nell’ambito dell’art-based research (McNiff, 2008), e dell’arts-informed research (Cole & Knowles, 2008)....

The professional development of those who work in the educational sector is a theme that is widely debated at the European level. It is related to the need to guarantee high standards of educational work and high quality educational services. This paper addresses the theme from the viewpoint of the writing practices and documenting of educational w...

Educational contexts have their own peculiar characteristics, such as that of being multi-professional contexts with a wide range of end users. Counsellors working with educational staff must take these specifics into account. In addition, counselling should be a process that, starting out from the “core issue” that led to the decision to initiate...

p class="IATED-Affiliation">This paper presents a reflection on the role of cooperative research in addressing the topic of evaluation within the field of adult education. To this end, the authors outline a specific cooperation initiative that involved academics and practitioners from the field of adult education in different European countries.The...

The current paper explores the practice of case writing in educational and pedagogical work, focusing on its use by education professionals as a research and self-reflective strategy. This analysis of the pedagogical case write-up (Riva, 2007) as a clinical research procedure (Demetrio, 2008) is theoretically informed by the hermeneutic phenomenolo...