Vittoria Perrone Compagni, Deputy Vice Chancellor of Unifi, in charge of educational innovation

Ersilia Menesini, Director of FORLILPSI Unifi Department

Davide Parmigiani, ATEE President

Giovanni Biondi, INDIRE President

Maria Ranieri, Chair of the Conference

Dr Renee Hobbs

“Exploring controversial issues in the classroom”

Educators are themselves citizens who express and share political views as part of their personal identity. They may care deeply about issues including climate change, immigration/migration, growing economic inequality, health and wellness, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination, or other topics of concern. But in the classroom, some educators do not feel confident or comfortable exploring controversial issues with students, while others make clear their particular positions on political issues without necessarily reflecting on the inequality in power relationships that may silence their students. The practice of critical media analysis and reflection help teachers navigate both the opportunities and the challenges of exploring contemporary controversies in the classroom. Teachers benefit greatly from safe and structured opportunities to talk about the ethical and moral implications of their decisions to address or ignore controversial issues in the classroom.

Dr Maria Chiara Pettenati

“Teachers Training in Anthropocene between sustainability and equity, “the human epoch”

Education, together with digital revolution, is considered one of the six transformative challenges for a sustainable future, according to an authoritative study published in 2019 in Nature Sustainabilty. If the age we live in, is now defined as Anthropocene because of the extreme transformations that humanity has produced on planet Earth, what does make sense to ask (and give) to teacher training to direct the future towards a Safe and Fair Operating Space?
Reflections after monitoring the three-years national CPD experience in Italy.

Dr Shakuntala Banaji

“Critical media education and social justice in a time of technologised misinformation”

In much academic and policy literature on politics, participation, and media, young people across the world are enjoined to engage in activities thought good for them in order to qualify for the moral label ‘good citizens’. However, as the spread of hate propaganda around Muslims and migrants and the domestication of new technologies is implicated in events such as discriminatory misinformation, murderous mobs, mass shootings or movements against climate change and gender violence, questions abound about the ways in which media might affect teachers’ ability to relate to, learn from and build young people’s social media imaginaries with regard to justice. In this presentation, I will outline the visual research methods which teachers and educators can draw on in building a plausible case about the role of contemporary media texts in the social justice politics of different cultural contexts. With a particular commentary on the rise of fascism in India, I will explore the methodological challenges of ‘intertextuality’ for social justice oriented civic learning.

Davide Parmigiani, ATEE President

Maria Ranieri, Chair of the Conference