Abstract:

The article intends to make a contribution on the theme of education for democratic citizenship by presenting some of the constitutive and implementing features of the training model proposed within the S.P.A.C.E. project, selected by "Con i Bambini" in the framework of the "Fund for the fight against juvenile educational poverty" and promoted by WeWorld Onlus.

The project was set up to improve the social and educational conditions of adolescent commuter students who live in isolated areas of Italy at high risk of school drop-out and educational poverty. In Italy there are more than 11 million commuter students who commute daily from their municipality to school: the distance travelled, the time of the journey and the perception of their condition can generate discomfort and stress and in some contexts be key elements in triggering school drop-out processes. In fact, there is an increasing amount of research investigating the effects of a close interrelation between school drop-out and disconnection with the extracurricular reality in its various social aspects (Batini & Bartolucci, 2016). Educationally equipping the places experienced by commuter students and strengthening and involving the educating community are the main tools of S.P.A.C.E. to counter school drop-out.

In the past months of pandemic and physical isolation, the project has tried to relaunch innovative tools, also using the digital medium, to create virtual and alternative squares that would allow the students to find moments of meaningful sociality in an educational network connecting school and territory. It is precisely on the recovery of a strong sense of territorial belonging that the training and intervention model outlined in this article - addressed to socio-educational operators in the various territories concerned and implemented by the research team of Embodied Pedagogy of the University of Milan-Bicocca, a partner in the project - aims to move, outlining bodily-perceptual methods to question personal experience, create belonging and build a sense of aggregation to combat phenomena of educational poverty. The proposed intervention device is inscribed in the theoretical and practical framework of the Embodied Pedagogy (Gamelli, 2011), which aims to promote education as the bringing into play of thought-body-emotion and therefore as a contextualised and shared global experience, where one can develop one's aptitudes, appreciate diversity and train oneself to play an active role in community participatory life. Auto-mythobiographical narration, experiential cartography and theatrical improvisation are different declinations of Embodied Pedagogy that in the Project S.P.A.C.E. become training proposals addressed to educators who work with teenagers. They offer new ways to explore and re-imagine crossed and inhabited territories, in the direction of an embodied, living, democratic citizenship.

Keywords:

Embodied Pedagogy, Social Engagement, Adolescent Commuter Students.