Abstract:

Contemporary pedagogical reflection is undergoing a profound redefinition that places at the center of academic debate the need to rethink the university community in light of the holistic principles of well-being and resilience. Recent studies on tertiary education describe how well-being represents a structural condition for meaningful learning and the construction of mature professional and civic identities. From this perspective, the comparison between traditional teaching models and innovative approaches highlights how experiential, collaborative, and multisensory methodologies foster social responsibility, cooperation, and ethical growth in learners. Within this framework, the idea of “a happy university” is rooted in a systemic vision of education: people, processes, places, and values are considered constitutive elements of educational quality, while the university is conceived as a generative affordance of meaningful relationships, a sense of belonging, and active participation. This paper aims to analyse the transformative potential of motor–expressive laboratories structured on the theoretical frameworks of embodiment, non-linear pedagogy and the ecological–dynamical approach within the context of university education. The methodological design involves the implementation of intentionally designed spatio-temporal devices, qualitative observation of learning processes, narrative feedback, and guided reflective moments with the students involved. Preliminary findings outline a theoretical–methodological framework that contributes to the expansion of models of university education, proposing wellbeing as an epistemic and operational prerequisite for the design of educational contexts capable of supporting individual and community “flourishing”, understood as the development of personal, professional and relational potential. Taken together, these elements provide initial qualitative evidence to support a systematic reflection on university educational dispositifs, opening up further empirical investigations aimed at exploring the relationship between embodied learning, wellbeing and the construction of educational communities.

Keywords:

Well-being, experiential training, nonlinear pedagogy, motor-expressive activities, embodied.