Associate professor in Didactics and Special Pedagogy at the Department of Philosophy, Social, Human, and Educational Sciences at the University of Perugia.
She is a professor of Pedagogy of Diversity and Differences and Special Pedagogy in Childhood; she teaches in the Specialization Course for Support Activities at the University of Perugia. She is a contact person for the Documentation, Updating, and Experimentation Center on Childhood of the Region of Umbria and a member of the Secretariat of the National Group on Infancy and Childhood.
She has authored numerous publications and is responsible for research projects related to the issues of childhood, disability, inclusion, and educational poverty.
BEYOND EDUCATIONAL POVERTY: SUPPORTING FAMILIES IN THE “MINUTE PARTICULARS”
In recent years, the phenomenon of educational poverty has grown in Italy, affecting an increasingly large number of children of developmental age.
Educational poverty is defined by Save the Children as the deprivation of the opportunity to learn, experience, develop and allow skills, talents, and aspirations to flourish freely.
The projects put in place in Italy following the enactment of the National Fund can be traced to three broad types of proposals: interventions aimed at direct poverty reduction through an expansion of economic, cultural, and educational resources for the territory and families; others aimed at increasing compensatory resilience-promoting factors; and still others aimed at enhancing protective factors to mitigate the contrast to deprivation. The aim of this communication is to present some reflections regarding forms of parenting support that are central to being able to contain these forms of fragility. The research conducted invites educational professionals to welcome different modes in terms of both postures and actions. Indeed, it is necessary to accommodate frames that are promotive and not restorative, even when vulnerabilities are very evident. Moreover, the actions put in place, are called to be less informative and more accompanying and advisory. In the attention that needs to be paid to personal and individual dimensions, welcoming an authentically narrative perspective, it becomes increasingly important to make the most of informal moments, which allow some unprecedented and generally undervalued occasions and moments to become the true spaces of welcome and support. These new geographies can now enhance the many opportunities, not necessarily formal, that support a true “pedagogy of the doorstep”.