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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: the adult construction of childhood through education and politics and the way children in flesh and bone participate in the everyday life of their families and communities, contributing to defining what a child can do and be in a certain society. The first section of the paper explores the mentioned twofold movement from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, preparing the foundations for the development of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989. The UNCRC led to a shift in the way childhood is conceived whose roots lie in recognizing what children in flesh and bone had “quietly” been doing and being for ages, so in this sense it is a culmination point. The paper then deepens the analysis of the UNCRC, specifically focusing on how the participation rights offer a particular perspective on democracy, understood as a way of life that needs to be learnt. The paper ends with a reflection on the future of democracy as can be seen in the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which is based on the UNCRC itself.

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<p>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 work carried out by educators. Independently of the specific educational context, these professionals are called on to narrate their work, especially in written form, both as an internal record, and to externally communicate the meaning of their actions in the area where the service is based and to other stakeholders. The theory explored by the current paper is that the act of writing up their own educational work is also a valuable means of enhancing educators’ professional development.</p>

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 in local communities and enhancing “children’s lived experiences of local issues”. Herein, we emphasize both the political and the pedagogical value of this perspective, arguing that ESD bears the potential to overcome “universal vs. individual” tensions and dichotomies. Our line of reasoning is that the “capabilities approach” (CA), although it did not originally focus on children, can offer a useful theoretical framework in support of ESD, thanks to its multidimensional nature and focus on the concrete agency of individuals. Accordingly, we see the CA as playing a key role in bridging the gap between universal prescriptions, which disregard the specificity of the actors involved, as well as the peculiar nature of their social environment and its context-specific needs or constraints. We supplement this theoretical discussion by presenting “The Flying Carpet”, an ongoing community-based education project that has elicited the active involvement of over one hundred 11–13 year old students in an urban regeneration project in a municipal district of Milan.

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 the analysis of the prevailing emotions of Italian parents during the first lockdown, investigating possible associations with personal perceptions of well-being and readiness to cope with the emergency situation. 319 parents (93% mothers) answered to a semi-structured computer assisted web interview (CAWI; Kurniawan, 2018). The answers showed that parents went through intense emotions, both negative, like worry and anxiety (39.2% named only negative emotions and 32% negative emotions as prevalent) and positive emotional, like hope, serenity and joy (7.8% indicated only positive emotions and 9.5% positive emotions as prevalent). Parents’ perceived positive emotions have proved to be important resources linked to a higher level of personal well-being and the perception of being adequately equipped to deal with an emergency. Emotion management emerged as a key area affecting parents’ way of relating with their children during the strict lockdown: parents declared their need to be supported in building a positive emotional relationship with their children in a stressing situation, highlighting a difficulty in cope with and communicate their own emotionality.