Participatory methods for citizenship education: interdisciplinary perspectives. Introduction

Abstract

Educational processes are complex pathways through which individuals build knowledge, skills, values and behaviour. These processes do not take place only in the moments dedicated to formal education in schools. They also include informal and non-formal learning occurring in different life situations, which take place in the territories where each individual’s life unfolds. Territory plays a decisive role in educational processes as it provides a real and concrete context for learning, useful for reducing educational poverty and promoting the rights of the child and youth. Thus conceived, territory offers different opportunities for meaningful and contextualised learning, playing a strategic role in shaping educating communities, characterised by the action of different territorial actors (students, school, local authorities, stakeholders, etc.). These territorial actors interact in order to develop a collaborative, participative and educational process. For this reason, “territorial Education sets out to unite the objectives of the various forms of education (citizenship, inter-culture, sustainable development...) in a territorial dimension, rethinking and redefining them on the basis of the diversities of the places and the complexity of the geographical spaces” (Dematteis and Giorda, 2013, p. 18).