Listening to children and mental health. Educating adults in clinical-pedagogical skills

This contribution aims to show the close connection between listening attentively, in-depth and respectfully to children and individual and collective psychic health. It also suggests that adults who work with children have to be trained in this type of listening, which cannot be considered natural or taken for granted (Riva, 2015, Rossi, Travaglini, 2008). Those responsible for education, at their various levels of social and institutional responsibility, should take the task of this training as their guideline. The approach used is that of clinical pedagogy, which combines and interweaves knowledge of education with that of psychoanalysis and psycho-social theory. This approach uses the hermeneutic-interpretative method as an instrument of analysis and interpretation of the individual and collective educational processes (Ricoeur, 1967; Massa, 1993)