A common responsibility to contrast educational poverty

The paper aims to describe the first findings of my actual research directed to deepen the different characteristics of the term “educational poverty”, drawing a pedagogical perspective on it. Presentation gives importance to the dimensions of inquiry that explicit the characteristics of a collaborative ‘educational community’, where each member can have a strong role in activating educational opportunities for young generations. At first the dissertation gives evidence to the main concepts to describe the phenomenon, especially reconstructing strategies and activities that make possible, in Italy and Europe, to contrast ‘educational poverty’ building a common educative responsibility between adult educators (parents, teachers and social workers) and offering qualitative educational experiences. This theoretical framework includes an exploration of different dimensions of the topic, a broader definition of poverty in terms of possibilities and functioning and the pedagogical proposals, that, traditionally, have found solutions ‘from the bottom’ for poverty and social fragmentations. These concepts are reference points to generate an operative definition of ‘educational poverty’ and its multi-dimensional shape. The paper considers this operationalization and the first findings of an ‘holistic case study’ based on the educative project “Sulla buona strada” and its activities in a disadvantaged area of Genoa city (Italy). This is my actual field of study. The participants are parents, social workers, policy makers, teachers and school managers. Using in depth interviews and focus-group, the research wants to developed a situated and context-sensitive description of the term ‘educational poverty’ and the possible role of participants in contrasting it. Reinforcing the importance to really understand a topic, starting from the concrete experience of people involved into the research, the paper tries to open some questions as: what are the policies that a territorial community address to young generations? What are the characteristics of schools? Are there free time and cultural activities to reinforce the impact of schools and to support parents in their role? Is it possible to improve them, activating the whole ‘educational community’ and realize a collaboration between adults (parents, teachers, policymakers...)? Can they collaborate and open perspectives to children who come from disadvantage backgrounds? The paper aims to show how it is possible to engage the whole ‘educational community’ to organize strategies and activities to realize ‘a high educational impact territory’ and give opportunities to children and youngsters to really develop their personhood, despite difficult starting points.