Conference Agenda

The aim of the project was to examine the process of preparing children for citizenship and self-governance in primary school (ages 6–9). As a result of the conducted research, an original educational programme was developed to support the propaedeutics of self-governance among children aged 6–9 in a community primary school. The main research problem addressed in the study was formulated as follows: How do early school-age children experience and make sense of the process of developing citizenship and self-governance within the everyday practices, relationships and culture of the school environment? This question also encompassed the identification of factors that children perceived as enabling or constraining self-governance at this educational stage.

Previous research in the field of educational sciences addressing self-governance in educational institutions has focused primarily on older children and adolescents, as well as on the organisational structures and formal functions of student councils. This gap is particularly visible also in the European context. In contrast, this study concentrated on younger children and on self-governance as an everyday, lived experience within school life.

The research was situated within a broader European and international context related to childhood studies, particularly drawing on Harry Shier and Laura Lundy’s work on children’s participation. This perspective highlights that many countries continue to struggle with the effective implementation of Art. 12 of the CRC, which guarantees children the right to express their views and to participate in matters affecting them.

The study responded to a noticeable gap in existing research, as there remains a lack of in-depth analyses of children’s participation processes in relation to their psychomoral development. In particular, little attention has been paid to the early primary education stage (grades 1–3) and to the ways in which everyday school practices, peer relations and adult–child interactions shape the development of self-governance from the children’s perspective.

The research was conducted using a participatory approach, which involved students as active contributors throughout the research process, including the formulation of research questions, data generation and the interpretation of findings. This approach made it possible to explore areas that have so far been insufficiently examined in scientific reflection, especially from the perspective of children themselves. Such an approach is crucial for understanding self-governance not merely as an institutional arrangement, but as a practice of co-decision embedded in everyday school life.

Due to the participatory character of the study and its implementation in a small community school, the findings were enriched by local and contextual factors that are often overlooked in quantitative studies and pedagogical experiments. While the study was conducted in a specific community school, similar school environments can be found across Europe and often function as laboratories for innovative approaches to participation and citizenship education.

An important component of the research involved a systematic inquiry into my own educational practice. This self-study was carried out with continuous reflection on my intentions, strategies and behaviours as an educator. The research also assumed that gaining insight into children’s worlds requires joint meaning-making processes, supported by a range of research tools that enable children to express their experiences not only verbally, but also through non-verbal and creative forms of communication, in line with Alison Clark’s Mosaic Approach. The trust established with children and parents over time allowed access to research areas that would be difficult for an external researcher to reach. A sense of security and community, developed within the school environment, constituted a key ethical condition for both the research process and the meaningful participation of children. The findings underline that effective social participation in early primary education depends on educational environments and adult practices grounded in mutual acceptance and respect for children’s agency.

Contemporary Education for Democracy (EfD) initiatives operate within a complex knowledge environment shaped by democratic erosion, information disorder, policy urgency, and increasing reliance on standardised indicators and comparative evidence. While citizenship education is widely recognised as essential for sustaining democratic cultures, the conditions under which knowledge about democratic education is produced, legitimised, and acted upon are increasingly contested. In particular, pressures to demonstrate impact at scale risk privileging metric-based forms of knowing that sit uneasily with the relational, contextual, and value-laden nature of democratic learning.

This paper examines how educational knowledge for democratic practice is generated and mobilised under these conditions, drawing on findings from the Horizon Europe–funded DEMOCRAT project (2023–2026). The project implemented 42 Living Lab–based local pilot projects across six European countries, spanning primary, post-primary, higher education, teacher education, and community-linked settings. Living Labs functioned as participatory research environments in which teachers, learners, researchers, and community actors co-designed and enacted EfD interventions, generating practice-based knowledge alongside research outputs.

Building on this empirical base, the paper addresses the following research question: How can knowledge about Education for Democracy be scaled and acted upon in policy and practice without reducing democratic education to performative indicators or decontextualised evidence? To address this question, the paper draws conceptually on the ScaleDem analytical framework, which conceptualises scaling as a multidimensional and relational process encompassing scaling deep, out, in, and high. This framework is used not as a prescriptive model, but as an interpretive lens for examining how different forms of knowledge travel across research, practice, and policy contexts.

A central focus of the paper is the project’s development and use of an illustrative, non-normative scaling profile designed to support reflective judgement rather than measurement, benchmarking, or comparison. This profile was explicitly framed as a sense-making tool, drawing on qualitative evidence, practitioner reflection, and contextual knowledge to support discussion about institutional embedding, cultural depth, internal learning, and reach. In doing so, it foregrounds professional judgement and situated interpretation as legitimate forms of evidence alongside more formal research outputs.

By analysing how this approach was received and used by practitioners and policy-adjacent actors, the paper contributes to wider debates about the authority, use, and limits of education research in conditions of poly-crisis. It argues that safeguarding the democratic purposes of citizenship education requires not only innovative pedagogies, but also careful attention to how knowledge is authorised and acted upon. In this sense, scaling Education for Democracy is presented as an epistemic and ethical challenge, rather than a purely technical one, with implications for how education research engages with policy while maintaining academic integrity and public trust.

One of the challenges associated with research projects in the fields of education and society is that, once they are completed, there is no guarantee that their contributions will be put into practice and have sustainability (Hargreaves, 2002). This limitation is due, among other reasons, to the fact that the “cost” of this sustainability is not usually part of the project. The socio-economic aspects of a project must not only indicate the immediate costs requirements for starting, but also the capacity for providing a lasting impact beyond initial funding. Hence the importance of understanding what it means to define the sustainability of a project or innovation and developing a methodology that allows its cost to be assessed (Müller, at al. 2006). Cost is understood not only in economic terms, but also in terms of training, emotional and support resources, dissemination activities and relational underpinnings.
These considerations regarding the importance of conducting a socio-economic evaluation are raised within the framework of the European project Critical ChangeLab (CCLAB), a Horizon Europe initiative that aims to build a more resilient European democracy through the implementation of a series of experimental laboratories in which young people engage in diverse artistic and creative exercises. The purpose of these labs is to foster critical consciousness and promote a hands-on approach to everyday democracy within participants’ immediate contexts. To this date, the CCLABs have engaged around 1900 students and 270 educators across 11 European countries. Moreover there have been collaborations with 40 formal and 36 non-formal education institutions, as well as 63 external partners, including NGOs and creative and artistic associations. The Critical ChangeLab methodology engages youth in identifying, analyzing, and addressing social tensions that affect democratic life. Through five phases —grounding, co-constructing knowledge, envisioning, putting into practice, and reflecting together—it fosters critical literacies, collective inquiry, and creative action toward equitable and sustainable futures through participatory, context-sensitive, and reflective democratic education practices.
Throughout its lifespan, the Critical ChangeLab has engaged in a comprehensive research process encompassing multiple implementation cycles. It began by examining the contemporary state of democracy within educational institutions through a self-assessment tool while simultaneously foregrounding young people’s perspectives on everyday democratic practice. (Jokić et al., 2024a; 2024b). Building upon this diagnostic foundation, the project designed and co-created, in direct partnership with young people and key stakeholders, an adaptable model of democratic pedagogy applicable to both formal and non-formal learning environments (Durall et al., 2024). This process unfolded across four Participatory Action Research (PAR) cycles, during which a rigorous evaluation phase was implemented in parallel, generating concrete, evidence-based recommendations for educational policies and practice.
In this context, a socioeconomic evaluation can offer valuable insights into the broadly understood costs and implications associated with implementing and innovating PAR initiatives, such as the Critical ChangeLab. The analytical framework adopted in this document is rooted in the field of the social and solidarity economy. Consequently, it relies on qualitative methods, prioritizing the assessment of participation and levels of commitment to the process over the financial costs of technological or artistic materials. Furthermore, the wide variation in economic conditions across contexts demands more complex adaptive efforts—not only in material provisions but also in relational infrastructures—to sustain such initiatives, an issue this paper seeks to shed light on.

Contemporary citizenship education faces a persistent challenge across educational systems: while schools frequently rely on rules, sanctions, and disciplinary measures to manage student behaviour, far fewer offer structured, preventive pedagogical models that actively cultivate democratic dispositions before conflict or misconduct emerges. This paper introduces the Level Up Pyramid (LUP), a values-based pedagogical framework designed to address this gap by foregrounding democratic participation, ethical development, and collective responsibility as core components of everyday classroom life.

The LUP framework is theoretically grounded in Self-Determination Theory, humanistic pedagogy, and research on classroom climate and student agency. Drawing on these perspectives, LUP conceptualises citizenship education not as an abstract curricular objective, but as a lived, developmental process embedded in daily school practices. The model is organised as a four-tier progression, moving from personal responsibility and self-regulation, to cooperation and fairness, and ultimately to active citizenship and democratic engagement within the school community.

The study reports on the pilot implementation of LUP in a small lower-secondary school in Greece (N = 27 students, aged 12–15). The research adopted a qualitative case-study design aimed at exploring how values-based recognition and participatory practices shape students’ understanding of citizenship in practice. Data were generated through systematic classroom observations, student reflective journals, formative feedback cycles, and the use of individual student portfolios documenting ethical choices, cooperation, and responsibility over time.

In addition, the implementation included targeted micro-interventions designed to activate student agency. One illustrative example involved a flipped-classroom activity in which a student assumed the role of facilitator, guiding peers through learning tasks using structured questioning rather than direct instruction. This intervention proved particularly significant for students who typically demonstrate low academic confidence, as it increased engagement, fostered mutual respect, and modelled non-competitive leadership. Such moments were subsequently discussed collectively and linked to value-based recognition within the LUP framework, reinforcing the distinction between academic performance and ethical contribution.

Preliminary findings indicate that students participating in the LUP framework developed heightened levels of empathy, self-regulation, fairness, and collective responsibility. Students demonstrated an increased capacity to reflect on their actions, to justify decisions in ethical terms, and to recognise citizenship as a shared responsibility rather than an externally imposed rule system. Importantly, classroom interactions shifted from competitive and compliance-oriented dynamics toward more dialogic and democratic forms of participation.

To further examine the transferability of the model beyond the classroom, a forthcoming experiential project has been designed in which students engage with ethical consumption and media literacy in real-world contexts. This extension aims to explore how LUP supports the development of responsible citizenship in situations requiring value-based decision-making beyond the school environment.

The paper argues that LUP contributes to contemporary debates in citizenship education by offering a preventive, structured, and adaptable framework that integrates personal development with democratic participation. By shifting the focus from sanction-driven discipline to the systematic recognition of values-based behaviour, LUP presents a scalable model that can be adapted across diverse educational and cultural contexts. In doing so, it responds to European and international calls for citizenship education that fosters agency, social cohesion, and democratic culture within schools.