Conference Agenda

In contemporary European higher education, student disengagement and declining attendance in traditional lecture-based courses have become persistent challenges. Enrolment in a course does not necessarily translate into active participation in classroom, particularly when students perceive limited relevance or engagement in the learning process (Freeman et al., 2014). This phenomenon is closely related to the predominance of teacher-centred methodologies, in which students often assume a passive role (Bonwell & Eison, 1991). In response to these limitations, active learning approaches have been increasingly promoted as effective strategies to foster motivation, participation, and meaningful learning (Prince, 2004), aligning with European educational priorities that emphasise competence-based learning, intercultural education, and civic engagement.

Within this pedagogical shift, board games emerge as innovative educational tools capable of promoting key competences such as collaboration, inclusion, negotiation, creativity, and emotional regulation (Kuo et al., 2023; Zagal et al., 2006). However, not all board games are inherently pedagogical. In higher education contexts, their educational potential depends on intentional adaptation and integration into instructional design, particularly when collaborative dynamics are prioritised (Johnson & Johnson, 2009). From this perspective, board games can contribute not only to cognitive learning but also to the development of social and intercultural competences, which are central to European frameworks for lifelong learning and democratic citizenship.

The theoretical foundations of this study are also informed by leisure pedagogy, which conceptualises leisure as a meaningful experiential space that allows individuals to transcend routine and engage in personally and socially significant activities (Stebbins, 2008). Participation in leisure activities has been associated with enhanced well-being and quality of life (Kleiber, et al., 2011; Maebara & Yamada, 2025). Nevertheless, not all leisure activities possess pedagogical value. From an educational perspective, the selected tools must be deliberately chosen to address specific needs, gaps, and areas for improvement among learners (Cès et al., 2024; Gee, 2003; Mauri-Medrano et al., 2024). This highlights the importance of intentional pedagogical design in game-based learning experiences.

In addition, empirical research has further demonstrated the educational potential of board games in learning contexts. Findings from the Technological Institute for Child and Leisure Products (AIJU, 2019) indicate that the increasing presence of digital devices in classrooms reduces the time devoted to play-based activities and may constrain opportunities for meaningful learning. At the same time, learners show a clear preference for traditional board games, particularly those adaptable to educational settings and conducive to collaborative interaction with peers and adults. These results reinforce the relevance of analogue, cooperative games as pedagogical resources in formal education.

Game-based learning has been widely examined, particularly in childhood education (Zosh et al., 2018), but its potential in higher education remains comparatively underexplored. Games can be conceptualised as social laboratories in which participants develop attitudes, acquire knowledge, internalise rules, and practise real-life situations within safe and structured environments (Klabbers, 2018). Empirical evidence suggests that games constitute effective pedagogical tools across different age groups and can be implemented in diverse educational contexts, including formal and non-formal learning environments (Wouters et al., 2017; Whitton, 2018). This perspective resonates with European educational policies that advocate for the integration of formal, non-formal, and informal learning to promote social inclusion and intercultural dialogue.

Therefore, the present study analyses the pedagogical potential of collaborative board games as innovative tools for enhancing student engagement, intercultural learning, and the development of social and emotional competences in higher education. By combining creative pedagogy, leisure pedagogy, and game-based learning, the research seeks to contribute to current debates on educational innovation and to provide evidence-based insights into the role of collaborative games in transforming university teaching practices within the European educational landscape.

The innovative Erasmus+ project EXCALIBUR (Expanding Content and Language Integrated Learning through Building a Sustainable Future in Realtime, 2022–2025) enabled upper secondary learners from six European countries to collaboratively explore issues of sustainability and develop solutions for safeguarding our planet. The participants used virtual 3D game-world environments as online collaboration platforms—tools typically associated with informal leisure contexts—which facilitated the transfer of informal learning elements such as immersion, flow, and affinity spaces into formal educational settings. In parallel, they developed their intercultural communication and language skills in English, German, and other foreign languages functioning as lingua francas within a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL / CLIL LOTE; Languages Other Than English) framework. While CLIL (LOTE) is usually implemented only in selected schools, the EXCALIBUR project demonstrated how it can also be successfully adopted in mainstream educational settings.

Restorative Justice Education (RJE) was first implemented in Canadian schools in the 1990s, as a way to enhance relationships, nurture theskills and approaches needed for engaged citizens, and respond to harm and conflict in meaningful ways (Evans & Vaandering, 2022; Reimer& Parker-Shandal, 2023). RJE principles and practices continue to be implemented in educational contexts within Canada and around theworld. There is growing momentum as evidenced by, among other metrics, increased post-secondary program development, professionallearning opportunities, and school-wide or classroom stories of practice (Darling-Hammond, et al., 2020; Foomani & Reimer, 2025). Researchcontinues to reveal that though RJE shows promise for developing relational school culture and addressing serious harm when it occurs, RJEcan also be co-opted by school systems and people uninterested in relational ways of being (Gregory & Evans, 2020; Reimer, 2019). A keyfinding from studies of RJE in teacher education (Eizadirad & Parker-Shandal, 2025; Hollweck et al., 2019; Foomani & Reimer, 2025,Vaandering, 2014) is that the most impactful way to teach RJE is in courses grounded in restorative philosophy and through RJE processes, sothat teachers experience the relational and transformative potential of RJE.

One core RJE process is pedagogical circle time. Restorative circles involve the physical re-arrangement of spaces so that participants aresitting or standing in circle, where everyone is visible, without physical barriers and on an equal level, with no obvious hierarchies. Restorativecircles require an intentional re-ordering of the physical space into one where each person is invited to participate fully, spaces “designed topromote connection, understanding and dialogue in a group” (Boyes-Watson & Pranis, 2014, p. 23). Through circle process, students – whetherchild or adult, “engage with the content and skills of any curriculum area, with one another, and with their own emotions and perspectives”(Reimer & Parker-Shandal, 2023, p. 2).

This paper presents on Relational, Restorative Book Clubs (RRBC), a professional learning practice, grounded in restorative philosophy, that isrelational and collaborative by design. RRBCs were implemented by the author in 2022 in Australia and in 2026 in Canada. RRBCs bringtogether educators interested in restorative approaches in education (Evans & Vaandering, 2022) to learn from and with one another, whilemeeting physically in person in circle. This paper reports on the Canadian RRBC, held once a week for 4 weeks, where educators met todiscuss an RJE book, relating their own experiences and practices to the book content (Foomani & Reimer, 2024).

Context matters. This study took place in Sydney, Nova Scotia, which is located on Cape Breton Island. Sydney is home to 30,000 people withonly 100,000 on the whole island. The island is steeped in relationship – within and between the communities of the Mi’kmaw people, Acadians,Gaelic, English and those considered more as newcomers. Yet despite the strong relational fabric of the island, Professional Learning forteachers is mandated from the mainland with little regional input. Educators are provided with five Professional Learning days per year insessions organized by the provincial body. RRBCs attempt to counter these external and often generic sessions and instead build on therelational foundation of Cape Breton Island to offer a free, informal collaborative learning circle experience informed by restorative pedagogy.The research study sought to understand the impact of this experience on educator knowledge, competence and confidence.

Contemporary early childhood classrooms are spaces of radical heterogeneity, vastly exceeding traditional pedagogical frameworks. These perspectives, anchored in often essentialist psychological, developmental, and cultural assumptions, tend to homogenize under the figure of a "universal childhood"—a construction that, as noted by Malone et al.(2020), frequently embodies a cultural past that is "white, middle class, male, heterosexual," leaving no room for diversities of race, class, and gender. In response, a critical re-examination of the philosophical, discursive, and, crucially, material aspects that weave together complex childhood life is urgently needed. The challenge is not merely to include diversity, but to design methodologies capable of responding to the multiple ways in which children actually learn, grow, and play in their everyday contexts.

This study is situated within a post-qualitative paradigm and was conducted between 2023 and 2025 in a classroom (5-year-olds) at a public school in Barcelona with significant cultural diversity. Its central objective was to investigate: how can the artistic practice of Object Theatre mobilize the life of the early childhood classroom and perform (or materialize) new ways of inhabiting and relating within and to it?

In this study, Object Theatre is understood beyond its traditional or merely instrumental definition. Following playwrights and researchers such as Manuela Infante (2019) and Shaday Larios (2016), I conceive of it as a philosophical and relational practice. Its power lies not in teaching about objects or using them as mere metaphors, but in activating them as catalysts for encounter. As Larios (2016) notes, an object's capacity for agency is also its potency—that is, its ability to provoke socio-cultural action, transforming the classroom, in this case, into an observatory of socio-material culture.

Over the course of eight sessions, children, educators, objects, classroom materials, and the space itself entered into dialogue through creation. This design represented an epistemological shift: it did not start from predefined learning objectives; instead, it sought to let the encounter with the material generate its own questions and directions, assuming the classroom as a socio-material assemblage where agency is distributed among human and non-human actors (Bennett, 2010).

The research shows that Object Theatre acts as a performative force, disrupting the conventional sense of the classroom. By transforming space, time, and materiality into a shared field of experimentation, the lived co-creation of the educational environment becomes possible. This process enables:

Making experiential plurality visible and valued: Unique and dominant narratives blur, giving way to a diversity of expressions, gestures, and uses of objects that make the multiple realities of childhood tangible.

Deepening relational and emergent learning: The focus shifts from predefined individual learning towards the participation of bodies, objects, and space. Affective learning, tacit communication, and collective, situated ways of inhabiting the classroom become evident.

Redistributing agency: It is demonstrated how the everyday materiality of the classroom can become a companion with initiative, reconfiguring hierarchies, attentions, and dynamics within the classroom.

In summary, this study proposes a reconceptualization of the classroom as a space for performative encounter. Its main contribution is to offer a concrete methodological framework for operationalizing in practice complex theoretical currents such as new materialisms in education and critical pedagogy. Thus, Object Theatre reveals itself as both an epistemological and ethical tool, allowing education not only to speak of diversity but to be, literally, performed by it.