Conference Agenda

This panel engages with the concept of Ecologies of Education to examine how educational processes are embedded in, shaped by, and responsive to complex social, cultural, and political environments. Drawing on ecological perspectives in educational theory, the panel foregrounds the interdependencies between formal and non-formal education providers, schools, families, community initiatives, and wider societal structures. Particular attention is paid to educational responses to forced migration and displacement, with a focus on the arrival of Ukrainian families in Central and Eastern Europe since 2022.

The panel builds on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, which conceptualises education as situated within nested and interacting systems, ranging from the microsystem of everyday educational interactions to broader meso-, exo-, and macro-level structures such as education governance, migration regimes, and socio-economic inequalities. This ecological perspective is complemented by research on school-family-community partnerships and educational cooperation, which conceptualise education as a shared responsibility across institutional and non-institutional actors. These approaches provide a framework for understanding education not as an isolated institutional process, but as an ecological phenomenon shaped by relational networks, contextual constraints, and power relations. The panel extends this framework by focusing on the role of non-formal education providers within educational ecologies, highlighting their particular relevance in contexts of migration, crisis, and displacement.

Empirically, the panel brings together qualitative case studies from Poland, Germany, and Hungary that examine educational initiatives responding to the forced displacement of Ukrainian children and families.

The contribution from Poland analyses a refugee-led “Invisible School” established by displaced Ukrainian teachers and attended by refugee children, which operated for an extended period outside the formal Polish education system. Conceptualised as a node within a local educational ecology, the case highlights how dense relationships between teachers, families, students, and community actors sustain educational provision in the absence of institutional recognition. The study shows how refugee educators and parents co-construct alternative educational pathways that respond to immediate needs while continuously negotiating legitimacy, resources, and relations with host-society institutions.

The German contribution focuses on schools working with students affected by forced migration, with particular attention to parental engagement under conditions of socio-economic inequality and displacement. Drawing on interviews with teachers from the Erasmus project Act4Mig, the paper identifies professional uncertainties, structural barriers, and institutional blind spots in school-family cooperation, especially in relation to migration- and poverty-sensitive parental work. It demonstrates how educational success and inclusion are shaped within educational ecologies characterised by unequal access to resources, differentiated parental capital, and limited institutional support for intercultural cooperation.

The Hungarian contribution examines non-formal education initiatives and civil solidarity mobilisations operating under an illiberal political context and rigid integration policies. Based on interviews with civil and grassroots actors, the study analyses how non-state educational initiatives navigate moral and political dilemmas, develop alternative visions of educational inclusion, and position themselves in relation to state policies. The findings show how non-formal education spaces function simultaneously as sites of care, resilience, and everyday resistance, shaping the mesosystem of refugee education while responding to the immediate needs of displaced families.

Taken together, the panel contributions demonstrate that educational responses to forced migration cannot be adequately understood through national policies or formal institutional arrangements alone. Instead, they emerge within dynamic educational ecologies shaped by local actors, informal practices, historical traditions, and unequal power relations between institutions and communities. By combining ecological theory with empirically grounded case studies, the panel contributes to a deeper understanding of how schools, families, and non-formal actors navigate the challenges of forced migration. It invites a rethinking of education as a relational, community-embedded practice and highlights the importance of non-formal education providers in sustaining inclusive educational pathways across diverse European contexts.