Modelling Bottom-up Territorial Development within the Framework of Sustainable Educational Research: A "Multi-Voice" Contribution Concerning Transformative, Innovative, and Participatory Processes Facing Local Sociocultural Demands and Special Needs

Abstract

This paper joins together different educational research approaches, which highlight the relevance of educational research as a stimulus to bottom-up transformative processes, and as a tool to make them valuable at the local (territorial) and global (national, European) level. Each approach is dedicated to a single region or administrative district of Italy, within which their cases unfold (namely: Apulia, Lombardy, and Trento). Moreover, as made apparent by the joint diagram, they all share assumptions with regards to the ontology of the macrolevel, which constitute the bases for their comparability. The final section subsumes individual results by projecting them against a theo-retical background that stresses on the role of bottom-up processes as fos-terers of transformative resilience; the latter allows for adaptation without depletion of contextual elements, nor the avoidance of selective pressures. As such, educational research qualifies as one of the cornerstones of sus-tainable development.

Keywords

• Bottom-up processes
• Education
• Territory
• Transformative learning
• Welfare