Call for papers n.199 (2025)

2025-06-16

Inhabiting the Transition. Towards a Pedagogy of Work that Meets the Algorithmic Challenge

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic hypothesis but has become a techno-economic paradigm triggering a radical metamorphosis of work and society. Its ability to automate not only manual tasks but also complex cognitive activities is reshaping professional structures, generating labor market polarization, and potentially rendering entire categories of skills obsolete. This scenario described by many as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (Schwab, 2016) differs from previous transitions. Today's technological transformations may go beyond merely supporting human activity to gradually replacing it, especially in its most distinctive function: symbolic processing, the capacity to interpret reality, assign meaning, and generate content autonomously.

For the first time in history, the worker faces the risk of being excluded from the very act of working, reduced to the role of supervisor over a process carried out without their active involvement. We are not merely dealing with a technological or economic issue, but with a profound anthropological and cultural challenge—one that demands a reconsideration of the aims and methods of education, urging pedagogy to engage in close dialogue with new technological frontiers.

The automation of cognitive tasks and the reconfiguration of professional knowledge risk being interpreted through a purely economic lens, reducing education to a tool for adapting the “human resource.” Although pervasive, this approach is pedagogically unsustainable, as it ignores the existential, identity-based, and political dimensions of work, and overlooks the development of those “human capabilities” fundamental to a flourishing life ( Nussbaum, 2011).

In this context, the pedagogy of work plays a crucial role. Its vocation is not to chase technological contingency, but to affirm an educational paradigm centered on the person, promoting agency and the ability to construct a meaningful professional path. The key question becomes: how can education become a space of emancipation rather than training; a place where one learns to collaborate critically with technology rather than submit to it?

This special issue aims to collect research contributions and theoretical reflections that, explicitly adopting the perspective of the pedagogy of work, explore the ongoing transformations. The goal is twofold: on one hand, to critically analyze the rhetoric and educational practices accompanying the introduction of AI; on the other, to outline pedagogical models capable of supporting individuals and organizations in building a fair and humanly sustainable future of work—preserving the “craftsmanship of the trade” (Sennett, 2008) even in algorithmic contexts.

 

Key Thematic Areas for Exploration

  1. School and the Construction of Foundations for Professional Agility

  • From competence to agency: How can the school system move beyond a content-based approach to cultivate professional agency (Hall, 2004; Arthur & Rousseau, 1996)? What teaching strategies can promote in students the metacompetencies essential to navigating the complexity and uncertainty of the future (Morin, 2000), such as self-direction, cognitive flexibility, and learning to learn?

  • Career guidance as existential design practice: How can guidance be transformed into a longitudinal process that helps students “build their own life”—both personal and professional—through self-narration? How can AI tools be used critically to expand rather than narrow students’ horizons based on predictive profiling?

  • PCTO (Paths for Transversal Skills and Orientation) as a critical laboratory: How can work-based learning experiences become opportunities to “think critically” about labor? What models of tutoring and methodologies can transform the student into a “reflective practitioner in action,” capable of decoding new organizational forms and the ethical implications of algorithmic work?

 

2. Lifelong Learning and Human Development in Augmented Organizations
• Beyond Upskilling: Professional Development and the Value of Human Competencies.
We welcome contributions that critically examine the ideology of perpetual upskilling and propose lifelong learning models centered on the integral development of the person-as-worker. What educational methodologies can support workers in making sense of transitions, valuing their experiential capital, and redesigning their professional identities?

• Training in Soft Skills: Between Human Development and Instrumentalization.
How can training programs be designed to genuinely promote human competencies (empathy, intuition, relational abilities, critical judgment, ethical discernment)? What is the ethical boundary between developing these skills for personal well-being and their instrumentalization by “emotional capitalism”?

• AI as a Training Tool: Pedagogical Potential and Risks of Control.
In-depth analyses of adaptive platforms and learning analytics are encouraged. What are the risks of a surveillance capitalism applied to education, turning learning into a data point to be monitored? Case studies are welcome that explore practices using AI to foster collaborative learning and learner autonomy.

 

3. Policies, Ethics, and Citizenship: The Macro Dimension of the Pedagogy of Work
• The Right to Education as a Pillar of Active Citizenship.
How can the individual right to lifelong learning be guaranteed? We invite analyses of active labor policies that frame training as an investment in social cohesion and the expansion of individual freedoms.

• Educational Justice and Algorithmic De-biasing. The use of AI in Human Resources processes raises crucial questions of fairness. Contributions are sought that, starting from the analysis of biases, propose guidelines for the design and implementation of ethical, transparent, and fair HR management systems.

• New Forms of Organizational Citizenship. AI is reshaping power relations and collaboration. What role can the pedagogy of work play in promoting active “organizational citizenship”? How can managers and workers be trained to co-design more humane and democratic learning organizations?

 

Types of Contributions
To foster rich and diverse dialogue, the journal welcomes various types of scientific contributions. The following formats are particularly encouraged:

  • Theoretical Essays: Contributions of a theoretical, epistemological, or critical literature review nature, deepening key constructs of the pedagogy of work in light of the challenges posed by artificial intelligence.

  • Empirical Research Contributions: Presentation of original research results based on qualitative (case studies, ethnographies, action research, narrative approaches), quantitative (surveys, statistical analyses), or mixed methodologies, conducted in school, university, corporate, or community contexts.

  • Practice Analyses and Case Studies:Description and critical analysis of educational experiences, innovative projects, or implemented pedagogical tools, with clear articulation of the theoretical framework, analysis methodology, and implications for practice and future research.

  • Methodological Contributions: Reflections on the design, implementation, and evaluation of training interventions in complex contexts, with a focus on the methodological challenges introduced by the integration of AI in learning and professional development processes.

 

 

Deadlines:


Contributions will be evaluated through a double-blind peer review process.
Deadline for any revisions requested by reviewers: November 5, 2025.

Publication date: December 31, 2025.

LINK TO EDITORIAL STANDARDS download

 

NEW STRUCTURE OF THE MAGAZINE

With issue 198/2025 our magazine has taken on the new structure:

1. Section-Articles in response to the "call" (double-blind refereeing)

2. Section - "Free" articles on current or particularly important pedagogical-didactic-educational themes, relating to historical-pedagogical research, also in a comparative key, to children's literature, reading (double-blind refereeing)

3. Information/contributions from conferences-congresses-cultural initiatives

4. Reviews Section

 

For contributions relating to the "free articles" section, the same rules and deadlines relating to the "call" apply.