Recovering from emergency: re-thinking educational practices in child protection services as a result of the pandemic experience

Abstract

Child protection services represent a professional context in which emergency is a frequent dimension, being embedded in the need to prevent and address threats to personal integrity and freedom. This feature makes it a particularly interesting milieu for interrogating the effects of the pandemic crisis on educational practices that take place in specific institutional settings, thereby fostering a wider pedagogical reflection on the meaning and nature of educational interventions in critical situations. This article will present some considerations based on qualitative research – part of the project Education for Social Justice, Disuf, UNIMIB – realized through inter- views with professionals during the lockdown. The emerging themes offer interesting cues to re-think some fundamental dimensions of educational work, such as the challenges that flourish on the borderline between the personal and professional spheres, the relevance of networking and the need for a better awareness of those professional assumptions shaped – often unconsciously – by institutional frames of reference.