Playing adolescence between social pressures and possible worlds

Abstract

This paper analyses educational work undertaken with today’s adolescents, exploring the emerging manifestations
of their distress in relation to the social, economic, and cultural processes of late Western modernity. The article
follows two complementary tracks. Firstly, it reinterprets adolescent malaise as resulting from social acceleration,
pressure to perform, and the reduction in liminal spaces for development. It also highlights the increasing use of diagnostic labels as a new form of self-expression. Secondly, it identifies pedagogical approaches that encourage
us to reconsider educational contexts as spaces of resonance, reciprocity and experimentation, particularly drawing on the metaphor of play in education.