Philosophical practices to change schools. Constructing narrative identities through communities of thought

Abstract

The article presents a Teacher Professional Development Research conducted between 2023 and 2025 in nine vocational schools in Milan, focused on the use of philosophical practices as a formative and transformative dispositif. The research methodology hybridised clinic of education and operational epistemology. The mixed and parallel groups of teachers and students were configured as communities of thought, in-between spaces in which to negotiate perspectives of the world, generating mutual horizons in which to construct narrative identities. The process, supported by material mediators, has transformed school practices by regaining the educational vocation of the scholé: time freed from the things and urgencies of the world in order to think, manipulate and transform them.