The Return of Presence: The Being-There of Education

Abstract

This editorial introduces the second 2026 issue of Formazione & insegnamento from the perspective of a “return of presence”. Drawing on Umberto Margiotta’s concepts of formativity and multireferentiality, it interprets the Network no longer merely as an epistemic model through which educational relations may be represented, but as an emic and ecosystemic condition within which subjects learn, act, and construct their experience. In this context, the return of presence does not indicate a nostalgic restoration of previous configurations, but rather the reclaiming of the human capacity to orient oneself, make choices, and assume responsibility within environments increasingly mediated by technical and algorithmic dispositifs. The contributions included in the issue are presented under the sections Paradigms, Inhabiting the World, Higher Education, Childhood, Teaching, Literature Reviews, and Retrospectives. Taken together, they address the transformation of educational presence in post-digital contexts, artificial intelligence-assisted research, processes of inclusion and transition, professional education, childhood experience, and pedagogical design. An ecological conception of education and formation thus emerges, in which human presence is not merely physical proximity, but the generative, relational, and ethical capacity to inhabit the world consciously.