L’educazione per la prima infanzia in tempo di riforme: incrementare l’accessibilità dei servizi per bambini e famiglie provenienti da contesti svantaggiati attraverso processi di advocacy

The paper illustrates the findings of a participatory-action-research jointly designed by academic researchers and pedagogical coordinators of a social cooperative with the aim of increasing the quality and inclusiveness of ECEC services run by such cooperative in the context of recent policy reform (D.L.65/2017). The study is framed within an ecological paradigm, taking into account the macro-level of ECEC policies, the meso-level of institutional cultures/procedures and the micro-level of pedagogical coordinators’ views/understandings for generating transformational processes, which could proactively respond to the complex needs of children and families living in the increasingly socio-culturally diverse communities where the services run by the social cooperative operate. The project adopted Ricerca-Form-Azione methodology, combing elements of practice-based enquiry and training, to promote pedagogical coordinators’ reflection on inclusive practice and experimentation of pilot initiatives to improve accessibility. The findings show that ECEC unequal access could be tackled by intersecting the effects of top-down policy-reform with grassroots initiatives sustaining the agency of all those involved in educational decision-making processes (pedagogical coordinators, educators, families and children) as protagonists of change.