Explorans - Dip. Psicologia e Scienze Cognitive UniTrento

The purpose of the headline image associated with the title of Explorans is to make the vision of the whole project explicit.
 
The picture shows an adult with two children: they are all looking for something, observing, exploring. The adult is using the binoculars, a scientifically validated instrument with fixed optics, which makes the object closer thanks to an optical scheme with a focal ratio that reduces the distances (but also the field of vision).
The children imitate him (imitation learning is important also in social health education), but having no other binoculars, they use some pine cones! It will be there fantasy to make them imagine the object to find (the fox, the fawn, the hidden cave).
 
Another type of research process is activated, which is based on mental and emotional  representations, mostly irrational, but lived as real from a point of view of educational phenomenology. They are experimenting together, exploring the new without fear of what they will find, but at the same time cautious and careful about what is around them.
It is the same courage that is shown in the outdoor adventures of Baden Powell’s scouting, where the activated learning processes are biological, perceptive, neurophysiological, but also social and relational. 
 
Thanks to Jean Piaget, we know that children explore the world by putting things in their mouth, touching and biting (Piaget’s experiential learning). This is a kind of research where the researcher is not a spectator/detached analyzer, but is actually involved in the observational process.
The two children imitate the exploratory attitude of the adult, discovering and searching for something which is outside and inside us.
 
Social and health education research in Italy is also living the pros and cons of youth: the questions it is making are maybe a little naive.
 
How to look at and analyse phenomena in particularly difficult contexts, keeping in mind the educational purposes?
What contents, problems and outcomes of the activities should be made public?
 
We are fully aware of the limits of the Italian research in this sector −compared to other European countries− but also of its lively curiosity. We saw this in the eyes of the three hundred people attending last year’s First National Conference in Rovereto.
 
When exploring, the road is our companion, helping us to make the right choices when we are at a crossroad and to recognize the power and limits of our travel companions, showing us the directions already taken before us.
 
Exploring the present is probably attracting more students and newly graduates, while researching the past, on the other hand, is a practice which is generally carried out by adults. Nonetheless, both practices (exploring the present and researching the past and lived experiences) are important to us in order to promote the development of educational paths, research and interventions.
A particular focus is placed on the development of relational competences able to facilitate the protagonism of people and communities through higher autonomy and higher control of their health.
 
Dario Fortin, University of Trento