Higher education students meeting careleavers. An academic research project on social justice enhancing service learning

The idea of "engaged university" (Watson et al., 2011) acknowledges in a more explicit way the responsibility of Higher Education to society in general (Collini, 2012) and, specifically, in tackling community problems (Preece, 2017). The concept doesn't entail a subsidiary role of HE institutions in relation to other social actors, but rather highlights the possibility of incorporating public engagement into their activities: researching, teaching, and sharing knowledges and competences with other social actors (the so called "third mission"). In this perspective, research activities should have a meaningful impact both on communities' wellbeing as well as on students' awareness and responsiveness to social issues(Barnett, 2018). The Department of Human Sciences for Education (Bicocca University of Milan - Italy) currently planned a three year action research named "Education for social Justice" and focused on childrens' rights, as stated by the United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child. The theoretical framework is represented by the capability approach (Sen, 1999; Nussbaum, 2013) and the main aim is to identify those rights at risk of being neglected in different contexts (primary and secondary school, children residential centers, etc) as well as to interrogate conditions promoting or hindering an effective and real practice of these rights. The research project is managed by researchers working in the same department and belonging to different disciplinary domains (pedagogy, anthropology, geography, philosophy). The research also entails an active participation of university students thanks to the possibility of connecting their academic traineeship to the project. One of the project topic is connected to careleavers, i.e. young adults who came of age while living in fosterage (children’s homes and/or foster families), and who had experienced professional intervention in their lives. They represents in a way the existential “outcome” of many interventions carried out by a lot of professionals active along the foster care system and producing learning processes at many levels. Is this learning conducive to the exercise of agency, freedom, self -direction, reflexivity, and a meaningful life? An Italian association of careleavers became partner of the project and during the academic year there was the possibility to involve four students of the Master Degree in Pedagogical Sciences in helping performing different activities as the opening of an advice desk or the development of self-help groups. The paper will present the experiences of the four students collected through in-depth interviews (Merrill & West, 2009) in order to investigate their learning processes connected to the development of their personal and professional identity.