Using Problematicism to de-construct and re-semantize. A case study research within the Popular Education

This research starts from the importance of Popular Education in the history of Italian schools, which became a fundamental resource for preventing and tackling the widespread phenomena of school dropout. To contrast school failure, in 1995 the European White Paper on Education and Training fostered the birth of second chance schools, according to a business paradigm that also seems to underlie the conception of dropout. Reflecting on and overcoming the inequalities due to the rhetoric of success/failure, this study is set within the theoretical framework of Pedagogical Problematicism, looking at a process of de-construnction and then re-semantization of the semantic and lexical sphere of dropout and second chance in terms of social justice. A case study was carried out during the 2020/2021 school year in the “Antonia Vita” Popular School in Monza, focus-ing on contextual and structural conditions that can prevent hardship and disadvantage in minors at educational risk aged between 14 and 16.