The course is made up of three modules, structured in one part of critical reflection of the emotive and latent aspects of the educational relationship, with a focus on educational abuse, followed by two other parts. The first intends to analyse the issues of the educational relationship in the work with very young children, while the second studies the dynamics of the educational relationship with adolescents and young people.

After a first overview part, the second part of the course will deal with studying the elements making up the educational relationship which characterizes the work done in services for very young children, considering not only the intentional aspects and the aims of projects but, above all, the less conscious and rational components that inform the interaction with the children.

The functions that characterize the educational work with small children are very close to the caring functions carried out in the family context and every educator has had experience of this, For these reasons, the experiential territory of services for very young children lends itself to becoming, for the operators, a field of projection of the individually internalized and culturally shared educational models that necessarily are brought out from the implicit and recognized, including for the effects they produce.

Speaking of educational relationship in services for very young children also means considering that particular type of relationship that characterizes the relationship with the families. To this end, this module will explore the interplay between professional education and natural education which, in the play of reciprocal expectations, representations, needs and desires, emotional movements and attributions of meanings, requires operators to have the ability to interpret the relational dynamics under way and to manage what emerges from the relationship with the parents.

Continuing the journey undertaken on activating critical thought on the educational relationship, the third part of the course aims to focus attention on the complexity of educational work in general and on  the difficulties that educators encounter in particular in their relationship with adolescents; a category which is greatly discussed in the media but also amongst operators, who continually seek interpretations that can be useful for understanding their fragility, the reason for their rebellions and their malaise, where these come from, how to decipher them and how to act to help them.

Very often, what escapes the educators’ eyes is the affective, symbolic and relational construction that structures and characterizes their relationship with the adult world: this relationship is unequivocally conditioned by educational models reiterated by parents and educators. They   seem to understand and listen to the adolescents’ needs but, unconsciously, they act according to their own needs and following the representations rooted in their experiences, rather than attributing meanings and deciphering  the real demands of the adolescents.