This paper questions if and how teachers’ implementation of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) as learning and teaching methodology promotes educational and social justice by making room for young people citizenship. Our concern is also that mainstream schools and Vocational Education and Training (VET) institutions – as alternative learning arenas – are not joining enough efforts to tackle early school leaving (Nouwen et al., 2016; Van Pragg et al., 2016). Hence, policy-makers and educationalists (researchers and teachers included) have to take into account students’ disengagement, lack of motivation to learn and disconnection from education as problems that are seriously affecting social justice and inclusion (Bernstein, 2000; Czerniawski & Kidd, 2011). These struggles come together - and are impacted by – students’ socio-educational conditions of (in)justice, where macro and meso-institutional factors combine (Araújo, Macedo, Santos, & Doroftei, 2019).

We argue that by learning about - and engaging with - hands-on methodologies, such as PBL, teachers may contribute to: i) educational citizenship, which implies students possibility to identify, reflect upon, be heard and taken into account, and act in matters that concern their lives (Macedo & Araújo, 2014); ii) challenge students’ educational expectations, in order to improve their relational, social and work competences, and rethink ‘youth’ place at meaningful schools (Smyth & Hattam, 2002; Bishton & Lindsay, 2011); and iii) the reversion of the educational stigma (CNE, 2017) of alternative learning arenas and their educational offer.

The project EduTransfer, Learning from diverse educational settings: transferability of promising practices in the 2020 Horizon, sets the theoretical and methodological basis of this paper. Overall, it attempts to understand the complexity of students’ educational struggles and trajectories and to promote wider levels of social justice by means of wider educational justice. Teachers, supported by researchers, are to challenge young people’s thoughts and relational, social and work competences, besides their potential to explore and change their own realities alongside others. This implies the construction of educational citizenship (Macedo & Araújo, 2014) with recognition, interdependence and equality of condition (Baker, Lynch, Cantillon, & Walsh, 2004). It also encompasses the enactment of pedagogical educational rights of inclusion, participation and enhancement (Bernstein, 2000), valuing “all students in the classroom” while “holistically embracing all aspects of the student” (Mthethwa-Sommers, 2014, p.22), trying to take the focus off test evaluation.

Funded by thePortuguese national funding agency for science, research and technology (FCT), the project aims to understand the two-way transferability potential of educational practices between mainstream and VET spaces that face educational issues, such as early school leaving. This comes in line with concerns in the EU about the transferability of knowledge and competences; a crucial European educational debate and policies. The EU Council Recommendation (May 22th, 2018) on key competences for LLL refers that in “skills, such as problem solving, critical thinking, ability to cooperate, creativity, computational thinking, self-regulation are more essential than ever before in our quickly changing society.”(p.2) Moreover, in response to this challenge, the OECD (2018)reinforces the “need for new solutions in a rapidly changing world”. Some of its “design principles” intertwine with the project priorities, including student and teacher agency and transferability as a high priority to knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that involves learning processes that can be transferred to other contexts. PBL is in this mind-set at different levels. Core values such as justice, inclusion and democracy are at the basis of the wider project and of the current paper that brings to the fore teachers’ reflections upon their pilot work on PBL with students, which was part of teachers’ CPD, including 18 hours of joint work with researchers, followed by the same hours of field implementation.

The fusion we propose between pedagogic and research methodologies moves beyond the traditional methods of data collection, towards an intensive participatory research (Mannay, 2016) based on ‘creative research methods’ (Kara, 2015). These involve researchers and participants in the co-construction of data (Riessman, 2008), making the plurality of voices heard (Jackson & Mazzei, 2009). Thus, this methodology bridged researchers and teachers, commonly seen as theorists and practitioners respectively, in a process through which both groups can learn. Teachers’ CPD was the second step of a wider participatory research about educational transferability among different schools, which started with participant observation, Focus Group Discussion, and intentional conversations with key school actors. All stakeholders were actively involved, as a part of a theoretical-methodological tradition that recognises people’s capacity to observe, interpret and reflect upon their own reality and contribute to its change. This means that all participants are seen as citizenship construction authors (Macedo, 2018). This paper matches: i) teachers’ reflections about the pilot implementation of PBL with their students (put together in individual reflective reports); ii) teachers’ joint discussions during training about the implementation of PBL; and iii) researchers’ field notes on teachers’ CPD. Both types of documents were object of content analysis in the light of educational and social justice and citizenship. The implementation of PBL in the four institutions is a means to encourage both teachers and students to reflect upon problems they identify in their schools or local settings and to actively research and seek for creative and innovative solutions. The teachers’ CPD included 23 teachers from four educational institutions: two mainstream schools and two VET schools (an Artistic and a Business school). After three sessions about PBL, teachers took the opportunity to work as a group to trial independently this learning-teaching strategy with their students, in their own settings and with no interference from the researchers. The research engaged around 200 youngsters from the 10th and 11th grades, aged 15 to 20 y.o. As part of their CPD evaluation, teachers were asked to report individually their own input in the implementation of PBL. The final sessions of teachers’ CPD were based on the presentation of their reflexive practices. These sessions aimed at sharing and exchanging strategies, difficulties and solutions. This gave room to a wider debate and the transferability of knowledge among teachers and researchers. All ethical questions of anonymity, confidentiality and respect were ensured throughout the whole process.

The struggle against school disengagement is in the horizon of the promotion and identification of promising practices in each educational institution and acknowledge their potential of transferability. By using PBL both as pedagogical and research methodology, researchers worked together with other educational stakeholders (students and teachers). This paper focusses - and is an example of - teachers’ reflection on practice towards the improvement of the educational offer to students. It is expected that throughout and after the project, teachers will: - feel encouraged to reflect upon their own practices and educational struggles; - be more open to implement hands-on methodologies and to connect to students’ struggles and voice; - be more able to support students in the development of a set of competences, which includes knowledge, skills, attitudes and values, identified by the OECD (2019) as essential for the 21st century. By engaging students in participatory methodologies, the project invests in the development of their competences and empowering them to become authors of their own learning; - be more engaged in fostering an almost ‘natural’ process of institutional change, by supporting students in the development of learning and of themselves as global learner citizens (Arnot, 2009).

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