The research is situated in the context of the current health emergency caused by Covid- 19, the virus that has incredibly disrupted our lives globally since January 2020 (WHO 2021). To prevent an increase of the infection, the Italian government has implemented urgent measures of “physical distancing” including school closure and subsequent introduction of long-distance learning (LDL). Such sudden change has had a strong impact on people's lives, especially on the most fragile ones (United Nations, 2020) imposing school actors to cope with new challenges: above all, it required learning to manage the emotions of fear and disorientation. A research conducted by Orgilés (et al., 2020) shows that almost 90% of boys and girls aged between 3 and 18 years experienced changes in their emotional state and behavior during the quarantine: irritability, loneliness, worry, boredom and restlessness were found.

To address this issue a group of students- teachers involving a large network of other institutions, realized a project called “ripARTiamo!” with the aim of helping children and teachers to construct together new meanings from those difficult days during the lockdown. At the same time fostering the possibility of using emotions and creativity (Mckay et al., 2020) to imagine a sustainable “back to school” after the experience of the pandemic, not a return to a business as usual (Wolff, 2020). The project involves 63 pre-school and primary school classes, more than 32 teachers and 998 children.

From an ecological perspective it’s essential to move faster toward a more sustainable development in which education can be seen as an agent of change as well as an object of change itself (UNESCO, 2017). According to the transformational resilience paradigm proposed by European Union as "the capacity to use the shock to leap forward instead of backward" (ASVIS, 2020) resilience is conceived not as a "resistance" or "passive coping with difficulty", but as a process that leads individuals to react positively to change and to realize themselves in a way that allows them to thrive despite the trauma (Vaccarelli, 2018). The idea is to take advantage of the Covid-crisis as a possibility to rethink views and meanings, as proposed by Mezirow in the transformative learning theory (Illeris, 2018). It is assumed  that teachers have been exposed to a “disorienting dilemma” facing the challenge of LDL that required them to make their “frames of reference (…) sets of assumption and expectation (…) more inclusive, discriminating, open, reflective and emotionally able to change” because they have been proven to be inadequate to the new situation (Eschenbacher & Fleming, 2020).

The research can be defined as an action-research because it aims to respond to both practical and theoretical problems. The aim is transformative, and it is based on a close collaboration with the participants whose awareness is to be developed (Trinchero, 2002). The project has also been influenced by the research for children approach (Dozza, 2018). From an ethical point of view, the aim is to propose research activities useful and functional to the school's educational objectives, in a reciprocal relationship with researchers.

Thanks to this study, in fact, it is intended to collect participants voices to understand which meanings they assign to their experience of school during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as trying to understand whether they achieved new awareness or introduced positive behaviors after overcoming the difficulties encountered.

The research question that are guiding this research process are:

- Could some indicators of a transformative process be gathered from the experience of teachers? 

- Which are the meanings that teachers give to their disorienting dilemma?

- Are these processes moving towards sustainability?

Conducting the research, it is intended to use a mixed method (Cresswell & Plano 2011) adopting an exploratory sequential design (Pastori, 2017; Cohen, 2018). In the first phase the aim is to explore the research field with a qualitative approach. In a second phase a quantitative data collection is expected to understand if the transformative resilience issue can be generalized to larger school populations, in order to answer more circumscribed questions on an object that will emerge from the first phase. The use of both approaches in synergy allows to investigate the complexity of the phenomenon and to understand, control, validate and extend the results obtained (Mortari & Ghirotto, 2019). Regarding the first qualitative exploratory study, Grounded Theory as described by Massimiliano Tarozzi in Italy (2008), based on Katy Charmaz work (2014) is being applied. GT is particularly suited to the exploration of non-static phenomena such as the one under examination and aims to bring out basic psychological processes underlying the phenomena under investigation. It also offers the interesting possibility of "constructing analytical categories from data and respecting the phenomenon by following the indications that come from it. (...) to combine empirical research and theoretical reflection." (Tarozzi, 2008, p.8) to come up with a theory from field – gathered data. The procedure must be very rigorous and requires constant self-analysis of one's own research activity. In order to monitor it, it was decided to use a research diary (Mortari, 2007) in which to write down everything that could influence the process, as well as writing memos to record observations and conceptual junctions of the research. Thirteen in-depth semi-structured interviews and a focus group with the participating teachers were therefore conducted, following the GT method which approaches the field by asking an open question such as "Whats's going on here?" as proposed by Glaser (Tarozzi, 2008). The aim was to understand (Mortari & Ghirotto 2019) as deeply as possible, through teachers' point of view, which were the main difficulties experienced by educators and pupils during the LDL, which coping strategies have been adopted and whether they felt they had learnt from the experience of the distance school.

At the present, five interviews were transcribed verbatim and preliminary analyzed. To answer to the first research question, it was necessary to identify the transformative elements that seemed to recur mostly within the transcripts. In fact, three categories were inductively created and then connected with transformative learning phases theorized by Mezirow (Illeris, 2018, p.116). The first is related to the teachers’ disorienting dilemma (from phases 1 to 3), the second to the reflective process or inner dialogue (from phase 4 to 7), the outcomes of the process and the new perspectives derived from it (phases 8 and 9). In that way it has been possible to identify the presence of some preliminary indicators of transformative learning processes in teachers’ narrations: Teachers experienced different disorienting dilemmas like “the feeling of loss of contact” with children, difficulties in reaching all the students (in particular those with special needs), the need to face their own sense of insecurity toward LDL and technologies and need to collaborate with parents in a different way. They had to critically re-evaluate their system of meanings, and their idea of being a teacher, making it more open to accepting the inevitable transformation of their professional role and practice induced by the introduction of LDL. Some of them have also shown interesting new awareness, that can be applied for transforming their teaching practice, learned from overcoming the difficult experience of the pandemic crisis. For example, more flexible teaching approaches (flipped- classroom among others), the involvement of technologies in connection with the natural environment, more care for relationships. The next step will consist on identifying whether these findings can be applied to the other participants. In the upcoming months the second phase of this participative research will be decided considering the ever-evolving circumstances and further analysis conducted.

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