The emergencies of the last period, the COVID-19 pandemic, the environmental crises, the war in Ukraine, and the resulting socio-economic crisis, have accentuated, in education, the differences already existing among students (Save the Children, 2021; Giorgino, 2020) and produced new ones. These differences are also related to distance education (Ballarino et al, 2020; Torre et al, 2022) due to issues of economic, social, and cultural inequality. 

To cope with the situation that has resulted and for a more democratic and equitable school, there are two levers on which to act: on one hand, flexible planning that helps with dealing with the unexpected, and on the other hand, fostering greater student autonomy. It has been studied in the literature how teachers, in order to cope with the unexpected, are forced to make fast decisions (Perrenoud, 1999), and this often favors the reproduction of embodied methods of operation (Magnoler, 2017) that reproduce worn-out patterns that do not fit the current situation and the changes taking place. Linear and instructivist methodologies often prevail, which are only effective in appearance but in essence do not meet the criteria of equity that are essential today. If regulation in action can no longer be based only on the practices incorporated by teachers, it becomes essential to rethink design models and to understand whether it is viable a "design for the unexpected" that can prepare many possibilities and support the teacher in making decisions in action amid unexpected situations. Regulation in action in the past was seen as teacher improvisation. Our hypothesis, on the other hand, sees regulation as a design in action that opts among the various possible paths identified in the design. In other words, we hypothesize that in order to cope with the unexpected and to implement equitable educational practices, it is necessary to both activate implicit intelligence and explicit intelligence (Damasio, 2021) while having to operate at speed.

The research we are describing attempts to answer the previous problems. It started from the analysis of 200 teaching sessions of Primary Education students that made us verify how the unexpected impacts on (1) the spatiotemporal conditions of teaching action and (2) the way pupils respond to the devices proposed by teachers.

Spatiotemporal conditions also result from students' different modes of working and learning. The need to activate multiple channels and engage students on authentic tasks results in different work times for each. The use of technologies to activate different processes introduces new possible sources of uncertainty. Different student responses also result from the increased differences present. Today, each student arrives in the classroom with a personal and multivariate store of knowledge, and this depends not only on the individual cultural background but also on the experiences and vicissitudes he or she has gone through.

"Designing for the unexpected" uses certain strategies: modularity, which is designing self-consistent lessons; redundancy, which is proposing activities that pursue the same objectives with different devices; deviation, that is activities that pursue different objectives but are more adherent to contingent needs; anticipation, that is predicting what will happen in the classroom (Rossi et al., 2021); and hierarchy, that is being clear about which activities are unavoidable and which can be added or changed. Some of the above strategies are derived from Berthoz's (2011) studies on simplexity and how complex systems respond to crises.

The research was conducted during the teaching of Design and Assessment Theories and Methods collocated in the third year of the Primary Education Master’s degree program. It consists of lectures, workshops, and placement in schools. Design Based Research (DBR) methodology was adopted (Anderson et al., 2012; Fishman et al., 2013). The artifacts produced by the students were then analyzed using the a posteriori text coding system (Trinchero, 2004; Braun et al., 2006) with a semantic approach, and two researchers coded the artifacts and then compared the analysis. The research was organized in 3 steps. Within the course, students were asked to design a lesson and then carry it out during the internship. In the first step (academic year 2021-22), the design artifacts and post-action reflections of future teachers were analyzed. Several issues emerged from the analysis: difficulty in managing time following unexpected events and ending the session unfinished, poor attention to emerging differences, and a state of anxiety. Based on this analysis, the design method was organized using the previously presented strategies, and a training module on "designing for the unexpected" was introduced into the curriculum (academic year 2022-23). Finally, design artifacts and student reflections from the academic year 2022-23 were analyzed. The required artifacts are: - the pre-action artifact that contains a detailed sequence of activities (narrative section), and objectives, constraints, and purpose of the educational intervention (descriptive section) (Laurillard, 2014). The narrative artifact also contains the simulation of what they think might happen in the classroom and possible dialogues; - a post-action artifact in which the lesson that took place is narrated, reporting the dialogues that actually took place (after obtaining the necessary authorizations for privacy protection) and the post-action reflections. As indicated in the hypotheses, students had to include in the design artifact: - redundancy. That is, a. activities to be activated in place of the basic ones, b. activities to be included if the basic ones were not practicable or did not achieve their purpose or different work times emerged among different students. - hierarchy. The planned activities should be classified as either strictly necessary or as additional. In this way students know in action what to perform should unexpected events alter the time available. Additional activities to be implemented with groups of students can also be included. - the simulation of activities, i.e., predicting students' dialogues and behaviors to anticipate possible problems and estimate the time needed for activities.

The analysis of the 230 designs showed that in most cases having provided for possibles in the design helped future teachers deal with different kinds of unexpected events. Primarily, having talked about the unexpected prepared them for uncertainty and allowed them to better control anxiety. The presence of redundant activities allowed them to articulate in multi-modal ways the session promoting inclusion and enabling to accommodate diverse students' needs. In particular, in 23% of the designs, it emerges how redundant activities favored overcoming problems encountered by students with the first device proposed. In 46% of cases, the presence of redundant activities allowed to offer the same content through different paths, promoting greater participation for all. Finally, in 31% of cases, the hierarchy of activities made it possible to overcome the space-time problems generated by unexpected events. During final exams future teachers were asked to share their impressions of the usefulness they had detected from the inclusion of the strategies for the unexpected and almost all of them confirmed the positive effects that this change on the design model had on classroom management, time and anxiety. Although we are aware of the bias due to the implicit teaching contract for which students may have shared only positive impressions, we believe that the results were indeed interesting. In fact, comparing the reflections on these issues with those made by students in the previous academic year we noticed a more clearheaded attitude in making choices even in a state of anxiety, greater self-confidence, and, above all, better management of time and unexpected events. One element that supports our hypothesis is that students introduced changes other than those planned or used differently redundant activities, or inserted new ones accepting solicitations from pupils, highlighting how attention to the unexpected initiates a divergent and generative posture.

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