The learning hub has been conceptualized by the OECD (2020) as a future-oriented vision of schooling, characterized by openness to the community, organizational flexibility, and the integration of local resources into educational practices. This model aligns with UNESCO’s broader vision of education as a common good (UNESCO, 2021), which calls for schools to become dynamic, participatory, and networked institutions capable of fostering social cohesion and sustainable development.The learning hub framework envisions schools not merely as service providers but as catalysts of social transformation, fostering intersectoral collaboration and responding to complex educational and territorial challenges through innovative pedagogical, organizational, and governance models.

In the Italian context, small and rural schools have historically functioned as proximity-based educational and social infrastructures, playing a key role in community engagement, place-based learning, and alternative governance models (Mangione & Cannella, 2021; Chipa et al., 2022). These schools are often framed through narratives of structural fragility and geographic marginality, yet they demonstrate remarkable adaptability, positioning themselves as spaces of social innovation and pedagogical experimentation. Their ability to connect formal education with informal and non-formal learning environments makes them ideal settings to investigate the potential of schools as learning hubs in fostering territorial development, intergenerational learning, and cross-sectoral collaboration. Moreover, recent policy initiatives in Italy  Community Educational Pacts (MIM 2021)—underline the increasing relevance of network-based and place-responsive school models, reinforcing the urgency of investigating how small schools can act as learning hubs within different territorial and socio-economic contexts.

This study investigates how three Italian schools, identified through a national mapping process, conceptualize and enact the learning hub model. Specifically, the research seeks to explore the visions of the future that emerge from participatory future imagination labs (UNESCO, 2023), where educational communities—teachers, students, families, and local stakeholders—are engaged in a co-constructive process of anticipatory reflection. The study examines how these visions articulate different dimensions of the learning hub paradigm, particularly in relation to community engagement, curriculum innovation, and governance structures.

Grounded in an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, the study integrates perspectives from futures literacy, open schooling, place-based education, and governance for education as a common good. Futures literacy and future studies (Facer, 2021; Poli, 2024) provides a lens for understanding how schools develop anticipatory capabilities, enabling them to shape and respond to emerging educational and societal challenges. The concept of open schooling (UNESCO, 2021) highlights the transformation of schools into collaborative ecosystems, fostering partnerships with cultural, civic, and economic actors to expand learning opportunities beyond traditional institutional boundaries. Place-based education (Sobel, 2017) further strengthens this perspective, emphasizing the territorial role of schools in reinforcing local identities, environmental consciousness, and community-led learning experiences. Finally, the study engages with debates on educational governance (Locatelli, 2023), examining how participatory and networked decision-making processes redefine the social contract for education, positioning schools as key agents of social and territorial innovation.

By integrating these perspectives, the study provides an analytical framework to examine how small schools reconfigure their role within educational ecosystems, positioning themselves as strategic nodes in multi-actor networks of learning, innovation, and social inclusion.his perspective contributes not only to understanding the present role of small schools in Italy but also to informing broader educational policies aimed at scaling up and adapting the learning hub model in different educational systems globally.

The study employs an exploratory qualitative research design, combining inventive methods (Lury & Wakeford, 2013; Giorgi et al., 2021) with content analysis to systematically examine how small schools conceptualize and operationalize the learning hub model. The research is structured in three key phases. The first phase involved the identification of case studies through a national questionnaire survey within the INDIRE Small Schools Network, selecting three schools—from Northern, Central, and Southern Italy—where elements of the learning hub model were already emerging in practice.The selection criteria were based on schools exhibiting a strong orientation toward the learning hub model, as evidenced by their engagement in community partnerships, pedagogical innovation, and governance structures. The second phase consisted of Future Imagination Labs, participatory workshops designed to stimulate co-constructive and anticipatory reflections on the future of schools as learning hubs. These labs engaged school leaders, teachers, students, families, and local stakeholders through focus groups, narrative interviews, and video storytelling, generating a rich dataset of textual and audiovisual materials for analysis. Participants were encouraged to articulate visions of school transformation, allowing researchers to capture the underlying values, expectations, and perceived challenges associated with the learning hub model. The third phase employed qualitative content analysis, with a structured approach to codebook development (Schilling, 2006). The analysis was conducted in three stages: (1) defining units of analysis based on six predefined dimensions—spaces, time, pedagogical approaches, leadership, agreements, and professional development—to ensure a structured and systematic categorization; (2) applying a negotiated coding process, in which researchers independently identified emerging conceptual categories before engaging in a dialogue-based reconciliation process to refine thematic clusters; and (3) constructing a replicable codebook, enabling a comparative analysis across cases and supporting a broader scaling-up effort to categorize learning hub models within the Italian small school network. By integrating inventive methods with systematic content analysis, the study provides a robust methodological approach for mapping and interpreting the ways in which small schools operationalize the learning hub model.

This study offers an empirical contribution to the international discussion on the transformation of schooling, illustrating how the UNESCO vision of education as a common good (UNESCO, 2021) can be contextualized within the Italian education system. By analyzing three diverse case studies, the research provides a structured framework to interpret how small schools function as learning hubs, responding to evolving educational and territorial needs. A key expected outcome of the study is the development of structured codebooks, which will serve as a methodological tool to identify patterns, divergences, and convergences in how different schools construct and operationalize the learning hub concept. These findings will enable the classification of learning hub models at a national scale, providing evidence-based insights to inform both educational policy and school leadership strategies. Furthermore, by engaging with a comparative, international perspective, the study examines how local, small-scale innovations can contribute to broader educational transformations. The research highlights the potential for scaling-up learning hub models across different territorial and governance contexts, fostering a deeper understanding of how global educational frameworks—such as UNESCO’s vision—can be effectively localized. Ultimately, this study positions small schools as laboratories of educational futures, demonstrating how bottom-up, context-sensitive innovations can inspire new conceptualizations of school-community relations, governance, and learning ecologies. The findings will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how schools, particularly in marginal or rural settings, can function as catalysts for broader educational and social change.

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