Tertium datur: ruolo e potenzialità dell’apprendimento degli adulti nel Terzo settore

In the current socio-political and economic framework, the Italian school is facing complex challenges that it cannot face alone (Argentin, 2021; Gavosto, 2022). The continuity of lifelong learning processes and in non-formal and informal situations is emerging as a necessary option to contribute to the growth of subjectivities, but also to the maintenance of those necessary intermediate bodies that enable their development and that in Article 2 of the Constitution are defined as social formations. The article examines, also through the analysis of some case studies, the contribution that Third Sector organisations, and in particular organised volunteering, make to the growth of a sense of community, participation and solidarity by contributing to the promotion of citizenship skills (Spinelli, 2016). The great contradictions and tensions that move within it will also be considered. The first, concerns the confrontation with strong individualistic drives that promote sporadic and unorganised forms of participation, in the wake of emotional conditions as powerful as they are transient. The second, addresses the relationship existing between educational and economic drives, which concern the issue of skills (Benadusi, Molina, 2018). This is an element that calls into question the national and European policies that take them as a reference (D'Ascanio, 2017). On the basis of these coordinates, which move between different visions of the participatory process, the role of training and its democratic attitude in the context of lifelong learning is played out (Tramma, 2019).