Design for learning in the third space: opportunities and challenges

Abstract Many educational agents offer paths that allow school to turn itself into a ‘third space’. Caritas Ambrosiana, based on a ‘pedagogy of facts’, proposes interventions to promote soft skills in schools. This non-formal education agency committed Research Center about Media Education, Innovation and Technology (CREMIT) of Catholic University for a project to improve their school programme and training effectiveness. We chose the participatory action research paradigm to verify how to design an educational path by applying third-space principles in the school context and how digital media can be embedded into the practice to enable a more porous exchange of experiences and expertise between students, educators and the school curriculum. The accompanying plan was designed on the basis of the initial questionnaire data analysis: sociomateriality was the main focus because it was considered by Caritas educators as one of the least important elements to include in the design process. The second reason is the need to rethink on-site training formats to face the challenges of the Covid-19 emergency. As expected, after the training intervention, sociomateriality had a significant growth in the design practices. The other third-space pedagogy elements (peering, experiential orientation, motivation, pleasure of making together) are maintained and reinforced, thanks to digital literacy.