The Center for Educational Documentation is part of the initiatives included in the project of Department of Excellence of the Department of Education and Humanities at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (2023-2027) High Social Cost Illiteracies: research tools for their reduction. The organs and people that make up the Center concur to field research tools for the reduction of illiteracy at high social cost, such as literacy-functional illiteracy, illiteracy in the understanding of cultural and religious difference, and illiteracy in critical thinking and citizenship. Specific to the Center is the cultural-historical approach to archiving, particularly digital archiving, of data in educational matters, with a focus on the history of the area and its heritage of experiences and its innovative pedagogical-educational resources.
The first objective of the Center is, therefore, precisely to contribute to the implementation of the DESU Project of Excellence. In the context of this Project, the Center is committed to collecting and making available bibliographic and documentary materials in digital form, enhancing educational experiences of national and international relevance concerning various eras and age groups, in different cultural and national contexts, in a critical and comprehensive way, also in collaboration with the Laboratory on Critical Thinking and the Observatory on Citizenship Skills. The Center’s scientific objectives include: (a) collecting and making available for study and research, including through digitization, hard-to-find educational bibliographic material; (b) collecting, preserving, reorganizing and enhancing documentary archival material on educational, pedagogical, school and academic figures, experiences, movements, institutions and legal norms, both locally and internationally; (c) the collection and analysis of data and evidence of relevant educational experiments and practices, at the local, national and international levels; (d) the creation and management of an Internet site accessible to scholars for consultation of collected data and materials.
The Center is committed to conducting research, training and public engagement activities with the aim of: 1) developing research based on the documentary materials collected and made available for study; 2) organizing national and international events, such as comparisons, seminars, and conferences, on the documentary materials collected and the themes of the Project of Excellence; 3) creating events and discussions aimed at the public to raise awareness of the importance of preservation and digitization activities; 4) publishing research results with publishers of national and international importance; 5) collect, preserve and archive documents from secondary education, produced by students’ internship and laboratory activities at the Department, in paper and/or digital format for future research purposes and historical-educational reconstruction; 6) foster the implementation and development of bibliographic and documentary resources already present in Reggio Emilia through agreements with libraries and publishing entities.