André Freitas, a researcher at CeiED, has taken part in the World Education Research Association (WERA) Mentoring Programme 2026. The programme pairs early-career education researchers with senior scholars who share their research interests, in a six-month collaboration that builds research capacity and international networks.

André Freitas has been working with Professor Anna Babicka-Wirkus, from the Pomeranian University in Słupsk, Poland. As part of this collaboration, he was invited to give the lecture “Listening to lived experiences, imagining educational futures” on 9 November 2026. The lecture was part of the annual event of the Institute of Education and Psychology, held in the university’s Academic Auditorium, for students and researchers in education, teacher education and psychology.

The lecture presented narrative inquiry as a way of researching with children and teachers. It followed the research process step by step: gathering and transcribing stories, validating them, returning them to participants and analysing them. It focused on the ethical decisions researchers face at each stage.

Drawing on research with children, André Freitas showed how children’s resistance, creativity and critique can change the way research is done, and how stories can help us imagine other educational futures. Through short moments of reflection, participants were invited to think about how stories become knowledge.

It was an opportunity to share knowledge on narrative and participatory methodologies and to strengthen CeiED’s international cooperation. André Freitas acknowledges funding from the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), under the Individual Scientific Employment Stimulus contract “Future-oriented Stories of Digital Schools’ Capital: Imagining Times, Places and Sociabilities of Education” [2023.08557.CEECIND — https://doi.org/10.54499/2023.08557.CEECIND/CP2877/CT0002].