The contribution aims at introducing some points to reflect on the new role which university museums of schools and education can play today in the wake of current international processes of revitalisation of university heritage and museums, particularly in the light of the new objectives of the University Third Mission. Starting from the experience of the "Paolo and Ornella Ricca" School Museum in Macerata University, the authors illustrate how university museums can achieve several goals: on the one hand, to foster the opening up of the universities and academic research towards civil society, and the dissemination of the results of the most innovative historical-educational research; on the other hand, to promote the meaning and the value of the educational heritage as a collective cultural asset able to give participation and knowledge; finally, to make the historical-educational disciplines more valuable as a specialised knowledge which, through such heritage, can express a new specificity and a more active role within academic community.

Public historians have definitively recognized the crucial role that museums – on par with libraries, archives, schools as well as media, cultural and tourism industry, and «all other sectors where the knowledge of the past is required to work with different audiences» (AIPH, The Italian Public History Manifesto, 2018) – can play for the development of Public History practices. In this scenario, historians of education do well know the potential that is locked up inside the historical-educational museums too. A potential that, especially in university museums, can improve academic teaching quality, promote innovative research and, finally, foster cultural and social empowerment of communities.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the evolution and use of the school desk in unified Italy as a multifunctional and highly efficient tool, which was required not only to efficiently support in-class activities, to facilitate the classroom management and finally to maintain a correct body posture in order to preserve pupils’ health, but also to accomplish the additional task of working as real “gymnastic equipment”, i.e. suitable for performing various gymnastic exercises inside the classroom. Design/methodology/approach The assumption upon which this paper rests is that school desks have always been signifiers charged with multiple meanings related to the evolution of curriculum, pedagogic ideas and daily school practices, which have often been forgotten, abandoned or, for some reasons, underrepresented in the official history of education as well as in the collective memory of school. In order to rebuild this forgotten history, and retrace the possible theoretical-pedagogical basis underlying such practice, the authors have systematically reviewed the Italian manuals on gymnastics between desks from the 1870s to the 1970s, retraced sources documenting this practice in the daily school life (government rules, school programmes, school hygiene prescriptions, iconographic sources, teachers and school managers’ testimonies) and finally, compared with other foreign practices (such as “calisthenics”). Findings The convergence between many differentiated sources has demonstrated the longevity of this school practice, which was not only the fruit of educational theories of gymnastic teachers but was also determined by the backwardness and logistic inadequacies of many Italian schools. The paper reveals how this gymnastic practice, after establishing itself in the post-Unification Italian schools, continued almost uninterrupted until the Second World War and even until the 1970s, evidencing how gymnastic teachers, hygienists, educationalists and lawmakers continued, over almost a century, to scientifically legitimise (from the top downwards) an educational practice that was actually driven from the bottom upwards, i.e. determined by an endemic lack of adequate spaces and tools for physical education in Italian schools. Originality/value For the very first time, the special source of Italian manuals and booklets on gymnastics between desks has been located, analysed and systematically reviewed for the period 1870s-1970s, and then cross-checked against differentiated sources. This study actually represents the first step of a research which must be still further developed. Undoubtedly, the “new” source represented by the manuals of “gymnastics between school desks” offered a first original perspective from which to explore the use of this furniture in the school of the past, thereby enabling historians of education to shed the first light on a school practice that has been overlooked or forgotten, and still hidden within the “black box of schooling”.

The Museums of educational heritage - especially those established in University Departments – represent an extraordinary resource for scientific research, education, and the Third Mission, which is aimed at promoting collaboration, dialogue and exchange between the University and its territory to generate knowledge and benefit of social, cultural, and economic nature as well. Within the Third Mission precisely lies Public History defined as "the communication of history outside academic environments" (AIPH 2018). In this framework the paper presents some examples of educational projects and activities carried out with local schools and communities by the "Mauro Laeng" Museum of school and education at the University of Roma Tre, and by the "Paolo & Ornella Ricca" Museum of school history at the University of Macerata. The final aim is to provide a methodological approach, project ideas, and operational tools for inspiring schoolteachers and professors, university researchers and museum educators.