Reflective practices have recently gained ground as a tool for sustaining the continuing professional development of educational professionals in a transformative perspective. Reflexivity represents an important device for supporting processes of change and reform through participation, whereby the critical dimension becomes the central lever for reading, deconstructing and restructuring reality, thus opening possibilities for (re)envisaging educational action beyond entrenched practice. The present article investigates the potential contribution that action-research-for-professional-development (ricerca-formazione) approaches could give to the grassroot implementation of the reform on the integrated 0-6 system in Italy (Law 107/2015; Law Decree 65/2017) by fostering the creation of inter-professional learning communities which support cross-cultural fertilization between 0-3 and 3-6 services within the ECEC sector.