During the last 20 years Italy has been interested by significant immigration processes. Thus, the Italian educational system has only recently faced the challenges of multicultural education. The increasing presence of immigrant students has pushed policy-makers to readdress some issues about schooling. The prevailing perspective seems to be that of ‘intercultural education’ where ‘difference is assumed both as the identitarian paradigm of school as institution, and as an occasion to open new educational spaces’ (Ministry of Education, 2007). This has inspired national policies and programs focusing on Italian language teaching, reception activities, extra-curricular laboratories, parents training activites and teachers professional development. The paper addresses the gap between the values and the purposes implied by such apparently progressive policies, the aims embedded in the institutionalised practices of schooling and the contradictory requirements posed by the borrowing of neoliberal-inspired policies from other countries. The works starts with the main thesis of Critical Race Theory (Gillborn, 2008), that of institutional racism, focusing on the discriminatory effects of the taken-for-grantedness in everyday practices of schooling. Drawing on the findings of a research carried on in three primary and low-secondary schools, it shows how the apparently progressive discourses of intercultural education are subjugated by the dominant educational discourses inscribed in the modalities of the three system-messages: curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation (Bernstein, 1971). In order to spread light on this discursive contradiction, we have tried to combine Critical Race Theory with a foucauldian approach centred on the power/knowledge regimes that shape the objects and the subjects of school life. The data were collected through documentary analysis of policy documents, schools’ curriculum planning, observations in classrooms, in-depth interviews with headteachers and teachers. The materials have been analyzed through a coding and sub-coding process, using the software NVivo 8. The paper highlights how teachers face unsolvable dilemmas, created by the clash between those progressive but weak discourses of interculturalism and the strongest selective and discriminatory messages implied by the ‘ordinary’ practices of schooling. The work shows how the ordinary practices of schooling are inspired by a set of discourses driving the systems in a selective and discriminatory direction. It is argued that the promotion of a more inclusive, democratic and non-racist education passes through a fundamental revision of the underpinnings of national curriculum, accountability processes and pedagogical backgrounds.
Discourses, policies and practices of 'intercultural education': contradictions in the Italian still-racist school system / Grimaldi, Emiliano; Serpieri, Roberto. - (2011). ( BERA Annual Conference Institute of Education, University of London 6-8 September).
Discourses, policies and practices of 'intercultural education': contradictions in the Italian still-racist school system
GRIMALDI, EMILIANO;SERPIERI, ROBERTO
2011
Abstract
During the last 20 years Italy has been interested by significant immigration processes. Thus, the Italian educational system has only recently faced the challenges of multicultural education. The increasing presence of immigrant students has pushed policy-makers to readdress some issues about schooling. The prevailing perspective seems to be that of ‘intercultural education’ where ‘difference is assumed both as the identitarian paradigm of school as institution, and as an occasion to open new educational spaces’ (Ministry of Education, 2007). This has inspired national policies and programs focusing on Italian language teaching, reception activities, extra-curricular laboratories, parents training activites and teachers professional development. The paper addresses the gap between the values and the purposes implied by such apparently progressive policies, the aims embedded in the institutionalised practices of schooling and the contradictory requirements posed by the borrowing of neoliberal-inspired policies from other countries. The works starts with the main thesis of Critical Race Theory (Gillborn, 2008), that of institutional racism, focusing on the discriminatory effects of the taken-for-grantedness in everyday practices of schooling. Drawing on the findings of a research carried on in three primary and low-secondary schools, it shows how the apparently progressive discourses of intercultural education are subjugated by the dominant educational discourses inscribed in the modalities of the three system-messages: curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation (Bernstein, 1971). In order to spread light on this discursive contradiction, we have tried to combine Critical Race Theory with a foucauldian approach centred on the power/knowledge regimes that shape the objects and the subjects of school life. The data were collected through documentary analysis of policy documents, schools’ curriculum planning, observations in classrooms, in-depth interviews with headteachers and teachers. The materials have been analyzed through a coding and sub-coding process, using the software NVivo 8. The paper highlights how teachers face unsolvable dilemmas, created by the clash between those progressive but weak discourses of interculturalism and the strongest selective and discriminatory messages implied by the ‘ordinary’ practices of schooling. The work shows how the ordinary practices of schooling are inspired by a set of discourses driving the systems in a selective and discriminatory direction. It is argued that the promotion of a more inclusive, democratic and non-racist education passes through a fundamental revision of the underpinnings of national curriculum, accountability processes and pedagogical backgrounds.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
