My proposal aims to address the theme of 2017 ECER by focusing on Italian childhood education abd on its intercultural and social justice potential. As I recently wrote (Gobbo 2017b, forthcoming), “the contemporary attention to early childhood education and care (ECEC) places the rights of the child at the forefront of the educational discourse on childhood and recognizes how the socio-political concerns have shifted from the goal to create work opportunities for women to the awareness that upholding the rights of the child means to engage in a much wider and complex endeavour. The change in empahsis and research has its reason in the pressing issues of equality of educational opportunities, social cohesion and inclusiveness, and in the possibility that they can be effectively met from different but interrelated perspectives – the economic, the educational and the social ones”.

At ECER 2017 I plan to present and discuss a qualitative research that I am carring out in a nursery school of Walltown, during school year 2016-2017. The current fieldwork complements and enriches the findings from previous school years (and previous ECER presentations) that – from an intercultural perspective - had taken into consideration educational routines such as the ritual of lunch and the cooks’ work in the school kitchens (Gobbo 2013c, 2015, 2016a, 29016b). This year research will continue to focus on the routines and rituals, and on the “settling in” (inserimento) process of the newly arrived children (usually the babies of less than 12 months of age) as well as on the participation to such process of their families, according to the educational vision promoted by the legislation that in 1971 instituted the municipal nursery school system. In fact, while in Walltown many immigrant families enrol their children in nursery schools, my research will place the intercultural discourse and practice in a wider scope, to see how the encounter between children, families and educators engage so that “good quality early education institutions” can ensure “that all children have the same access to high quality provision” and early childhood education and care may “make an important contribution to breaking the cycles of poverty and discrimination” and realize the citizens’ future “employability, social cohesion and personal fulfilment” (CoRe, 2011, pp.15-16).

Gobbo F. (2012a), Nourishing Learning, Nourishing Culture, (paper presented at ECER Cadiz, Sept. 2012). Gobbo F. (2012b), The “RIGHT” food at the “RIGHT” time in the “RIGHT” way: the art of cooking for nursery school and kindergarten children (paper presented at AAA Annual Meeting, San Francisco CA, Nov. 2012) Gobbo F. (2013a), Food for thought (paper presented at the Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group Meeting, San Diego CA, April 2013) Gobbo F. (2013b), Food and the Transmission of Cultural Ways and Meanings in a Walltown (Italy) Municipal Scuola dell’Infanzia (Childhood School) (paper presented at ECER Porto, Sept. 2013). Gobbo F. (2013c), Food for the Babies: the Ritual of School Lunch in a Walltown (Italy) Municipal Nursery, (paper presented at ECER Porto, Sept. 2013). Gobbo F. (2015), “Nourishing Learning, Nurturing Culture, Cultivating Justice”, in G. W. Noblit, W. T. Pink eds., Education, Equity, Economy: Crafting a New Intersection, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 25-50. Gobbo F. (2016a), Cooking in my own kitchen”: structuring a professional identity as nursery and preschool cooks. An Italian case study, (paper presented at ECER Dublin, Aug. 2016). Gobbo F. (2016b), Intercultural Education, Social Justice and the Culture of Food (paper presented at ECER Dublin, Aug. 2016) Gobbo F. (2017a), “Bringing up the Babies: Men Educators in the Municipal Nursery Schools of an Italian Town”, in G. W. Noblit, W. T. Pink eds., International Handbook of Urban Education, 2nd ed., Dordrecht, Springer (forthcoming). Gobbo F. (2017b), “Educational Engagement, Care and Inclusion: a Narrative about La Giostra, a Nursery School in Florence (Italy)”, in R. Svaricek, F. Gobbo eds., Childhood, special issue of Studia Paedagogica (forthcoming).• Urban M., Lazzari A., Vandenbroeck M., Peeters J., van Laere K. (2011), CoRe. Competence Requirements in Early childhood Education and Care. Final Report, available at http://www.researchgate.net/publication/265375997.