Sharing Knowledge On Interculturality, Diversity And Schooling: Researchers From Portugal And Italy Meet Together.

Author(s):

Lisa Bugno(presenting / submitting)Sofia Marques Silva

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

07. Social Justice and Intercultural Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

07 SES 06 B, Doing Research on Interculturality and Social Justice in Education

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-23

15:30-17:00

Room:

W3.17

Chair:

Kerstin von Brömssen

Contribution

Intercultural education aims to take advantage of differences and similarities through a pedagogical project built on the multicultural environment (Agostinetto, 2016). The goal is to ‘assess the intercultural dimension as the objective of specific and transversal projects, and, simultaneously, the intercultural education as the way in which they should be developed and implemented’ (Milan & Bugno, 2014).

That is particularly true at the school level.

In fact, schools are preferential places to make inclusion real, since they are the setting where a lot of differences come together: as Loiodice (2015) states, schools are ‘a 'natural' laboratory of meeting/comparison with diversity. It is also the place where people actively develop, enhance and mobilize competencies to deal with differences at various and interdependent levels: in effect, schools are evolving and complex systems reverberating the characteristics of society. Many relationships cross its physical and social space: between teachers and students, between teachers and teachers, including school principals, teachers and non-teaching staff, teachers and families, and not to forget, the crucial relationship with the territory, services, and various external consultants.

Furthermore, ‘in comparison to children from high socioeconomic and majority ethnic/cultural backgrounds, the academic success of migrant children depends more on the quality of schools attended’ (Severiens, 2014). Thus, cultural diversity requires formal education to enhance its sensitivity in order to promote inclusion, well-being, and widespread school effectiveness and achievement: among the competences schools are in charge of, one of the priorities is to integrate their offer with the resources coming from the community. Schools must be aware of being embedded in the cultural, social and economic local environment: the implementation of a systemic network in which actors contribute to succeed the educational process is a key aspect to make education significant for all and to raise its quality (Berger Sacramento, 2015). In other words, in order to flourish also its intercultural project, schools are designated to become a link between the informal and the non-formal education. This could be translated, for instance, in parents’ involvement and participation in scholastic activities, in collaboration with local civic or service groups to improve afterschool programs, and in companies’ engagement for internships.

Aiming to identify the benefits of networking strategies towards interculturality, this study was conducted within the Naos project: it is an E⁺ project in the field of education and, in particular, its central topic is the ‘professional capacity of teachers to deal with diversity related to migration in all its different forms. Professional capacity includes innovative forms of cooperation between educational professionals and other professionals dealing with children’ (NAOS, 2015).

In particular, this paper refers to a study visit occurred in November 2016 in Porto at Cerco’s Cluster Schools.

Method

Cerco’s Cluster Schools is part of the TEIP Programme, a Portugal Governmental initiative, implemented in schools located in social and economic deprived areas, with poverty and social exclusion, where some violence, indiscipline and school failure are more visible. The main goals are: prevent and reduce early school-leaving, reduce indiscipline and promote educational success of all students. The area where Cerco works aggregates a big number of social communities with a large number of individuals from the Roma community. Cerco neighbourhood has a majority of population with low social and economic stati, some of them with minimum income and high level of unemployment forcing these families to fight hard for survival, dragged sometimes into deviance and criminality. The school promotes its activities based on four thematic axes: 1. support the enhancement of apprenticeships; 2. Prevent drop-out, absenteeism and indiscipline; 3. Monitoring and evaluation; 4. Relation School-Families – Community and Partnerships. During the programme, the dean, teachers, programs coordinators, students, parents, and community members were involved in focus group discussions. The empirical data are field notes and interviews that give the opportunity to improve discussion on strategies towards interculturality within the school, between the school and the community, companies, and parents involved in the scholastic activities. In fact, the questions asked were about the school’s vision on diversity, its goals on diversity itself, the resulting professional team training, the practice with students and the collaborations within the community. Moreover, in that context it is decisive to understand how teachers are prepared to deal with diversity and how the institutions at different levels bother about professional development on it (Council of Europe, 2009). For this reason, a document analysis of both countries organisational and institutional documents is part of the methodology: the topic is teachers’ in service and service training on interuculturality.

Expected Outcomes

This paper explores the ways in which exchanging knowledge and peer learning could benefit in order to connecting theory, perspectives and practice on interculturality: our reflection moves toward the relevance of the internationalization of research in order to improve awareness. Therefore, the target is to share knowledge on interculturality, diversity and schooling by comparing researchers from Italy and Portugal. The study focuses on a comparison between the document analysis on intercultural preservice, and in-service training offered by both the countries. Moreover, it addresses and a discussion regarding the teachers’ considerations on key competences to develop for dealing with diversity, by recognising the crucial importance of improving professional capacity for diversity, i.e. through developing teachers preparation programs, and forming networks (Severiens, 2014),. Therefore, the data collected are expected to show both similarities and differences in the strategies and synergies improved, facing cultural diversity at school and to promote a critical reflection on engagements that are necessary to implement students’ inclusion and education success. From a pedagogical perspective, we argue that this critical reflection is useful to researchers as well as to the research issue in order to understand, examine and improve professional capacity to diversity at school.

References

Agostinetto, L. (2016) Oltre il velo: l’intercultura che fa scuola [Beyond the veil: making school with interculturality]. In Studium Educationis, anno XVII, n. 1 febbraio 2016, 71-86. Lecce: Pensa Multimedia, Berger Sacramento R. (2015), Migrant education and community inclusion, in < http://www.sirius-migrationeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/SIRIUS-CommunityInclusion-FINAL.pdf> Council of Europe (2009). Diversity and inclusion: challenges for teacher education. Final conference of the Council of Europe project “Policies and Practices for Teaching Sociocultural Diversity”. (Oslo, Norway, October 2009) Loiodice I. (2015). Teaching cross-culture. The pedagogy of the dialogue beyond ethnic groups. Pedagogia oggi, 2, 94-102. Milan G., Bugno L. (2014). Italy and France and the reception of foreign students: a comparison. Libro de Actas del II Congreso Internacional de Ciencias de la Educación y del Desarrollo, p. 430. NAOS (2014) Professional capacity dealing with diversity, in Severiens S. (2014). Developing school capacity for diversity. In < http://www.sirius-migrationeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Policy-Brief-3_School-Capacity.pdf>

Author Information

Lisa Bugno (presenting / submitting)

University of Padova

FISPPA

Padova

Sofia Marques Silva

University of Porto, Portugal

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