Context

South Tyrol is a country where recognizing the bi/trilingualism of its society and guaranteeing bilingual education to every inhabitant^[1] represents only a starting point in plurilingual and intercultural education.

Since 2001 most Italian schools of Bolzano have introduced different forms of plurilingual curricula but very few schools took into consideration ‘exogenous’ forms of multilingualism and multiculturalism.

The implementation of plurilingual and intercultural education involves  implications for the curriculum depending on context, on the role and position of languages in the school and in the environment, on the central and local institution and on the training of teachers.

[1] According to the South Tyrol’s Authonomy Statute, (1972) every South Tyrolean citizen has right to be taught in his own ‘mother tongue’ (L1) and in the second language (L2). Hence, there are schools with Italian language of schooling who teach German as L2, and schools with German language of schooling who teach Italian, as well as schools with Ladin – Italian – and German as equally distributed languages of schooling, in two Ladin-speaking valleys of the Province.

[2] Council of Europe, (2001), Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment, Strasbourg.

European Policy Framework

From the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (1992) to the recent Guide for the Development and Implementation of curricula for Plurilingual and Intercultural Education (2016), Europe is pursuing a ‘dual’ concept of inclusion: inclusion and appreciation of its historical already existing linguistic and cultural varieties and inclusion of the new repertories of all the pupils attending nowadays European schools.[1]

European policies will be considered, as those regarding intercultural competences (Unesco: 2013) and regarding language and intercultural education.[2]

School is for its own educational mission a privileged observatory to reflect on the need of changing perspective.

[1] Beacco, J.-C., (2005), Languages and language repertoires: plurilingualism as a way of life in Europe.

[2] Council of Europe, (2009), Plurilingual and intercultural education as a project.

Theoretical Framework

Drawing from the Bourdieu’s notions of cultural capital (Bourdieu: 1992), I will address the symbolic value of languages, considering its sociological effects in shaping the habitus of schools. Sociolinguistic concepts such as language hierarchy and language prestige (Kahane: 1986) as well as elements of intercultural education and intercultural competence regarding languages will shed light on linguistic dynamics in multicultural schools, especially considering current structures of superdiversity (Vertovec 2007) and transnational migration (Faist, Fauser, Reisenauer: 2013).

Research questions

I will try to give and share a definition of  plurilingual and intercultural education  then try to find a correspondence between this and the aims of plurilingual and intercultural education declared in the triennial planning of the Italian schools of the province of Bolzano in order to answer my first research question:

Is plurilingual education of Italian schools of Bolzano in accordance with what contained in European documents concerning multiple language education?

Languages are  strictly linked with their symbolic value and their prestige inside a community/nation.

I shall then try to investigate whether their planning contains explicit connections between the purposes of their linguistic education programs and those of the intercultural one. Being actually in charge of intercultural education at the Pedagogical Services Office in the Department of Education in Bolzano and being also a language teacher and researcher in applied linguistics, I am in the position of appreciating the convergence of both.

So that I find an answer to my second research question:

Are these plurilingual education programs  connected with intercultural education purposes, for example like social inclusion and development of intercultural competences?

Definitions of concept like social inclusion, social capital and intercultural competence are to be constantly reconsidered.

My study engages mixed methods, analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data. Main sources of data will be the collection of PTOF (public documents containing the school mission and its triennial educational planning) of Italian Schools of Bolzano (age 11-13; age 14-18) which grant access to school’s curricula, as well as quantitative data about Italian Schools, which will provide context for comparison purposes. The data analysis will comprise the thematic analysis of parts of triennial school planning referring to both language and intercultural education, and specifically: a. Whether and how schools declare as goal to offer both an intercultural and plurilingual education; b. whether and how schools give also explicit information about instruments, strategies and resources for developing and implementing plurilingual and multicultural education; c. whether and how schools cover in their language curriculum also linguistic and cultural repertoire of allophone pupils.

Expected outcomes At European institution level multiple language education purposes are intentionally integrated with those of intercultural education and also the new edition of CEFR emphasizes the section dedicated to plurilingualism and pluriculturalism , I expect so to find that the design of language education curricola of most Italian schools of Bolzano, because of the strong heterogeneity of their classrooms, are less oriented to ‘functional goals’ of language education and more oriented to promote: integration, inclusion, interaction, mutual comprehension and assumption of different point of views.

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