We present our contribution on intercultural professionalism as the development of our dialogue within the collective wom.an.ed (women’s studies in anthropology and education) on different educational experiences of research that we envision as critical dialogue on our research process (Giorgis, Peano, Pescarmona, Sansoé & Setti, 2021; Leeman, Koeven & Schaafsma, 2018). We acknowledge that we are socio-culturally, geographically, historically situated selves, and therefore we consider intercultural professionalism as critical reflexivity about our personal and professional histories and experiences, and about how our social positioning shapes research processes. We thus envision intercultural professionalism as a constant process of learning and reflexivity based on and deduced from the research, a process that is not only about others, but also about ourselves.

Our research experiences are various and applied in different multicultural educational contexts – from elementary school to university. However, we share a common praxis based on a professional critical reflexivity that engages us, as researchers and educators, in analysing how we can contribute to acknowledge the different diversities – status, class, gender, race, disability – without reproducing inequalities, thus orientating our research into transformative and emancipatory educational actions in the direction of more equitable learning environments. As a common thread, we take (auto)ethnography (Reed-Dahaway, 1997; Roth, 2005; Allen-Collins, 2013) as we believe it is a methodology that grounds and sustains such a critical reflexivity so that it can be fruitfully applied to investigate our own involvement in the research process (Gobbo, 2004; Hopkins, 1993). Indeed, we think that the ethnographic perspective is a resource for addressing, reading, researching and interpreting complex, dynamic, and multicultural educational contexts. Within such a framework, we think that ethnography and a critical approach to interculture cooperate to promote and enact social justice (Bhatti, Gaine, Gobbo, & Leeman, 2007) by fostering a constant and committed dialogue between the different contexts and the different actors who participate in the research process.

Our contribution to the Panel will be thus based on the presentation of different experiences, research and case studies, to show how our educational research based on ethnographic methodology gains insights from the research process itself, shaping our own involvement in a critical way. We believe that our presentation can offer a potential contribution to research on pedagogical choices and educational policies in general, questioning practices and forms of organization sometimes assumed uncritically, opening the way to reflections and subsequent research, and fostering an impulse to innovation and improvement of the inclusive capabilities within diverse educational environments.

Allen-Collinson, J. (2013). Autoethnography as the engagement of self/other, self/culture, self/politics, self/futures. In S. Holman Jones, T.E. Adams, & C. Ellis (Eds.). Handbook of Autoethnography (pp. 281-299). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Bhatti, G., Gaine, C., Gobbo, F. & Leeman, Y. (Eds.). (2007). Social Justice and Intercultural Education: an open-ended dialogue. Sterling: Trentham Books. Giorgis P., Peano G., Pescarmona, I., Sansoé R. & Setti F. (2021). Within different perspectives. Critical Experiences in Education, Interculture and Ethnography. New York: Dio Press. Gobbo, F. (2004). L’insegnante come etnografo: idee per una formazione alla ricerca [The teacher as ethnographer: suggestions for a research training]. In G. Favaro & L. Luatti (Eds.), L’intercultura dalla A alla Z [Intercultural education from A to Z] (pp. 126-135). Milano: Franco Angeli. Hopkins, D. (1993). A teacher’s guide to classroom research. Buckingham: Open University Press. Leeman, Y., Koeven, van E. & Schaafsma, F. (2018). Inter-professional collaboration in action research. Educational Action Research 26 (1): 9-24. Reed-Danahay, D. (Ed) (1997). Auto/Ethnography. Rewriting the Self and the Social. Oxford: New York: Berg. Roth, W. -M. (ed.) (2005). Auto/Biography and Auto/Ethnography: Praxis of Research Method. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.