Initial teacher education (ITE) is becoming increasingly important to ensure that all students have an equitable, inclusive and high-quality school experience (EC, 2021) and learn to play an active role in today’s complex and multicultural society (Cochran-Smith, 2020; Kaur, 2012). Issues of intercultural education and social justice are central in an increasingly interconnected and globalised world (Aguado-Odina et al., 2017; Bhatti et al., 2007). But it needs to be studied in depth how to promote intercultural education in ITE curricula in such a way that future teachers can acquire an habitus focused on social justice and value the uniqueness of everyone, by avoiding the risk of falling into empty rhetoric about diversity (Leeman & Ledoux, 2003; Tarozzi, 2014) and taking into account teaching and learning methods.

Thus, it might be useful to discuss ITE, starting from university teaching, by proposing a change in traditional teaching methods to achieve this much-needed valorization of diversity and the construction of shared knowledge based on dialogue (Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2008). There is a need to move away from traditional delivery transmissive methods to participatory methods that effectively can engage future teachers in an intercultural dialogue and enable them to build their professionalism by deconstructing their ideals, perspectives and beliefs about diversity and their role in class and developing new interpretive lenses and teaching strategies to be effective in heterogeneous contexts. The process of questioning those implicit beliefs and knowledge and fostering complex professional interpretations must be supported (Stephens et al., 2022). In this way, a disorientation can be brought about that creates imaginative spaces for new scenarios of pedagogical action in the classroom and for professional identity (Ellis et al., 2019). Undertaking this process is precisely the basis for intercultural education, which is not only about acquiring knowledge and theoretical principles, but also about constructing and rethinking one’s own professional identity in dialogical contexts.

Our paper aims to contribute to this discussion by proposing to use collaborative philosophical dialogue following the model developed by Matthew Lipman (2003; 2008) to design courses in ITE on issues of intercultural and social justice in education in academic courses. Lipman’s approach has traditionally been used in schools to promote complex thinking (Kennedy, 2012), but its potential can also be used for ITE, especially to reflect on educational processes in heterogeneous and multicultural contexts. Indeed, it encourages the active participation of future teachers in the form of an inquiry exercise that allows them to give original interpretations and unexplored perspectives on the issues discussed and to develop an ethical stance through the confrontation with different perspectives (Oliverio, 2014; Santi et al, 2019). This process can trigger a virtuous circle between philosophical dialogue and intercultural education (Anderson, 2016), as prospective teachers develop the ability to question their own beliefs about education, move between different systems of meaning, and open up to shared contexts.

Our paper addresses this issue from a theoretical standpoint by discussing a case study conducted within a ITE course at the University of Turin (Italy), in which future teachers were engaged in community philosophical dialogues to develop, discuss and problematize some issues of intercultural education. In particular, we would like to encourage discussion on the following questions:

• How can Lipmanian philosophical practise be used and developed in ITE?
• How can it support the future teachers in building a social justice-oriented habitus?
• Could the application of this approach become a resource for ITE to address intercultural issues in terms of reflectivity?

The experience conducted in an ITE course at the University of Turin (Italy) takes the form of a case study (Hamilton & Corbett-Whittier, 2012). Community philosophical practise will be used implemented in some lectures or lessons according to Lipman’s model (2003). The collaborative reading of stimulus texts proposed encourages the formulation of questions on intercultural education. Then, these questions are analysed and organised according to the thematic strands to which they relate. In this way, a discussion plan is defined and shared by the group; thus, the dialogue begins and engage all the participant in an active way. The dialogue is concluded with a self-evaluation about dialogue mode and depth level. We will use a qualitative approach: data will be collected through the observation of community philosophical practice activities and the analysis of the dialogues in which the future teachers will be engaged. In particular, these dialogues will be recorded, transcribed and analysed in the manner of low-structured focus groups (Stewart & Shamdasani, 2014) through a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006): it will illuminate the intercultural themes on which the dialogues will focus. An original aspect of this ITE research process is the writing of specific pretexts to initiate philosophical dialogue. The use of this practise in ITE on intercultural issues has made it necessary to construct specific texts based on the indications of Lipman and those studies that deal with philosophical narratives (Oliverio, 2015), as well as on the PEACE curriculum (2015), designed for use with children and adolescents to develop skills in reflexive cosmopolitanism. Our pedagogical process is thus designed as a journey that aims to - test the effectiveness of the new materials by understanding whether they meet the requirements identified in the literature (presence of multiple strands of inquiry, presentation of multiple epistemic positions, raising questions on multiple thematic strands), thanks to the analysis of dialogic processes and the questions formulated by future teachers; - evaluate the effectiveness and impact on the ability to critically address intercultural issues by creating spaces where voices can be heard, problematizing your own relationship to diversity and changing the values and expectations of future teachers. The self-evaluation will be crucial to listen to the voices of the protagonists and understand their perceptions on the activity and effectiveness of using community philosophical practice in ITE to achieve the objectives related to intercultural education.

We expect that applying the philosophical practise of Lipman’s community will enable future teachers to challenge themselves in the co-construction of pedagogical ideals, to reflect on their tacit knowledge and beliefs about diversity, and to change their habitual perspectives on education through philosophical dialogue. On the one hand, focusing on intercultural and social justice issues through specifically written pretexts could enable the acquisition of knowledge related to the epistemological domains of the discipline in an active way by future teachers. On the other hand, community philosophical practice could facilitate a decentralisation on its part to better understand the other’s point of view and consequently better define one’s own point of view in light of the possibilities of encounter and exchange. Indeed, dialogue is a central tool of intercultural education: through community philosophical practice and they could internalise a habitus open to the other and to different perspectives. Therefore, we will present the voice of the participants and their ideas from the data that emerged from the thematic analysis and participant observation, discussing the opportunities and criticalities of this approach for ITE in intercultural education at university level.

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