In November 2009 the European Project entitled INSETRom ( IN-Service Training for Roma Inclusion) came to its conclusion and presented the outcomes of the teachers’ training course resulting from research on educational needs among teachers and Roma families in eight European countries,  the planning and implementation of training modules, and testing of course contents and methodology in various multicultural classrooms. In Italy, and specifically in a Turin school where a number of teachers had attended the training course that I organized, three students at the Master level and a doctoral one (Carla Bergonzini, Irene Martini, Federica Setti, Giorgia Peano) whom I all tutor are carrying out a follow up of INSETRom through ethnographic fieldwork that began at the re-opening of the school year and will continue until its end in early June. Their decision to study INSETRom multicultural classrooms where Roma pupils are enrolled stems from, and shares, the persistent concern – expressed by organizations such as the European network against Racism, the OSCE, FRA, the ERRC, Save the Children, the Open Society Institute and the Soros Foundation, the European Commission and the Council of Europe among others - about the lack of quality of education for Roma pupils, on the one hand, and, on the other, from their interest to understand how initiatives responding to teachers’ educational needs (as collected through INSETRom initial interviews)  can contribute to changing the culture of the school and classrooms, and improve understanding of school expectations and family education among teachers and Roma families, respectively, so as to promote successful learning of Roma pupils and greater cooperation with the families.

INSETRom had aimed to attain such goals by hypothesizing that the unsuccessful school experience of Roma children was not so much related to the Roma culture – as it is customarily indicated – but rather to the culture of the school and a stereotyped knowledge of Roma groups and cultures. Therefore, the four student researchers’ plan to do participant observation in different classrooms in order to understand the everyday educational routines and relations, and the effects on them of scholarly meetings on Roma culture and history, as well as classroom management, pedagogy and intercultural education approach, provides educationists (and teachers) with a great opportunity to reflect on the dialectics between schooling and enculturation, between teachers’ self-fulfilling “prophecies” and pupils’ strategies of accommodation and agency, between teachers’ positive educational initiatives and a complex institutional and cultural context reluctant to change its ways.

5. Gobbo F. (2009a), “<>”, in I. Bolognesi a cura di, Rom, Sinti e Gagé: culture, processi educativi e diritti, numero monografico di Educazione interculturale, vol. 7, n. 3, ottobre 2009, pp. 347-358. 6. Gobbo F. (2009b), “The INSETRom Project in Turin (Italy): outcomes and reflections”, in Symeou L., Luciak M., Gobbo F. eds., Teacher Training for Roma Inclusion: Implementation, outcomes and reflections of the INSETRom project, focus issue of Intercultural Education, vol. 20, n. 6, December, pp. 523-535 7. Gobbo F. (2010), “INSETRom, un progetto per l’inclusione degli alunni rom nelle classi multiculturali. Riflessioni e proposte”, in Madrudaga, n. 77, Marzo 2010 (forthcoming). 8. Gobbo F., Peano G. (2009), A European project for Roma pupils’ educational inclusion, paper presented at ECER 2009 (Vienna, Sept. 26-28, 2009). 10. Karagiorgi, Symeou, Gobbo a cura di (2009), INSETRom: un percorso per l'inclusione di alunni rom nelle classi multiculturali italiane. Questioni, indicazioni e materiali per la formazione degli insegnanti in servizio, Nicosia, European University (di prossima uscita)