The Intercultural workshop: challenges and innovations against persisting models for the education of Roma and Sinti students in Italy.

Author(s):

Federica Setti(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

07. Social Justice and Intercultural Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

07 SES 05 A, Researching Roma Education

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-11

11:00-12:30

Room:

D-302

Chair:

Dana Moree

Contribution

This paper is fruit of a two years ethnographic research in a Sinti and Roma family network and in a middle school of Trento in Trentino South-Tyrol, a North-eastern Italian region at the border with Austria. What innovations have been experimented in contemporary schools for the education of Sinti and Roma students? If special classes have left an heavy burden, to the older generations of Roma and Sinti parents, to see the school as a possible place of a useful education for their children, new models and innovations are present in some European schools today. In this paper I will analyze the model of the Intercultural workshop. If on one hand it is still present the reproduction of some features of the special classes in contemporary school, on the other hand I will highlight the innovations brought to school from this workshop, experimented in an Italian city. Teachers, Roma and Sinti’ creativity consists both in their capacity of changing their coping strategies from main classroom to the Intercultural workshop, in teaching and learning methods, as well as in the interactive models between Roma/Sinti and non-Roma/non-Sinti. Europe and especially Southern Europe is nowadays characterized by low resources for school projects sustaining Intercultural education and additional language learning, due to the Western world economic recession. Furthermore all over Europe has been spread the growth of anti-‘Gypsism’ and racist political movements, actions and laws. In this setting subjects’ creativity and agency is constrained within rigid limits and for this reason it is even more interesting looking at the glimmers of innovative interactions and teaching and learning modalities in the framework of Roma and Sinti education field. Indeed, it is important to highlight specific contexts in Europe where head teachers, teachers, parents and students’ creativity and innovative actions and projects have generated new positive interactions and new opportunities of education, in which both teachers, parents and students believe and truly participate.

Method

The researcher lived with a Sinti family and shared with them daily experience related to school, health and activities such as shopping, visits at the ‘Nomads’ camp (local site for Roma and Sinti), visits to the cemetery etc., for the first phase of the fieldwork. The chosen method of participant observation followed an ethnographic approach favouring an interactive participation both of the ethnographer in the Sinti family, as well as the Sinti family members in the researcher’s family. The ethnography of the school through the immersion of the researcher in a familiar reality thanks to a forced estrangement of her sight on it, followed the question ‘What is happening in this context? What the subjects do in relation to one another?’. It was assumed a role of adult and teacher ‘at the minimum’ interacting with students and teachers without assuming an authoritarian or judging role towards them. Three classrooms and the Intercultural workshop were observed for an academic year. As well, the researcher participated to school meetings between head teacher and teachers and between teachers and parents. The researcher organized a focus group at the beginning of the research and a restitution of the ethnography at the end of the academic year.

Expected Outcomes

It was observed a new experimentation of formal education on which both teacher, students and parents relayed. The Intercultural workshop was developed by the Integration section of the Trento Province Education office, for teaching Italian as additional language to students speaking other mother tongues. This workshop has revealed itself as an opportunity for a new, challenging and innovative education context against old and misleading formal education features. This innovation was not as much in the structure itself of the Intercultural workshop as in the creativity of the teacher, who has been leading it and her students. Indeed they have been able to transform that context in a fruitful and open space for learning for all the students, comprised in this case, Roma and Sinti students, too. This experimentation and the active participation in it of all the subjects involved, represent an interesting example in the field of study of European Roma and Sinti minorities’ education. Indeed, it was proposed by the school and supported by Sinti and Roma students and their families.

References

Boyle M. 1999, Exploring the Worlds of Childhood: The Dilemmas and Problems of the Adult Researcher, in Walford G., Massey A. (eds.) Studies in Educational Ethnography, vol. 2. London: Jai Press. Gay y Blasco P. & De La Cruz Hernandez L. 2012, Friendship, Anthropology, in Anthropology and Humanism, 37 (1), 1-14. Gobbo F. 2003, (eds.) Etnografia dell’educazione in Europa, Soggetti, contesti, questioni metodologiche [Ethnography of education in Europe]. Edizioni Unicopli: Milano. Gobbo, F. 2009, “INSETRom”. Un progetto europeo per la formazione delle insegnanti [An European project for teachers’ training], Educazione Interculturale, 7(3). Trento: Edizioni Erickson, 347-358. Gobbo F. 2011, Ethnographic Research in Multicultural Educational Contexts as a contribution to Intercultural Dialogue, in Policy Futures in Education, 9 (1), 36-42. Goffman E. 1959, The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday Anchor. Gomes A. M. 1996, Etnografia scolastica tra i sinti di Bologna: una descrizione preliminare [Ethnography of schooling among Sinti of Bologna] in L. Piasere, a cura di, Italia Romaní I. Roma: CISU, 93-117. Ogbu J. 1987, Variability in Minority School Performance: A Problem in Search of an Explanation, in Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 4 (18): 312-334. Piasere L., Saletti Salza C., Tauber E. 2003, L’educazione dei bambini sinti e rom: risultati preliminari di una ricerca europea [The education of Sinti and Roma children: preliminary results of a European research], in Scarduelli P. (Eds.) Antropologia dell’Occidente [Anthropology of Western world] Roma: Meltemi. Pollard A. 1982, A model of Classroom Coping Strategies, in British Journal of Sociology of Education, 1 (3): 19-37. Wax M. L. e Wax R. H. 1971, Great tradition, Little tradition and Formal education, in Diamond S., Gearing F. and Wax M. L. (eds.) Anthropological Perspectives on Education, London: Basic Books. Woods P. 1986, Inside Schools. Ethnography in Educational Research, London: Routledge.

Author Information

Federica Setti (presenting / submitting)

University of Turin

Philosophy and Education

Trento

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