Teaching in our Society: Primary Teachers and Intercultural Competencies

Living in a context marked by pluralism and heterogeneity is never straightforward, even less so if you belong to a marginalised part of society, in terms of social status, culture and religion. The processes that lead to social exclusion take effect in the first years of a child’s life and too often they are formalised in the school system. In Italy, research data and statistics reveal a deep-rooted disparity in the academic trajectories of students from a migrant background when compared with what we might term “native” students. Since the reduced level of attainment of such “non-Italian” students is already noticeable in primary school, where the formal process of acquiring the language skills required in education takes place, we decided to work with teachers from this level of schooling to discover if, and in what way, they have the skills and training required to teach such students. The teachers chosen had taught in multicultural classes for a total of at least five years. Hoping to ascertain whether these teachers employed intercultural competencies in their teaching practice – and if so, which ones – we selected a method based on the narration of a problem situation encountered during their time in teaching. To date, fifty teachers have been interviewed. Analysis of the interviews reveals a heterogeneous reality, with some teachers displaying new forms of sensitivity and cultural competence in response to a changing world and a changing school population, while others seem entrenched in an outdated mindset.