Competenze interculturali a scuola. Indagine con insegnanti di Verona e provincia

The literature analysis has shown that in the current, complex and multicultural society, anyone who aims to become a competent and expert citizen has to have knowledge, skills and attitudes to face the global processes in which he/she is involved. Among social institutions, school has represented a sort of "test bench" for teachers that have to be able to deal with differences and complexities. This evolution requires a new teacher profile, a professional that can’t rely only on traditional working virtues such as diligence, cleverness and creativity, but also has to have complete intercultural competences. This thesis – of exploratory nature and carried out on a non-representative group of (female) teachers – aims to point out and describe how teachers of different school degrees inside and outside Verona define the concept of “intercultural competence” and explain their practices in order to improve them. Here is the research question: which practices do teachers consider exercise of their intercultural competences? This question has raised some other issues, such as: which reasons and goals lead teachers to exercise these intercultural competences? What is the relation between school teachings and intercultural competences promotion and use? Furthermore: what is the relation between intercultural competences exercised in the classroom and theories and models proposed by scientific and institutional literature? Symbolic interactionism has been chosen as epistemic approach because it fits best research needs as it emphasizes the deliberateness, the awareness of the interactive behaviour and, above all, its relation to the context in which it is generated. The methodology used is qualitative and it has implied a sort of “triangulation” in which semi-structured interviews, focus groups and an extended observation period in three different classrooms in Verona have been used to try to understand and analyse teachers’ intercultural competences, especially through the analysis of critical situations in everyday life in which the multicultural match is dense and demanding. These tools have been supported by the parallel drawing up of a research diary in which ethnographic notes have been collected and divided into: descriptive, methodological, emotional and theoretical. Analytical work on the collected data has then required further readings, the identification of recurring issues that over time have turned into categories of analysis, the extrapolation of meaningful passages and an overall analysis of expressive and discursive forms. The analysis doesn’t always concern notions roundly expressed by teachers, but instead observations and reflections arising from a data interpretation (a sort of “labels” concerning data analysis that are ascribed according to the theoretical framework). These elements have then been divided into three types of knowledge: technical and cultural knowledge (knowledge): cultural knowledge, verbal and non-verbal knowledge, social skills knowledge, self-awareness; character characteristics (attitude): openness (and its related concepts), patience/perseverance, sensitiveness – empathy, congruence; “to know about practice” (skills): to be able to promote other cultures, to be able to work in team – to be able to create a community (to be able to involve oneself and other people, motivate oneself and other people, mediate), to be able to promote continuity, to be able to manage the available resources and make methodological-didactic reviews, to be able to communicate, to be able to create comfortable and inclusive contexts, to be able to do action research – to be able to document and promote changes (e.g. educational reforms). The connection between macro-areas, each representing a fundamental dimension, shows the semantic and operative complexity of the concept of “intercultural competence”. Some critical elements have also come out: difficulties related to relational dynamics; an often inadequate school organizational framework (in terms of methodological-didactic, curricular and time, resources and space management choices); more attention for cognitive curricula rather than relational-socio-emotional ones; lack of reflexivity, and communicative forms that can lead to exclusion; small investment in intercultural training. This thesis ends with a reflection on the identified critical aspects and with the elaboration of training strategies and methods –in terms of solutions proposals and useful pedagogical tools built on the correspondence between theory and daily teaching practice – aimed to enhance and develop teachers and future teachers’ intercultural competences.