La rappresentazione della cultura arabo-islamica nei libri di storia per la scuola secondaria di primo grado. Uno sguardo particolare sull'immagine della donna musulmana

This research focuses on the representation of the Arabic-Islamic culture in the history textbooks of the first grade secondary school. The fact that the world today is characterized, more than ever, by continuous and inevitable encounters among people from different backgrounds requires a strong commitment to promote peaceful intercultural relations. For this purpose, it is believed that the contents of textbooks have an important role. Hence, the goal is to verify if the textbooks convey an effective education to know and to respect other cultures and religions, to promote intercultural dialogue; and to overcome ethnocentrism, stereotypes and prejudices. So, it was necessary to verify †" in the sample of textbooks examined †" the presence o any recurring prejudices, stereotypes and ethnocentric perspectives that can be constructed, consolidated, repeated and transmitted, consciously or unconsciously, through statements or images that illustrate the Arabic-Islamic culture. The first part of the thesis, the theoretical one, is dedicated to two themes: the first theme concerns the relationship between East and West and the representation of the others and the second theme concerns the status of Muslim women between stereotypes and reality. The second part, the empirical one, is dedicated to the qualitative content analysis of history textbooks. The analysis results show clear interest, by the authors and editors of the textbooks, for the theme of Arabic-Islamic culture. In spite of that, the texts may contain, although to different extents, stereotypes, generalizations and partial, inaccurate or incorrect information about the Arabic-Islamic culture and about Arabs or Muslims.