Decision-making processes, conflict and coordination in Italian schools in the era of distance education

This article is aimed to disentangle how the emergency transition to online education was coped by Italian school during the first lockdown (March-May 2020) related to the Covid-19 outbreak. In particular, combining two bodies of literature - Sociological New Institutionalism and Science and Technology Studies - we focus on the organizational solutions schools adopted in emergency, and on the consequences of a sudden introduction of technology-mediated education. We maintain that organizational choices, school climate, coordination, conflict and work-related stress were influenced by pre-existing individual (digital skills and professional attitudes) and organizational (school governance and leadership) factors. To explore these issues, we used an original study - a web survey of over 2,000 Italian teachers in every stage of the Italian education system, that was administered between April and May 2020. Our findings show that individual level features (digital skills, age, education, career) count as much as some structural dimensions (e.g. the type of school). Nevertheless, such features are mediated by relevant organizational dimensions. In particular, stress and conflicts were limited where roles for digital transformation were already in place, and where school leaders were perceived to adopted less hierarchical and more coordinated leadership styles.

Interculturalism, multiculturalism and Italianness: The case of Italy

Until the 1970s, Italy’s population trajectory had demonstrated a clear propensity to be an emigrating nation. Over its almost 150-year history, it had witnessed four major phases of outward migration which had defined this country and created large diasporas across the globe. However, major changes began occurring to this demographic trajectory. It saw the unexpected arrival of large numbers of migrants from mostly poorer nations which it only reluctantly acknowledged. But, Italy was both unprepared and unconvinced to respond to this new phenomenon of incoming migration. Even though many of its European neighbours began to engage with this new and wider multicultural paradigm emerging in the 1980s, this multicultural approach never took hold in Italy. At the same time segments of the Italian education system were obliged to tackle recently arrived large numbers of migrants and their children requiring integrated models of education. While the political elites sought to remain immobile with large numbers of incoming immigrants, schools and educational institutions had little choice. Unfortunately, as this paper will demonstrate, this approach was mostly limited to the area of education. Although Interculturalism received a boost from its European Union promotion in 2008, it remained largely an activity exercised within the domain of public education. Fundamentally multiculturalism, like interculturalism were never officially embraced in Italy. While some sectors of society constructively engaged with interculturalism arguably as a different and more developed idea than multiculturalism, Italy and its policymakers continue to avoid engagement with migrant integration models whatever they be.

Interculturalism, education and society: Education policies for immigrant students in Italy

The article seeks to illustrate Italian educational policies for students with an immigrant background within the context of the EU intercultural framework. Italy can be considered the EU country where interculturalism is more widely recognized in terms of pedagogical theory and school legislation. However, the Italian approach is characterized by a weak and contradictory relationship between policy, teaching strategies and educational experiences. To support this argument, I will refer to a review of Italian sociological studies, which demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of the interculturalism as applied to the Italian education system. The conflict between theory and practices is illustrated by empirical findings that suggest immigrant students are still not granted equality of opportunity, linguistic and cultural diversities are almost absent from most school curricula, and a positive dialogue between culturally different subjects is still more of an aspiration than a fact. More research is needed in order to monitor and evaluate if intercultural practice is indeed a true expression of the ideas to which it aspires.

The Language of Cinema Fosters the Development of Soft Skills for Inclusion and Interdisciplinary Learning

This chapter presents research on an Italian education project implemented with immigrant students attending C.P.I.A. courses in Bergamo (Centro Provinciale Istruzione Adulti – Provincial Adult Education Center). This contribution proposes an educational experience characterized by an interactive approach among different disciplines. The title of the project was Cinema as a resource for enhancing interdisciplinary teaching and learning by harnessing knowledge and skills from across different subject areas: from Italian language to geography and history, and from science and maths to the visual arts. Over the four years of the project, film was used in multiple ways as a tool/resource for teaching-learning focused on developing school inclusion. The overall aims of the project were to incorporate the cinema into the construction of an interdisciplinary teaching/learning path, while seeking to integrate theory and praxis within a collaborative professional development and research model. The project activities were designed in keeping with EU recommendations on core competences for ongoing learning. From 2006 to 2018, the European Parliament and Council approved a set of “Recommendations on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning,” that is to say, knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will help learners find personal fulfilment and, later in life, find work and take part in society. The project was also informed by recent Italian legislation encouraging the use of cinema in education, particularly Law 14 November 2016, No. 220, containing “Discipline of Cinema and Audiovisual” and the Law 13 July 2015, No. 107, the school reform framework “La BuonaScuola.”

Educational Robotics in Informal Contexts: An Experience at CoderDojo Pomezia

The project aims to develop technical skills in primary school students. Technical courses are usually not popular among schoolchildren. With the introduction of the National Plan for Digital Education (PNSD) by Italian Education Ministry since 2015, words like coding, robotics and computational thinking are used more frequently in primary school classrooms. CoderDojo is a worldwide movement working to introduce children to robotics and computer science. As CoderDojo Pomezia, we prepared a number of activities to encourage students’ interest in computational thinking and robotics, and to improve their skills. In recent years, we have held several workshops for primary school students. The workshops have involved activities such as programming robotics kits, using robotics with six-year-olds, programming videogames, modelling 3D objects. The activities always have a hands-on approach. Over 100 primary schoolers have participated in the workshops. We have also held workshops to train teachers to introduce these technical skills in their classrooms. This paper presents the work of CoderDojo Pomezia to train children and demonstrate how students have improved their technical and social skills.

Italian education’s view of cinema: from suspicion to media education

From the outset, Italian education has been interested in the message of films and cinema’s power of persuasion. Prior to the advent of television, education viewed cinema with suspicion for the alleged damage it caused to the minds of young people. Later, it would view cinema as a means of fascist ideological propaganda. From the 1920s onwards, schools would use cinema as a teaching aid through the so-called “educational cinema”. Since 1960, schools have aimed to teach formal analysis and film content. On the threshold of the new millennium, the revolution in school autonomy obliged every educational institution to independently manage the financial resources allocated to them. This involved the arrival in schools of external experts who were entrusted with media education: they were supported by an internal tutor while the school coordinated the professionals who spe-cialized in cinema; meanwhile the subject teacher entered the Internet era with the innovation of the interactive whiteboard, assuming the role of multimedia author. Thus began the training of teachers within schools, who were registered on the national list of Visual Education Workers.

The «New School» of Basilicata in Mid-twentieth Century. Arturo Arcomano’s Contribution for a Different Education in Southern Italy

This article falls within a branch of studies aimed at highlighting the experiences of some neglected protagonists of Italian education through their professional writings. Indeed, school journals and records give an insight into the transformations that the teaching profession and school culture have undergone throughout the years. From such a historiographical perspective, this contribution highlights the «new school» experiment carried out by the teacher Arturo Arcomano (1927-2007) in a small town in Basilicata, a region of Southern Italy, in the mid-twentieth century. By looking at the material held in the private archive of this educator, scholar, professor and politician, particularly his school journals, as well as at the notebooks and school papers produced by his pupils, we can get a sense of the «new life» breathed through the school of Roccanova, where Arcomano applied the teaching methodologies that were becoming popular in those years, like the use of free writing and Freinet’s printing press at school. The Arcomano case study enables us to understand both the resistance and the push towards this experimentation, which was based on a «different» pedagogical culture, and action intended to fit the environmental context. The use of the sources that can be found in Arcomano’s personal archive on the one hand enables us to define the human and professional profile of the teacher, and on the other, contributes to the reconstruction of the renovation process that affected education in Southern Italy in the mid-twentieth century.