RESEARCH PROGRAMME
Training, curriula and tools for learning in the multicultural society.
Scientific Coordinator of the research project: Alba Porcheddu
Key words:
INTERCULTURAL INTEGRATION AND EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT; SCHOOL ORGANIZATION
INNOVATIVE APPROACH; NARRATIVE AND BIOGRAFY; COMMUNICATION SKILLS;
CULTURAL MEDIATOR; MULTIMEDIA SHELF
The organization of present-day society seems to require mainly language and communication skills, the
ability to resolve problems, and the ability to think critically and independently; moreover, it seems that it is
the responsability of schools and education to create a responsible citizen, or rather to develop skills and
values (tolerance, solidarity, respect for the others) associated with this type of political and educational
undertaking. The school in a society characterized by the economic and marketplace globalization, by
scientific and technological innovations, by the even more important role of information and social and
cultural trasformations, must provide students with the tools necessary for maximum personal development
and effective integration into the social, cultural and economic dynamics of contemporary society.
Educational programs are built on this premise, and they map out the basic cultural structures that are
necessary for the development of one’s ability to understand, communicate, perform, make decisions, plan
and choose the future, and initiate the processes of cultural, social and professional integration.
The research workshop will start with an analysis of curricular innovations and will carry out a sample
analysis of school and educational curricula, singling out the methodologies utilized in complex fields for the
development of “realistic and useful” skills in a multicultural society.
We will give space to story-telling and to the methodology of biography. In particular, these conceptual tools
be tested (with the validation of their efficiency) as vectors (facilitators) of discussions that offer those who
are in the training stage the opportunity to measure themselves with a multiple, polysemic, credible meaning,
which are independent at least in the strict sense, from verifiable truths, which, however, belong to human
knowledge and prove to be correspondent to criteria of coherence and practicality.
Our main objective is to establish the criteria that lead to narrative interpretations with regard to human,
social and cultural events and to indicate the tools necessary for understanding the complexity of producing
meaning, reflect on how much has been learned and the way it was learned.
In particular this research Unit will show how reading, stories and the library can:
- Help children and adults in multicultural societies to discover the diversity among cultures;
- Contribute to creating a culture in which is possible to live together with diversity;
- Enrich opportunities for growth, with tolerance for diversity, in the school system;
- Explore the dimension of published materials aimed at teachers and students with the objective of
pointing out the criteria needed for building a multimedia “shelf” based on a multicultural theme.
It is not necessary, however, to prepare a list on web pages but rather to create fresh tool that, starting with
an appropriate selection of materials (books, periodicals, literary publication etc.), have been re-worked
synthetically and on teaching method basis, will facilitate the comparison and exchange among cultures that
are diverse from that in which one lives and acts, emphasizing the selection of those elements that are
essential for developing an educational intervetion with an intercultural nature. These re-working,
appropriately illustrated and placed on the Internet, will constitute for teachers and students a “virtual”
cultural mediator until the figure of a “real” cultural mediator can be introduced.
This research project is embedded in a broader national research project, entitled: “Educational and social
implication in the multicultural society”.
RESEARCH PROGRAMME
Educational and social implication in the multicultural society
Scientific Coordinator of the national research project: Alba Porcheddu
ABSTRACT
The project is based on the certainty that communication must be encouraged by a pedagogy of change and
innovation, so as to facilitate the circularity, interaction and intentionality of cultural messages in a
multicultural society.
The main object of the programme will be to find a way of identifying new curricula, teaching methods and
human resources, on the basis of the theoretical studies prevailing in the educational sector, so as to modify
the paradigmatic approach to education and training in a multicultural society.
The research programme is based on three themes:
1. Training, curricula and tools for learning in the multicultural society;( Unit: Univ. Rome 3, Education
sciences, prof. A.Porcheddu)
2. Identity, multiculture, training: relationships and implication;(Unit: Univ. L’Aquila, Teaching Sciences,
prof. M. Cavalieri)
3. Communication and multiculturality: training courses and tools for teaching in a prison environment, in
order to promote communication and reintegration in society.( Unit: Univ. Rome 3, Lifelong education,
prof. M.G. Casadei)
In particular, the project aims to identify and define criteria for setting up “multicultural multimediashelves”,
for the purposes of training, and a “window of dialogue on the teaching of innovation and change in adult
education”, drawn up together by the faculties of Teacher Training of several universities, in Italy and
elsewhere (L’Aquila, Rome, Zagabria etc.), to be published on the Internet. In the absence of real cultural
mediators, who should be introduced into institutes of education and training, as outlined at a technical level
in the programme, these will lay down the premises for the said role and represent it on the virtual plane.
KEY WORDS
MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY; CURRICULA, CULTURAL MEDIATION; DIVERSITY; NARRATION
AND BIOGRAPHY; SCHOOL ORGANIZATION STAFF; INTERNATIONAL FRAME OF
REFERENCE; MULTIMEDIA SHELF; WEB DIFFUSION
RESEARCH PROGRAMME OBJECT
……….
The European Community States, in its white paper on education and training entitled “Towards the
cognitive society”, said that education and training promote social integration, personal development, the
establishment of common values, the perpetuation of the cuòtural heritage and the learning of autonomy. But
it is still necessary to identify pedagogical and didactic shapes and models that can be used to tackle the
cultural transition, reduce the vulnerability of the users (who are the co-protagonists in this transition) and
define the new professional figures required: multicultural mediators, learning facilitators, tutors, learning
planners.
Our aim is therefore to make an interpretative review of the criteria and tools brought into play by the debate
on multicultural training, carried out in collaboration with universities and institutions, both national and
international (UNESCO, Ceis, Caritas etc.), which are studying the problem.
The theoratical context in which the programme lies is that which sees the revision of the curricula and the
use of story-telling as pedagogical-didactictools which are essential for setting in train the processes of
cultural and social integration.
In a society distinguished by the globalization of the economy and markets, by scientific and technological
discoveries, by the all-pervading role of information and by social changes, the school, in planning its
curriculum, must endeavour to draw up a map of the basic cultural structures necessary for students to
develop their ability to understand, do, make decisions, plan and choose the future, as well as launching
inegration processes in the spheres of culture, welfare and employment.
The object is to elaborate criteria that help students to interpret human, social and cultural events in the form
of a narrative and to identify tools that make it easier for them to understand the complex process of making
sense of what they have learnt and reflecting on the way in which it has been learnt. Acting and
collaborating, discussing with others, imagining the causes of an event, taking responsability for an
explanation or an interpretation are the various essential premises of the ability to reconstruct a story, which,
with its general rules (from the present critical situation, to the violation of legitimitate expectation, to the reestablishment of legality) seem to call for research into the characteristics of intercultural training and the
need to evaluate its impact.