Conference Program

Topic, research question, theoretical framework

According to coloniality theory in the European project of world domination, a central role was given to the domination of subjectivities, culture, and knowledge. Walking along this path, drawing on authors working from a decolonial standpoint (Quijano, 1992; Dussel, 2000; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018), “epistemologies of the South” (Santos, 2007, 2014), and prospectivism (Viveiros de Castro, 2017), the present contribution propose a theoretical explanation of the academic difficulties encountered by non-dominant students (we refer i.e., to people of color, with migrant backgrounds, Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003), in Western school system.

Often, students whose strengths differ from those recognised by the curriculum and in society are considered in terms of what they do not know, relative to the education system’s established standards (Levinson, 2011). They (and their knowledge) become invisible (Ellison, 2014; Anzaldua, 2012). The school system's view of them is clouded by deficit thinking perspectives (Paris & Ball, 2009; Shields et al., 2005; Valdés, 1996, Yosso, 2005). According to this theory, minority students and their families are mainly responsible for their possible failure at school (Olivos, 2006; Bishop, 2008; Irvine & York, 1993). I hypothesize that the “coloniality of knowledge” (Quijano, 1992) provided fertile ground for the development and spread of deficit thinking theory in education system (Author, 2023).

Research question and method

Reflecting on the concept of the ‘coloniality of knowledge’ developed by Anibal Quijano (1992) which is central to decolonial literature, I interrogated the literature through the following question: is there a connection between the deficit thinking approach to education and the ‘coloniality of knowledge’ structure of power?

The path I took to try to answer the above question was a theoretical one, based on a traditional literature review (Pope, Mays & Popay, 2007). Despite the limitations of a traditional literature review implies, it can contribute to new understandings and conceptualisations. In this context, it enabled the development of an explanatory theory that may help us to understand the persistence of deficit thinking in Western school systems where students are still oppressed by the “Euro-American ‘regime of truth’” (Ladson-Billing, 2000).

Findings & Conclusion

According to coloniality theory, the domination of culture, subjective experience and knowledge was a key part of the European project of global domination. The “non-white” other and his/her subjectivity and knowledge were studied, classified and presented to the white world through “scholarly” research - that was an instrument of colonisation practices (Denzin & Lincoln, 2008) - which judged to be less civilized. This theory shines a light on the absolutism of Western rationalism, which casts positivist science as the sole, valid knowledge form for distinguishing “true” from “false”. We argue that rationalist scientific absolutism continues to provide the epistemological foundation of schooling, education and teacher-training systems. The knowledge school offers is therefore the expression of a privileged and ultimately contemptuous point of view towards 'other' subjects and their epistemological perspectives, assigning them a “marginal” position in the school spaces.

The disciplinary note fits within the daily school routine of the professional technical institutes as a recurrent practice. Apparently functional to the regulation of behaviors that place themselves in implicit or explicit conflict with the educational institution, the note assumes within the circular teacher-student-institution relationship a different, transversal and a more profound meaning.
Disciplinary notes are therefore treated in this study as a cultural capital that the institution unknowingly generates on a daily basis. It is a school practice from which emerges the continuous definition, discussion, ratification of the relationships, the roles, the subjectivities, the emotional experiences of the actors involved in the educational process. As old, forgotten photographs, the disciplinary notes therefore reveal bits and pieces of lived life; they are permeated with the feelings and the actions that the school has seen occurring in its spaces, in the ritual routine that defines it, day after day (Mc Laren 1986). Through them, it will thus be possible to trace a "school condition": the practices by which schoolwork is distorted, sabotaged, and made fundamentally ineffective (Caroselli 2022); the exercise of pedagogical authority as power (Goffman 1967); the definition of subjectivities according to precise behavioral codes that define normativity with the aim of "providing a good education for the oppressed" (Bukowski 2019) by expelling to the margins those who prove to be inadequate.
Based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a data set of approximately 5,000 disciplinary notes issued to the students within a professional technical institute of Bologna from 2021 to 2023, the study aims to investigate and classify this material with the purpose of identifying and illustrating the processes of defining subjectivities within the school environment on the one hand, and the nature of conflicts and their recursiveness on the other.

The contribution examines the project paths of two schools (the Pisacane Primary School in Rome and the Seventh Comprehensive Institute in Padua) that seek to counter the increasingly significant alliance between the conservative school of control and discipline and the neoliberal school that promotes individualism, competitiveness, and productivity, propped up by a positivist system of measurement and quantification.

These are two emerging paths of educational emancipation that also seek to counteract a dual process of stigmatization, as institutes located in peripheral territorial contexts of their cities and with a significant component of migrant students (Pacchi and Ranci, 2017).

The research work, rejecting a traditional "extractive" research model that presupposes a radical separation between scholars and the phenomena studied, involved teachers and parents as protagonists of these processes, in the co-construction of the research and the continuous discussion of its results, to build a symmetrical relationship as a way of constructing common knowledge to be mobilized in emancipatory social practices (Massari and Pellegrino, 2020).

In both cases studied, new subjectivities have emerged to form a fragmented and conflictual field that is highly experimental and of great interest. An auto-organized community of practices has been created, starting from giving space and visibility to the reflective capacity of teachers and parents (also of foreign origin) and recognizing the active role played by other territorial subjects (such as local associations and cooperatives) and by the students themselves (more or less explicitly referring to the so-called active pedagogy). These communities of practices (Wenger et. al., 2002) have also promoted the construction of local and extralocal networks among different schools that support the transition from a model of competing schools to a model of schools collaborating with others to build territorial alliances and opportunities for mutual learning, as well as to build new projects and advocacy paths.

The research also focuses on the spatial and temporal dimensions of these pathways and in particular: a) on the importance attached to the spatial and territorial aspects through which emancipation practices are realised to overcome a mentalist, de-materialised and anthropocentric perspective (e.g. relevance of socio-material assemblages - Fenwick and Landri, 2012 - and atmospheres of learning spaces to co-generate collaborations, experimentation and mutual learning; centrality of spatial capital and thus rediscovery of unused spaces both within school buildings and in the neighbourhood and city); b) on new conceptions of time and temporality in school and education that challenge the current production of standardised and alienating times, as well as limited to traditional school hours, to promote a school capable of giving space to the ‘here and now’ of the learning and experimentation experience and of opening up the school beyond the current time limits (even in the afternoons and weekends) to make it an open and relevant space of democracy especially in territories with few public spaces as in the two case studies.