The Children of Mixed Couples in the Postdigital Age: When Digital and Intercultural Competences Come Together
Stefano Pasta, Michele Marangi
Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan, Italy
This study is situated within the Postdigital Intercultures, that is a field of research in which the challenge of living together, education for citizenship, and social relations both among individuals and of individuals with societies and their structures, are studied in relation to the everyday intertwining of socio-cultural heterogeneity/complexity and a plurality of languages and environments that are connected to postdigital transformations (Pasta, Zoletto, 2023; Jandric et al., 2023).
Beginning with the concept of "digital educational poverty" (Marangi, Rivoltella, Pasta, 2022; 2023), the study reflects on digital skills and differences based on socioeconomic factors using the Depend tool (Digital Educational Poverty in Educative Networking and Development). This tool was developed by the Research Center on Media, Innovation and Technology Education (Cremit) of the Catholic University and tested in the Digital Connections project (2021-2024), involving 99 schools integrating the fight against digital educational poverty into the civic education curriculum for the second and third year of middle school.
The concept of digital educational poverty results from the hybridization of two perspectives in defining digital competence (Pasta, Marangi, Rivoltella, 2021): the "rights" perspective (Digital Competences 2.1 and 2.2) and that of "New Literacies" (Rivoltella, 2020), which focuses on the dynamism and transdisciplinarity of competencies (Buckingham, 2020) and the concept of Dynamic Literacies (Potter, McDougall, 2017). Depend calculates the Digital Competence Score (PCD) with 12 indicators related to four learning dimensions: understanding (technical knowledge; rules; filtering data, information, and digital content), being (digital creativity; narrative skills; protecting digital identity), living together (netiquette and cyberstupidity; algorithmic logics; collaborative knowledge), and for an autonomous and active life (citizenship: using the web for good causes; sharing information; critical thinking).
Through the survey of the Digital Competence Score (PCD) submitted to 6,415 respondents in 2022-23, it emerges that the results of children of mixed couples surpass those of children with both parents born abroad and those with both parents born in Italy. From this perspective, the article focuses on the children of mixed couples, providing a socio-cultural snapshot with attention to technological uses, and theorizes the elements of mutual enrichment between digital and intercultural competences (Granata, 2011; 2015).
Dynamism, the need for contextualization, and the collective component are the three elements that, within the framework of "Onlife Citizenship" (Pasta, Rivoltella, 2022), unite digital and intercultural competences, approached also, in the sense of Bourdieu's cultural capital, by a declination that considers the variables that intervene to co-determine situations and strives not to apply linear and deterministic models for assessing competences.
Help! Where Do I Start? The Starting Phase of School Writing: How To Overcome the Fear Of The Blank Page
Manuela Roccia
Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy
Text-writing competence is a challenging objective that is taught as early as primary school (Indicazioni Nazionali, 2012).
When observing writing skills as a process (Hayes, Flower, 1980, Hayes et al.1987; Hayes, 1996), the initiation start phase of composition represents a moment of solicit by the teacher and a moment of great tension for the pupil when faced with the blank page. The student should concentrate on reading and understanding the prompt, collecting ideas related to the given topic, organizing them, and then beginning to write.
The hypothesis is that proposals can either hinder or facilitate the design phase (Bereiter, Scardamalia, 1987; Scardamalia, Bereiter, 1991). They can therefore prove to be a useful variable in offering equal writing opportunities to all students (European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education, 2012).
After identifying historical developments and current textbook proposals (Roccia, 2024), we intend to explore strategies to create pathways to support the ideational phase of writing and suggests ways to improve writing skills based on different learning needs.
To respond to the complexity of the classes, the writing suggestions are based on multimodality and multimedia (Prensky, 2001; Cortiana, 2020; Dota, Polimeni, Prada, 2022). Proposed writing prompts are illustrated that are aimed at carrying out a real task for a specific audience (Benvenuto, 2020).
The contribution provides therefore a historical analysis of school practices, critiques the writing instruction method (Della Casa, 1994; Boscolo, 2002; Colombo, 2002), and finally suggests models of problem-based learning that prioritize the student (GISCEL, 1975) and taking to consideration to the complexity of classes.
Wellbeing at School Between Different Languages and Family Cultures
Silvia Sordella
Università di Torino, Italy
In the pursuit of the well-being at the school, students with migratory background must always build and rebuilt a balance between different languages and cultures. Frequently, the Italian school provides a pedagogical model that is geared towards monoculturalism and monolingualism and moreover the different linguistic disciplines live in the curriculum as different solitudes (Cummins 2008).
Like the aspects of various family cultures, the linguistic heritage of children of foreign origin also struggles to find its place in school. However, banning heritage cultures and languages from the school context may send a negative message to pupils and their parents about the family's language identity (Van Gorp, K., & Verheyen, S. 2024) as well as on their own learning skills. For these reasons, while it's challenging, it's necessary to keep migrant families involved in school life.
The role of families with respect to the scholastic success of students is the subject of many studies (Jeynes 2005; Fan & Chen 2001) especially in situations where the socio-background and the culture of the country in which the learning processes develop are different from that in which parents grew up and were formed (Jeynes 2003; Andorno & Sordella 2022).
The proposed intervention will seek to identify the areas that could benefit from a triangular collaboration between teachers, pupils, and parents, focused especially on the enhancement of the linguistic and cultural heritage of families.
From interviews with teachers about the possibility of doing language education with a multilingual approach, different ways to enhance multilingualism by including families in school learning paths will be discussed. Through the methodological approach of the conversation analysis (Sacks, Schegloff, Jefferson 1974) it will be shown how the attitude towards the school experience can change, even momentarily, thanks to the occasions when a child can enter school their own language and family culture. The presentation will show situations of Language Awakening (Sordella 2022) where the parental role of foreign families receives positive recognition with respect to their linguistic and cultural (De Carvalho 2000).
Analyzing the results of the comparison between teachers on language education activities in a multilingual perspective and the difficulties faced in profitably exploiting parental resources, further ways of working will be defined to jointly design new educational pathways. The requests that are sent to immigrant parents are often too far from their understanding of school and their possibilities, how may in certain cases be the request to attend class meetings or the request to support the children in the performance of tasks and study (Fox 2016). Instead, situations will be identified in which the school itself could take a first step towards families (Lopez 2004), offering them an adequate space to contribute to language education with the resources that families themselves recognize, both linguistically and culturally.
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