Conference Program

Educational poverty is not only a matter of access to schooling but also of the quality of knowledge and competences that students acquire (Argentin et al. 2017; Ardeni, 2018; Pensiero, Gancola and Barone, 2019; Giancola and Salmieri, 2023). Historical competency, in particular, encompasses the critical ability to interrogate and evaluate sources, a skill increasingly vital in digital environments saturated with misinformation and low-quality content. Developing students’ capacity to navigate such complex information landscapes is essential for fostering informed citizenship and civic responsibility (Armitage and Guldi, 2016; Pisanty, 2019; Prosperi, 2021).

Despite this, history teaching in many Italian schools rarely covers contemporary topics, often neglecting structured engagement with primary sources and historiographical materials (Talarico, 2023). This pedagogical gap risks perpetuating cultural deprivation and reinforcing patterns of social reproduction (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1970). Addressing it requires not only increasing the instructional time devoted to history, particularly in technical and vocational tracks, but also providing teachers with professional development in source-centered approaches often lacking in their university training (De Bernardi, 2023).

This presentation examines these issues through exploratory research based on a qualitative analysis of final reports from class councils in a sample of Italian upper secondary schools. The data offer insights into how micro-level teaching practices both reflect and contribute to broader social inequalities, and how a stronger emphasis on critical source use could simultaneously enhance historical understanding, civic competencies, and the ability to discern reliable information from misinformation in both offline and online contexts.