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In a European context marked by increasing multiculturalism and by pervasive use of digital technologies in the construction of identity (Landsberg, 2015), this contribution presents phases of a research project carried out in a heterogeneous, multicultural, and multilingual fifth‑grade classroom in a school at the center of Florence. The study examines the hypothesis that history education — understood here as the intergenerational transmission of memories with historical value — can promote greater mutual understanding, inclusion, and the development of intercultural historical competence (Green, 2019) when mediated through grandparents’ or parents’ narratives and supported by active methodologies (Barton & Levstik, 2021). The project involved 22 students (12 Female; 10 Male), including 8 with culturally diverse backgrounds. The young fifth‑grade students were therefore divided into two clusters (“Italian students” and “Students with a different cultural background”) exclusively for research purposes. An initial focus group between two student clusters revealed that students’ knowledge of one another was limited and often shaped by stereotypes. To overcome these barriers, the project required students to administer an open‑ended questionnaire to their grandparents (and, in some cases, to their parents) to collect autobiographical narratives related to seven crucial areas of their lives: family traditions, social relationships, schooling, work, leisure, personal and collective memories.

The collected stories made it possible to compare experiences originating from highly diverse contexts - from descriptions of postwar Italy to the wartime scenarios of the Balkan conflict (territories of the former Yugoslavia), as recounted by both a Serbian grandmother and a Croatian grandfather, and further to narratives of migration from rural communities in Honduras and Albania - thereby offering a plurality of historical and cultural perspectives. The unique and personal narratives shared by grandparents played a decisive educational role, confirming what the literature highlights regarding the value of family memory in shaping narrative identity, historical consciousness and socio-emotional competences (Souralova, 2020). The sharing of these stories in the classroom created a new space for dialogue, fostering processes of decentring, adoption of alternative perspectives, and a critical reading of cultural representations; in other words, it effectively supported an intercultural approach to historical learning (Nordgren & Johansson, 2015). Subsequently, a second focus group revealed a significant shift; students demonstrated greater openness, curiosity, and an enhanced ability to recognize mutually the complexity of their peers’ backgrounds.

Despite the limitations of a small sample, the practice showed that intergenerational transmission can serve as an effective pedagogical resource for promoting inclusion, historical thinking and global citizenship in multicultural school settings (Rantala et al., 2023). The grandparents’ narratives provided the class with a new ‘common ground’, contributing to the construction of a shared historical heritage and to appreciation of cultural diversity. The experience suggests that reciprocal knowledge rooted in family stories can emerge as a decisive factor in overcoming stereotypes and in fostering a deeper relationship between school, family and community, thereby generating a participatory ecosystem in which young students are valued as active citizens capable of building a sense of belonging (Buchanan & Fivush, 2023).