Cultures of excellence and integration of diversity: An intervention in a Roman high school

Abstract

This article is part of the ongoing debate on the role that the Italian school can have in contemporary society. A deeply changing society in which the relationship between education and the world of work is changing, the constitution of heterogeneous classes from the point of view of cultural origin is increasing and there is an increase in early school leaving. Part of the literature deals with the problem by looking at the school’s ability to integrate diversity often using a diagnostic approach. Diversity in this logic is hardly conceived as a resource, more often understood as a deficit of the individual or the environment, to be corrected. In this article I propose to think about the integration of diversity as an opportunity for the school to rethink the question posed by pupils and families. I will report an intervention conducted in a school wishing to present itself as a place of educational excellence, grappling with the problem of integrating diversity, with particular reference to cultural diversities. From the reporting of the intervention, developed through the theoretical and methodological model of the analysis of the demand, it is possible to detect how dealing with the experiences that organize the school context will allow dealing with the encounter with cultural differences as an opportunity for the development of the school and its customers.