Inclusion in Italian School: Mutual Perception of Italian and Foreign Students

Abstract

This article is about dynamics of inclusion and reciprocal perception among Italian and foreign students, a particularly relevant topic in Italy. In Italy, in fact, proportion of foreign students has increased much in last 15 years, from 0,7% to 7,9% of the total number of students.

The increased presence of migrant students in the schools of our country has strongly raised the issue of the importance of observing and studying the coexistence of Italian and foreigners, mainly from social and psychological points of view. The study focuses on psychology of coexistence, analyzing perceptions owned by Italian and foreign students about mutual presence: is students’ estimate of number of students from other Countries (Italy included) correct? Which characteristics correlate with wrong estimates (by shortcoming or excess)?

The context in which the research has been carried out was the Junior High School, both because School is a sort of laboratory for studying dynamics of coexistence inasmuch it represents a well-defined and scaled-down setting compared to social context as a whole and because this way it is possible to prevent since later, in the education, conflicts tend to emerge.

Keywords: Inclusion, perception of diversity, prejudice