Narratives of memories and dialogue in multicultural classrooms

Abstract

AbstractThis paper presents the analysis of a series of workshops conducted in Italian multicultural classrooms, involving children aged 9–12. The workshops were based on the collection of photos representing the children’s memory and were designed to enhance dialogic facilitation of narratives in the classroom. Starting from the collected photos, a facilitator promoted the interactional production of narratives of memory and identity. The workshops were entirely video-recorded for purposes of analysis. First of all, the paper presents the theoretical background of the analysis, including the concepts of narratives, memory, social use of photography, facilitation of children’s agency, and intercultural communication. Secondly, it includes one example of the analysis conducted on the basis of the transcripts of the video-recorded workshops showing the ways in which narratives of children’s memory have been facilitated during the workshops.