Stereotypes, prejudices and intercultural education in Italy: Research on textbooks in primary schools

Abstract

The concepts of intercultural education developed in Europe during the early 1980s, following a proposal submitted by the European Council in response to immigration. The concept of intercultural education is now quite common in Italy, not only in books, but also in the area of school legislation. Sometimes, however, even in the field of education, such terms simply become a fad or a slogan, emphatic yet hackneyed, meaningless or misused, which may give rise to irregular patterns of application in different contexts. In the course of this paper, I shall present the results of a research project--carried out by the Centro Studi Interculturali at the University of Verona--pertaining to the implementation of these principles in Italian schools. Our analysis, based on a sample of textbooks used in primary schools in several Italian provinces, investigated the presence of stereotypes, prejudices and intercultural education concepts.