This qualitative study analyses how teachers’ and head teachers’ identities shape their dispositions towards pupils with immigrant backgrounds in Italy, and how their understanding of Italian education policies inform their beliefs about pedagogical practices for pupils with immigrant backgrounds. In considering identity, this study takes an intersectional approach, focusing on social class, gender and ethnicity as aspects that interact and shape life experiences. Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field and capital, together with Butler’s concept of performativity, help theorise how teachers and head teachers take up and understand classed, gendered, and ethnicised identities. Data collection is based on semi-structured interviews with 23 participants, 9 males and 14 females, with ages ranging from 36 to 65. The findings highlight a general lack of explicit reflection on class, gender and ethnicity by teachers and head teachers. An unequivocal link between their identity and how they position their students cannot be straightforwardly established. However, notions of (not)belonging circulate around and are attached to students with immigrant backgrounds. Such circulations coalesce around values and practices linked to gendered, ethnic majority middle class habitus norms, through which difference is positioned and opposed in hierarchical terms. The background neoliberal ideology is normalised and permeates the educational environment. This study aims to analyse the relationship between teachers’ identities and their attitudes and pedagogic dispositions towards students with immigrant backgrounds in the Italian context, showing how these contribute to their state of (non)belonging in the educational setting and indeed in the wider society. This investigation also highlights the difficulties and subtleties of talking about ethnicity and cultural difference alongside professional identities. This research considers teachers’ pedagogic dispositions and highlights some practical consequences and implications. Such considerations are extended to recommendations and suggestions for future research.
| Date of Award | 8 Oct 2019 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution | - University Of Strathclyde
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| Supervisor | Yvette Taylor (Supervisor) & Virginie Theriault (Supervisor) |
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