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Integration is a fundamental mandate of schooling in democratic and differentiated societies. This chapter analyzes the consequences generated by an increase in number of students without Italian citizenship in Italian schools, and the development of multiethnic classrooms. When non-Italian pupils comprise >25–50% of the pupils in classrooms, it’s worth questioning: Are these classrooms segregated? Which factors affect school integration and for whom? The chapter presents the results of the first survey on classrooms with a “high density” of students with an immigrant background carried out in Italy. This study is based on a sample of 1,040 students enrolled in lower secondary education in Lombardy. We use statistical indicators related to two dimensions of integration: (a) the institutional dimension (school access and achievement), and (b) the relational dimension (well-being and absence of conflicts among peers). Data analysis included indexes and a correlation matrix between indexes, regression analysis, and cluster analysis. Results demonstrate a positive correlation between the rate of non-native students in the classroom and low degree of integration, but also the complexity of factors at stake such as gender imbalance and the high concentration of students whose families have a low Socio-Economic Status (SES), independently from citizenship. These results enabled us to de-construct the concept of school integration, identifying a plurality of integrative factors and providing suggestions for intervention.

This chapter explores how marginalized youth, specifically former child soldiers in South Sudan, struggle to access education that is crucial in their reintegration process. The chapter draws upon data from a study focusing on the reintegration process of school boys formerly associated with armed forces and groups in South Sudan, and is based on ethnographic fieldwork including interviews and observations of 20 former child soldiers in Malakal, Upper Nile State. The study identifies a number of external factors that inhibit educational opportunities for the boys in their reintegration process. These are their life experiences, the impacts of war, their socioeconomic background and the lack of educational structures due to ongoing conflict. This study describes how the living conditions that motivated the boys to join the armed group are still present after their demobilization. Thus, they not only still find themselves in poverty but the time spent in the armed group and the impacts of war have put them in an even more marginalized position today than prior to their recruitment. The study argues that access to education is crucial in order to prevent recruitment and also re-recruitment to armed groups.

The significant increase in refugees in Europe and worldwide during 2015 challenges the paradigm of refugee education. For many decades, ‘refugee education’ has been primarily associated with the education of refugees in countries far-away as the majority of the world’s displaced persons and refugees are hosted by countries in the Global South. However, the recent European ‘refugee crisis’, that is, the large influx of refugees and migrants in Europe, has definitely turned refugee education into a European issue. As refugee students from all over the world enter European classrooms, policy makers, educators and researchers need to rethink refugee education ‘at home’ in order to ensure quality and equity. As many refugees in Europe are here to stay, the challenge is how education can contribute to their inclusion in school as well as their integration into the host society. There is a great need for rethinking the education of refugees resettling in Europe and their inclusion in national school systems. How can universal principles of quality and equity for all students be implemented in national education policies, schools and classroom practice? The current challenges are complex and call for an interdisciplinary approach. Findings and perspectives from refugee education research as well as comparative and international education research can advance our understanding of these issues. This chapter argues for a holistic, whole-school approach to refugee education, which includes education policy, school structures, classroom practice, curricula, pedagogy and teaching materials, as well as cultural awareness and refugee competence.

As a team of eight scholars at the University of Texas, we collaborate to research issues that directly focus on the development, training, and experiences of anti-racist and social justice leaders in urban secondary schools. Each of us considered a personal event, or series of events, that significantly influenced our thinking about social justice. We share experiences of personal and institutional racism, and reflect on how these experiences continue to shape our awareness of race. Our perspectives capture how issues of race and racial discrimination persist in a status quo educational system and how past experiences directly influence our work.

Purpose: The aim of the chapter is the analysis of the processes of inclusion and/or exclusion experienced by Italian and immigrant students who live in rural areas. This chapter specifically focuses on the forms of belonging that they develop in their districts and at school.

Study approach: The analysis is based on a mixed methods study that was carried out in a middle school of a rural town in Central Italy. For the research, a focus group was first carried out with middle school students, then a semi-structured questionnaire was administered to the students. Privileged witnesses (e.g., school managers, people working for voluntary associations, social service operators, political actors) were also interviewed. Their interviews provided additional information about the territory under study.

Findings: Findings indicate that school reproduces processes of stigma and marginality for immigrant school students. This is best illustrated through their sense of belonging to the district in which they live and the school where they attend.

Originality: This study analyzes the lives of young migrants and their Italian peers who live in a rural area of Italy. Additionally, it considers the processes that schools play in promoting inclusion and exclusion among young migrants and Italians. This work contributes to the literature on children and youth migrants, as well as the sociology of education. It motivates future research on the experiences of life and schooling among migrants who live in rural communities.

Seeing inclusive education as a process of removing barriers and dis-abilities and to foster participation and learning for all students in educational organizations (Ainscow & Sandill, 2010; Florian & Beaton, 2018), research approaches and perspectives are valuable for sustaining a theoretically, analytically and methodologically consistent perspective on social order and structural barriers as well as on their transformation. This analytical research perspective challenges researchers to reflect on the positionality and normativity of their research as well as the problem of reification of deficit-oriented categories in educational research (Messiou, 2017). The chapter analyses how the problem of normativity and reification is addressed in the practice of international qualitative research and publishing, in regard to inclusive education. It endeavours to provoke critical thinking about how inclusive education research can target these challenges by discussing interpretative and reconstructive research approaches. Hence, the paper explores how to develop ways of analysing processes and practices regarding inclusion and exclusion.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a pedagogical innovation – a matrix construction exercise – intended to help pre-service teachers (PTs) navigate the multiple and oftentimes competing discourses that shape the school subject English Language Arts (ELA).

To explore the various ways the PTs drew on the discursively constructed paradigms of ELA throughout their teacher preparation program, researchers (themselves teacher educators) conducted an intertextual analysis (Prior, 1995) of PTs’ classroom texts and interview transcripts.

The intertextual analysis suggested that PTs possessed knowledge of and investment in a range of discourses, which they used to anchor their own pedagogical and curricular decision-making and to anticipate the leanings and ideologies of other stakeholders in ELA. Although the organizational schema of the matrix proved helpful from an orientation standpoint, it also may have disguised the productive tensions between particular discourses for some PTs.

Although scholars have long noted the plurality of the school subject English and some studies on innovations in teacher education allude to the difficulties that teachers encounter as they navigate the multiple purposes of ELA, there is little scholarship that considers how pre-service and beginning teachers might best navigate that incoherence and unwieldiness. This study, which contextualizes and explores a pedagogical innovation in an English methods class designed to help PTs navigate the many “Englishes”, attempts to fill this gap. The findings suggest that teacher preparation in ELA would do well to conceive of pedagogical innovations in teacher education that allow teachers to grapple with, rather than solve, the uncertainty and unfinalizability of the discipline.