Teacher Professionalism and the Quest for Equity in Multicultural Classrooms. Critical Perspectives from the Field

In a rapidly changing and culturally diverse world, teacher quality may play a key role in addressing different instructional needs and promoting equality of opportunity for all for a democratic society. Beyond the idea of “Best Practices”, this paper aims to examin the complex process of learning and implementing a cooperative strategy for promoting inclusion in multicultural classrooms. By discussing data collected during an ethnographic research project in some Italian Primary schools, the paper sheds light upon some of the challenges teachers encountered in putting the new strategy into practice in their own classrooms. Findings reveal how teacher previous educational ideas and ways of teaching, as well as the local teaching context, affected their choices and the meanings they gave to innovation. Instead of applying the new strategy as a “ready-to-use package”, these teachers recognized themselves as active agents in this process of change.