The chapter presents the analysis of immigrants parents' and preschool teachers' interviews conducted in Italy within the international research study 'Children Crossing Borders. Children of Immigrants in Early Childhood Settings in Five Countries: A study of Parent and Staff Beliefs (2005-2010) coordinated by J.J.Tobin (State University of Georgia), on the specific topic of immigrant childrens' cultural identity. Youngsters with a migrant background live a complex identity process construction, linked to their and their families’ migratory experience and to the condition of double-multiple belongings to different cultures. A condition that challenges traditional notions of national and cultural identity as shaped in the modern ideology. Successfully raising ‘transcultural’ children is a challenge that requires the efforts of multiple actors: schools, teachers, parents, and innovative cultural and educational politics, since the early childhood. The study, based on a multivocal and video-cued method (Tobin J.J., 1989, 2009), has gathered voices of preschool teachers and immigrant parents, their views of immigrant children’s cultural and national identity. They expressed very different perspectives: parents told about “many concerns” regarding their children, their identity and sense of belonging, giving us a glimpse into their experience of ambiguity, ambivalence, and sometime frustration in their struggles to help their children develop a bicultural identity; teachers described a school context which seems ideally welcoming, but totally blind and lacking in strategies for addressing the topic of cultural differences, cultural hybridization and bi-multilingualism, a school context assimilationist. Discourses and constructions of teachers and immigrant parents on children’s identity give a possibility to get closer to what immigrant (and non immigrant) children are experiencing about their cultural and national identity, since they are very young
Pastori, G. (2016). Italian immigrant Parents’ and Teachers’ Views of Immigrant Children’s Identity. In J.J. Tobin (a cura di), Preschool and Im-migrants in Five Countries (pp. 147-166). P.I.E. Peter Lang.
Italian immigrant Parents’ and Teachers’ Views of Immigrant Children’s Identity
PASTORI, GIULIA GABRIELLAPrimo
2016
Abstract
The chapter presents the analysis of immigrants parents' and preschool teachers' interviews conducted in Italy within the international research study 'Children Crossing Borders. Children of Immigrants in Early Childhood Settings in Five Countries: A study of Parent and Staff Beliefs (2005-2010) coordinated by J.J.Tobin (State University of Georgia), on the specific topic of immigrant childrens' cultural identity. Youngsters with a migrant background live a complex identity process construction, linked to their and their families’ migratory experience and to the condition of double-multiple belongings to different cultures. A condition that challenges traditional notions of national and cultural identity as shaped in the modern ideology. Successfully raising ‘transcultural’ children is a challenge that requires the efforts of multiple actors: schools, teachers, parents, and innovative cultural and educational politics, since the early childhood. The study, based on a multivocal and video-cued method (Tobin J.J., 1989, 2009), has gathered voices of preschool teachers and immigrant parents, their views of immigrant children’s cultural and national identity. They expressed very different perspectives: parents told about “many concerns” regarding their children, their identity and sense of belonging, giving us a glimpse into their experience of ambiguity, ambivalence, and sometime frustration in their struggles to help their children develop a bicultural identity; teachers described a school context which seems ideally welcoming, but totally blind and lacking in strategies for addressing the topic of cultural differences, cultural hybridization and bi-multilingualism, a school context assimilationist. Discourses and constructions of teachers and immigrant parents on children’s identity give a possibility to get closer to what immigrant (and non immigrant) children are experiencing about their cultural and national identity, since they are very young
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