Culturally Inclusive Schools: Celebrating diversity, teaching common values and fostering intercultural competence among youth

Despite the successes achieved in studying how intercultural competence of young people can be promoted in European school systems, different stakeholders indicate that considerable gaps remain in understanding “what works” in promoting intercultural competence in youth.The proposed project “Culturally Inclusive Schools: Celebrating diversity, teaching common values and fostering intercultural competence among youth” (INCLUDed) responds to this need by addressing three main limitations in existing knowledge and research in the European context:a) The lack of rigorous empirical studies aimed at conceptualizing and measuring intercultural competence in youth;b) The lack of rigorous empirical studies aimed at conceptualizing and measuring culturally inclusive educational approaches promoted by schools;c) Insufficient evidence on the effectiveness of different culturally inclusive educational approaches promoted by schools for the development of intercultural competence of youth.A heuristic framework inspired by educational effectiveness and ecological systems theory is applied to a large nationally representative sample of young people (14-year-olds) in a European country (i.e.

Italy) and analyses are carried out to:a) Develop, adapt and validate a multifaceted measurement instrument of intercultural competence;b) Develop, adapt and validate a multifaceted measurement instrument of classroom cultural diversity climate based on student perceptions of their learning environments;c) Evaluate the relationship between different configurations of classroom cultural diversity climate approaches and the intercultural competence of youth and to examine the effectiveness of these approaches in different cultural school settings and for specific subgroups of young people.

The project will generate actionable evidence for research, educational policy and practice adding significantly to current research on interculturality in culturally diverse school settings.