About the conference
How do we incorporate diversity in our Italian courses? Diversity has been defined as the quality of diverse or different cultures within one context, as opposed to monoculture or global monoculture. Diversity involves taking into account the differences between people and groups of people and placing a positive value on those differences. Italy has always been a diverse country, due to its historical vicissitudes and the rich geographical, linguistic, and cultural variety which characterise this relatively young nation. More recently, Italy has become even more diverse thanks to immigration from other countries. Lastly, in Italy the notion of the “other”, to be understood as anything not befitting the traditional values of Italian society, has taken the centre stage in the contemporary cultural discourse. Within the climate of inclusivity promoted by higher education institutions, we, as language educators, will endeavour to incorporate diversity both as a cultural element in our courses and as a series of strategies to ensure that learning takes place for language students of all backgrounds, abilities, and learning styles.
We will focus on:
- the theme of the geographical, cultural, linguistic differences within Italy (the teaching varieties in Italian regions (North and South) and the differences in dialects) and in the countries where Italian is spoken
- curriculum design: introducing diversity in the language class (movies and books of second-generation immigrants in Italy, alternative models of family, “the other" in Italian culture)
- diversity as differentiation of learning styles
Who should attend
The conference is ideally suited to teachers of Italian in secondary, higher and further education.
The Italian conference at King’s College London is a forum for the exchange of ideas, theories and practices, promoting teaching excellence and scholarship in the field of Italian Studies. It is a one-day event for teachers of Italian combining workshops, panel presentations, and networking opportunities. Participants will be awarded a Certificate of Professional Development upon attendance.
We hope you will enjoy the conference.
Further details
For full details including the conference programme, keynote speakers and abstracts please visit the dedicated conference webpage.
