In Service Training to Support an Integrated Education in Contexts of Social Marginalization

For many children born and growing up in contexts of social marginalization and poverty is a “condemnation” to a destiny marked by lost opportunities and foreclosed. ECEC is an important safeguard in the early fight against educational poverty and social injustice, preventing the risks of marginality. Educational work carried out in an integrated manner by services 06 can reduce forms of disadvantage, ensuring real opportunities for development for all. The contribution presents a research-training path carried out with teachers who work in the nursery schools of the south-west area of Brescia, marked by many challenges, including new forms of poverty, discrimination, marginalization, to name just a few. These are highly multicultural schools, with classes in which the presence of children with a migrant background is close to 90% and in which serious situations of social marginalization occur. In these schools, teachers interface daily with the issue of educational poverty in terms not only of lack of opportunities, deprivation and quality of life, but also as social deprivation. In consideration of the situation we intended to explore the reasons behind an integrated vision of educational action and create the conditions so that educators feel encouraged to work in a systemic way. It is impossible to contrast the different aspects of educational poverty, without considering its existential characteristics and implications on the professional identity and emotional experiences of teachers. Educational staff play a strategic role, although they must act within a marked complexity, which is usually managed in emergency, without having the possibility of generating professional reflexivity and awareness. This perspective opens up questions about the identification of training approaches and research methods: what kind of research approach should be adopted to support an integrated education for children aged zero to six? How to bring out the professional resources of educators who daily put their educational skills at the service of children with a migrant background, disadvantaged, or in educational poverty? We will present the results of this path, conducted with the MAG method (méthode d’analyse en groupe, ie. method of analysis in a group), which has opened up spaces for reflection and discussion on challenges, critical issues, efforts of a patient and delicate work of interconnection with families, social services, the different educational realities. The complexity of educational poverty and marginality, with its multifaceted aspects and challenges, cannot be understood and solved solely using didactic and scholastic approaches. To address these challenges, it is important to promote new In-service training processes, more integrated and capable of improving complex strategies to face intricate, interconnected and changing phenomenon of social injustice, according to the inspiring principles of the integrated system 06. Through this research and training experience, we want to offer an opportunity to make the 06 services places open to the community, in its broadest and most inclusive sense. The complexity of educational poverty requires multidisciplinary measures and engagement of several actors to improve education and social justice, enhancing community.