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In this paper we analyze the degree of participation, epistemic management, and authority performance during Parent-Teacher Conferences with non-native parents. Studies focusing on ethnic minority communities illustrate the dominance of the teacher’s epistemic authority (see Lareau and Weininger, 2003; Garcia-Sanchez and Orellana, 2007). Describing differences in mastering both the expert and the institutional knowledge, Howard and Lipinoga (2010) illustrate how immigrated parents remain relatively silent during the report phase of the encounter. This paper reports data from eight parent-teacher conferences with non-native parents. We show how parents’ practices to accomplish and receive assessment confirm in part what has already been identified by the literature, but also adds new communicative “nuances”. We contend that also non-native parents could be able to challenge the teachers’ authority by questioning them and making the information from their territory of knowledge (i.e. the “child-at-home”) relevant. We advance that a detailed analysis of how the management of knowledge and the negotiation of epistemic authority occur in parent-teacher conferences, will also help in critically rethinking some “pedagogical certainties” concerning school-family communication and their possible outcomes.

With the aim of clearly defining how we may best understand ‘method’ in the field of education, this paper offers an analysis of the methodological model proposed by Piero Bertolini in Per una pedagogia del ragazzo difficile (Pedagogy for the troublesome juvenile). This work is of great contemporary relevance for two reasons. First, the theoretical and anthropological assumptions are clearly stated and their intimate connection with the methodological and pragmatic aspects of educational work compellingly demonstrated. Second, the author suggests a fertile way of thinking about educational method and educational intervention that goes beyond the merely technical or ‘applied common sense’ approaches that are widespread in social work and education. I outline the key elements determining the current value of Bertolini’s way of conceptualizing and implementing the educational method, especially his specifically pedagogical focuses of attention. These methodological focuses run counter to certain contemporary tendencies, providing the basis for a solid educational professionalism that always maintains an attitude of inquiry, and that has the capacity to work with the structural uncertainty of educational situations., Ricerche di Pedagogia e Didattica. Journal of Theories and Research in Education, Vol 13, No 2 (2018): Phenomenology and Education Today [Special Issue]

Time represents both a crucial concept to interpret one’s own experience and a taken-for-granted dimension of everyday life. These intertwined aspects impact individual and collective actions: time remains essentially a locus of power dy-namics, that’s why it must be understood and studied as a ‘dispositive’ and it needs a deep analysis from a pedagogical perspective. There is no doubt that peo-ple’s experience of temporal alienation and temporal habitus espressed in differ-ent forms of living and acting, had to be questioned from an educational point of view. This paper provides a focusing analysis of the relationship between educa-tional temporality and rhythms of the pedagogical processes exploring a possible perspective of a genealogy of formative temporality to develop a rethinking of emancipation and some forms of organization that affect autonomy and agency., Studi sulla Formazione, Anno XX, 2-2017

At the infant-toddler center, the rituals of transition that mark children’s arrival and going home times offer interesting kaleidoscopes for the study of interactive dynamics with the associated meanings and implicit educational models. Numerous pedagogical studies have investigated the meanings of these events, for the most part drawing on the monocultural model of classical attachment theory to analyze interactions between adults and children. Far less research has approached these rituals using triadic, systemic and intercultural categories of analysis in order to explore not only educators’ actions but also what is going on in their minds. In this paper, we discuss examples from a recent study on rituals of transition in the multicultural context of an infant toddler center, combining description of the timing, behaviors and interactive styles of children and adults, with analysis of the thoughts and representations of the educators., Ricerche di Pedagogia e Didattica. Journal of Theories and Research in Education, Vol 8, No 2 (2013)