School culture: reflections and pedagogical implication for today's challenges

Abstract

Dealing with a polysemic concept such as school culture, which implies recourse to certain preliminary operations, is not an easy process. Although “school culture” as a construct has been the subject of many theoretical reflections, two interpretative readings seem particularly relevant: the first involves overcoming a cultural model as a form of training and acculturation; the other entails arriving at an idea of culture understood as a form of education that can re-centralize a “School of the Constitution” while retaining the ability to emancipate and support pupils in the autonomous production of culture. It seems appropriate to adopt a wide-angle perspective (Baldacci, 2006) that emphasizes the long-term formative effects, that is, the outcome of the course of an entire school grade. Lastly, returning to the suggestions of Scurati (1973/2021) and reasserting the centrality of the reflections of Malavasi (2020), the essay will propose to promote a school curriculum culture that is able to present itself as an instrument of organic connection between scholastic and extra-scholastic elements.