School cultures between visions and policies – findings of a document analysis of three-year educational offer plans
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7346/sird-022025-p213Keywords:
school development; school cultures; inclusion; document analysisAbstract
This article examines how schools articulate and communicate their pedagogical and inclusionrelated
orientations through the Piano Triennale dell’Offerta Formativa (PTOF), the threeyear educational plan mandated by Italian law. Anchored in the sociology of knowledge and school culture theory, the study conceptualises PTOFs not as neutral descriptions of school reality but as social artefacts that both reflect and shape institutional knowledge discourses. The empirical basis consists of 46 PTOFs, covering all educational levels. The findings of the document analysis reveal that PTOFs serve a dual function as instruments of accountability towards external audiences and as internal reference points for school development. Their analysis offers insight into the symbolic orders, implicit norms, and discursive strategies through
which school cultures navigate the interplay of autonomy, regulation, and inclusion policies.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Simone Seitz, Giulia Consalvo, Silvia Dell'Anna
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The authors who publish in this magazine accept the following conditions:
- The authors retain the rights to their work and give the magazine the right to first publish the work, simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons License - Attribution which allows others to share the work indicating the intellectual authorship and the first publication in this magazine.
- Authors may adhere to other non-exclusive license agreements for the distribution of the version of the published work (eg deposit it in an institutional archive or publish it in a monograph), provided that the first publication took place in this magazine.
- Authors can disseminate their work online (eg in institutional repositories or on their website) before and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges and increase citations of the published work.
