ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a case study of Italian educators’ understanding and practice of intercultural education. It explores a critical lens to analyze how educators take up, or not, intercultural education in the classroom and school community at large. In Italy despite an emphasis on scholastic regulations of intercultural education and a focus on the sociology of education and pedagogy relating to the concept of interculture, discrepancies are still prevalent between legislation and implementation of educational intercultural practices. Schools in Abruzzo provide an interesting context for study, which could provide significant contributions in the field of educational sociology regarding the methods of translation intercultural educations concepts into concrete practices. The valuing of linguistic and cultural diversity, and the right to the conservation of the mother tongue constitutes another dimension of intercultural education present both in European documents and in Italian school regulations.
