Intercultural Values influencing Teaching and Learning. A case Study on Secondary Education

The belief of Western world in the universality of the West's values and political systems is naïve and continued insistence on democratization and such "universal" norms will only further antagonize other civilizations. The planetary society needs to reconsider its values, images, symbols, generating from one hand the instruments of tollerance, mutual understanding and dialogue; and from the other, recognizing the common, grounded values of human kind. The main hypothesis, where mainly European Union is investing through its well known policies and programmes, is that education is the key to intervene in conflicting societies within this complex landscape. Too much effort is to be done in the attempt of promoting dialogue among civilizations , preventing people to perceive otherness as a menace; but, at the same time, a long way has already been done in the last sixty years of European reconciliation, and in front of the last thirty years of massive immigration, where intercultural education has played a crucial role. Europe is now looking beyond, considering the integration of countries like Turkey, where interrogating the own cultural project and identities connected to religion, history, territory; new alleances, seems to be necessary; it could be affirmed that these new experiences of dialogue help Europe to explore an entirely new, integrated model of development, where social cohesion gives place to a more sustainable society. Connected to these reflections, the present study introduces perspectives about education as instrument of dialogue: the project PERMIT (Promote Education and Reciprocal Understanding through Multicultural Integrated Teaching) tried to become a playground where to experience the above sketched principles. Bringing together people from several cultural background, from Slovenia, Turkey and Italy, was a challenge from the beginning, where it was hypothesized that researchers, teachers, and students, had low levels of knowledge about each other; and where building together new practices of teaching and learning, would be the key to achieve an intercultural competence required to be an active citizen in the planetary society (Byram, 2003)