The big picture: meeting educational challenges in an increasing multicultural world

From 80's, the research on intercultural education has discussed it potential to introduce dialogue among civilizations, in order to reduce conflict, and preventing the perception of otherness as a menace. Nowadays, that position has developed, leaving behind the idea of cultures classification for a new point of view, -the one is introduced in the PERMIT case-. Namely, the position of culture as something dynamic, continuously evolving, and created on the bases of dialogue and interaction; this is the notion of culture as a forum (Bruner, 1988 -2003-, 152), which in time introduces a conception of teaching and learning practices as main activities to rethink and rebuild cultures (Margiotta, 2007). In fact, the attempt of research in a number of educational contexts is entirely devoted to show how cultural values, opinions and attitudes (representing cultural identity) can be discovered and re-negotiated through new pedagogic practices (Minello, 2008). This evolving concept is present in several focal research fields of intercultural education, that are summarily presented in this chapter: curriculum research, teaching methods, new learning environments, the achievement of intercultural competence, and teachers' professionalism. The attempt here is, while introducing these topics, to depict the foundations of research that impulsed PERMIT's project experimentation.