Insegnare e/a narrare la migrazione, la cittadinanza e l’inclusione da una prospettiva interdisciplinare. Gli albi illustrati come casi-studio

The new and ongoing migration flows have recently pointed towards a gradual reconsideration of concepts such as language, belonging, mobility, citizenship, contact, nation, race and identity, and have connected Italy and the United States, Africa and the Mediterranean, metropolitan cities and peripheries, diasporic, migrant and postcolonial subjects, who define their critical space through literature, music, literature and cinema by enabling a new discursive imaginary and aesthetics. In the light of such premises, the present study is an attempt to understand why and how to train prospective primary English teachers (PPETs) in the use of transethnic children’s pictures books as new engaging pedagogical and intermedial narratives that may tell about migration, citizenship and inclusion in plural Italy, but not limited to that. Specifically, the selection and analysis of three recent children’s picture books published in English and translated into Italian will help us to reflect on the role of intersectional education of young children in many national settings, that is to assist them as they develop into productive citizens in a pluralistic society. By pursuing such a theoretical goal, we maintain the need to prepare PPTs for cross-culturally responsive teaching as an national educational priority that may give them the opportunity to develop intercultural competence through the “decolonisation of ways of knowing” (Hooks 2003: 3) and systematic self-critical inquiry.