Federico Farini (University of Suffolk) talks about promoting migrant-background children’s inclusion and learning in three European countries.

Date: Thursday 9th March 2017

Time: 15.00-16.00

Location: Room C126, College Building, Middlesex University, London, NW4 4BT

Federico will introduce the Erasmus+ supported SHARMED project. SHARMED promotes migrant-background children’s inclusion and learning in three European countries (Italy, Germany, UK) by encouraging children’s work on their personal and cultural memories, and children’s participation in dialogue in classroom, telling and negotiating stories of themselves and their sociocultural background.

The project implements children’s collection and production of visual materials on their own memories; involvement of children’s families in this action; facilitation of description, comparison and sharing of materials and memories in classroom; a web platform including an archive with these materials.

These actions can (1) give a voice to migrant-background children, (2) foster their motivation, (3) provide personalised support for their learning, (4) develop their participative approach to learning, (5) strengthen collaboration between children’s families and schools. In this way, the project promotes social inclusion of migrant-background children and combats their segregation and discrimination.

Biography

Federico has a PhD in Sociology of Education from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, where he worked as a researcher and Lecturer in Sociology of Education, Childhood Studies, Youth Studies and Intercultural communication (2005-2013). Previously he worked as a research fellow at the University of Urbino (Sociology) and University of Bologna (Early Modern History, where he got his MA in History in 2002). From 2013 to 2015 Federico has worked as Research Fellow and Lecturer in Education at Middlesex University in London, where he was a founding member of the Centre for Educational Research and Leadership. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

He is currently the UK principal investigator for the project Shared Memories for Dialogues (selected for funding under Erasmus+ Key Action 3, Support for policy reform,  Forward-Looking Cooperation Projects).

He has published  books, chapters, articles and edited books in Italian, English and Slovenian language and he has presented research papers at numerous international conference.