Rethinking Teaching and Learning Italian: Cross-institutional Practices

Organizers: Enrica Aurora Cominetti (University of Guelph), Andrea Privitera (St. Jerome’s University – University of Waterloo)

The mobility of Italian teachers and learners characterizes modern didactic approaches to teaching Italian language and culture. Today instructors lend themselves to serve at the same time in different educational contexts within the private, public and non-profit sectors, teaching Italian not only to university students but also to adults, children and youth. Still, we tend to perceive these institutions as compartmentalized, even though learners naturally transition between them. In other words, the cross-fertilization between different learning contexts is already a reality. The potential of synergies between university and non-university types of institutions remains an as yet unexplored topic within the modern scholarship of Italian teaching and learning.

This roundtable aims to open a necessary dialogue between educators from various Italian teaching environments. We invite university and non-university instructors alike to reflect on these questions: how can practices that are traditionally a prerogative of specific educational contexts improve student learning experience across different settings? What are the ways in which said practices may be adopted in or adapted to circumstances other than the ones where they originated?

The roundtable welcomes contributions on the potential intertwining of teaching practices between settings including (but not limited to):

• postsecondary institutions
• adult language schools
• children and youth education (childcare, primary and secondary schools, community centers)
• community-based learning (language exchanges, student and youth organizations)
• public sector (government training agencies, non-governmental organizations, Centri Provinciali per l’Istruzione degli Adulti in Italy)
• nonprofit institutions
• nonformal education.

Please send a 200-word proposal in English or Italian and a short biographical note to Enrica Aurora Cominetti (ecominet@uoguelph.ca) and Andrea Privitera (andrea.privitera@uwaterloo.ca) by March 1st, 2022.

Here is the link to the roundtable and the conference webpage: https://canadianassociationforitalianstudies.org/Session-Proposals-2022#rethinking_teaching