Social planning for sustainability, innovation, and gender inclusion

The course aims at providing students with knowledge and analytical resources to understand the variety and complexity of meanings, which are related to processes of social integration, meant as processes, intended to recognize to members of a community (e.g, cultural/ethnic community, working, educational, institutional community, etc.) equity of access to rights of participation and “voice” within the social group they interact. Particularly, the course will aim to deepen the study and the design of the different participation frameworks by which the social integration can be developed and implemented in specific settings and different sociocultural communities. The course privileges a cultural, situated and interactionist perspective, which assumes the cultural and discursive nature of individual processes and assigns a particular emphasis on concepts such as: participation, identity and agency, looking at how these are built and made relevant in specific communities of practices and by means of multiple discourse resources. By means of examples drawn from empirical research and critical studies in both national and international perspective, social integration will be examined in relation to the following topics: - gender: in particular, the course will deal with the case of the unequal distribution of participant roles and responsibilities enacted by women in the family domain, and also, the case of the unequal representation of identity of women and LGBTQ persons in the public, institutional, and educational discourse - interculture: drawing from a psycho-cultural vision about the concepts of stereotype and prejudice, maintained as discursive and negotiated constructions, the course will deal with the particular case of the unequal chances of access to care by migrant patients, and it will discuss problems – and solutions given –related to the issue of social integration, which arise from language differences between patients and healthcare professionals - neurodiversity: as regards this topic, the course will propose to revisit the concept of disability in critical perspective and discuss it as a social, political, historical and cultural phenomenon (accordingly to the perspective of Disability studies). Neurodiverse identities will be examined as embedded in forms of participation and self-advocacy of persons with disturbances within autistic spectrum disorders, and empirically analyzed through successful examples and good practice of social integration in educational contexts In every context considered thus far, the course will aim to equip the students with research methodologies, competence in observation and analysis of the phenomena under study and will help students develop abilities to design contexts for groups, communities and organizations which would promote values of diversity, equity and justice. Students will be engaged in empirical works of data collection and analysis of field observations. Specific aims For the students, passing the exam would imply being capable of: 1) to know the most relevant concepts theorized within the perspective of cultural psychology; to understand the relationship between mind, cognition, and culture and the relationship between individual and group processes; to develop awareness of the socially constructed and cultural nature of knowledge; to know the main qualitative methodologies (e.g., ethnographic observation, narrative interviews and focus groups, video- analysis, discourse and conversation analysis) adopted within cultural psychology to study the situated and discursive nature of individual and cultural processes, specifically within the context of the social integration (Descriptor 1 : Knowledge and understanding) 2) to apply the knowledge of the epistemological frameworks relevant in a cultural and interactionist perspective to the analysis of the main dimensions implied in the study and design of social integration in different social contexts (eg. family, educational, institutional , public and media contexts); to develop reflexive skills in applying methods and tools (ethnographic observation, narrative interviews, video-analysis, discourse and conversation analysis) used in cultural psychological perspective and qualitative research to analyze, design and assess practices of social integration in different social contexts ; to empirically identify forms of participation , which are relevant to build (or, which impede) processes of social integration in real practices of interaction between individuals in different group settings; to be able to analyze and arrange structures of participation that are relevant to aims of social integration (II Descriptor: Applying knowledge and understanding); 3) to develop critical judgment about the reflexive nature of knowing, and to reflect about the close and mutual relationship existing between epistemological and methodological stances, which guide the investigation of a certain object of study; to be able to apply methodological tools, from a psychocultural perspective, to the collection and the analysis of data , including both textual and video material (scientific texts, media, institutional reports, video and film, transcripts of interactions in natural contexts ), recognizing the partial, open and complex nature of analytic interpretations and exercising in the triangulation of data and observational methods ; to recognize the reflexive nature of processes of knowledge production, which also includes the position of the researcher and her point of view (positioning) with regards the object under study and the field of research; to develop reflexive skills, with regards the ethical implications of the research conducted within a psycho-cultural perspective on the individual and the group and specifically within the study of social integration (III Descriptor: Making judgments); 4) ) to develop skills to communicate in a clear and unambiguous ways the empirical results of observation and analytical interpretations of data observed in real contexts and related to the phenomena of social integration by means of: public presentations of data and observations in the classroom, collective classroom discussions of data and analyses written analytical reports regarding collected data, which will be assessed at the end of the course , discussions aimed at accounting, by either oral accounts or argumentative texts ,for the reasons which lead from empirical evidences to certain conclusions, desigdesigned for both expert and non-expert audiences (IV Descriptor: Communication skills); 5) to develop skills in autonomous learning and the detailed study of theoretical, methodological and applied knowledge usable to the study and the design of effective forms of social integration and challenge to inequalities (V Descriptor: Lifelong learning skills)