Comparison of the roles and responsibilities in Arabic language teaching to refugees from the MENA region and Italian soldiers

• In Event: Education, Culture and Learning in Response to Conflict and Protracted Crisis

Proposal

This paper investigates the roles and responsibilities of language teachers working with young people in Turin with divergent cultural identities and lived experiences of conflict: young refugees from Arabic-speaking families who sought refuge from conflict in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and young Italian soldiers learning Arabic at the military academy as part of their engagement in areas of conflict within the MENA region.
Drawing on scholarship in the fields of intercultural communication and education, the paper conducts a comparative analysis of the experience of two Arabic language teachers in Turin, themselves refugees. It is based on qualitative, ethnographic data collected via semi-structured interviews and participant observation by the author who is herself a language teacher and an Arabic speaker.
Through comparing these different pedagogical settings, the paper identifies common benefits which language learning brings to young people in peri-conflict settings, and common elements of pedagogical best practice in these contexts, contributing to the field of comparative education studies while also providing practice-focussed observations.

Author

• Esa Aldegheri, University of Glasgow