EXCLUSIONARY DISCIPLINE IN ITALIAN PROFESSIONAL SECONDARY SCHOOLS: THE WHAT AND THE WHY. HOW THE AMERICAN ZERO TOLERANCE PARADIGM FITS THE ITALIAN CASE

Scholars have long and consistently documented how discipline practices in schools affect the social quality of the educational environment and, as a consequence, emotional cognitive and behavioral student engagement. Since the early 1990’s, fear of school violence has driven American public education toward increasingly punitive and exclusionary methods of school discipline which have been defined by scholars as zero tolerance policies. Three decades of extensive research on this topic afterwards have raised serious questions about the effectiveness and equity of these practices: ubiquitous disparate rates of exclusionary discipline across schools reflect students’ racial, ethnic, disability disparities. Researchers have documented some of the potential harms of these exclusionary school discipline practices for students, including academic difficulties, dropout, increased misconduct, and juvenile justice system involvement (the school to prison pipeline phenomenon). This paper explores the way in which since 2008 Italy has similarly passed legislation to increase the use of exclusionary discipline and examine how discipline reforms have changed the schools’ environment with special focus on the Italian Professional schools, mainly attended by the poorest, multiethnic sectors of the society. Moving from the theories developed over three decades of extensive American research on zero tolerance policies and practices the paper analyzes Italian Schools’ Codes of Behavior and contemporary discipline national legislation in order to document the extent to which the American zero tolerance paradigm fits the Italian context today. Qualitative grounded research data developed within two Italian professional secondary schools support the inquiry. The author argues that the Italian secondary schools are currently implementing the zero tolerance approach and addresses reasons and consequences of this occurrence. In an era of educational policy defined by accountability it is astounding to find a widely implemented practice or policy that has demonstrated, through sound research, to be counterproductive. Sustained by a growing body of ethnographic sociological research the paper interprets the crime and punishment rhetoric enforced in Italian schools as an expression, accommodation and reinforcement of broader fears and political economic changes which were manifested in the USA thirty years ago and are currently unveiling within the Italian society now. What kind of discipline and why will fit the best our citizens tomorrow? The role of public school within a democratic society is at stake; perhaps the survival of democracy itself.