Teaching and Learning in Italian Multicultural School Contexts: Outdoor Education and Inclusion Processes for Children with Migrant Backgrounds

Italy has recently and rapidly become a country of strong immigration, with an increase in the schooling of second generation children. This has highlighted the urgent need to address the issue of the inclusion of pupils with a migrant background in school contexts and to identify appropriate teaching methodologies to enable them to achieve the intended educational goals. This paper presents the results of a systematic review of the scientific literature focusing on the processes and factors of inclusion of children with a migrant background in the Italian school context, with particular emphasis on the role played by some teaching methods and strategies identified in the literature as "inclusive", in particular outdoor education. This is done to highlight the challenges that teachers face today in increasingly multicultural school contexts, where they are confronted with the multiple learning needs of all pupils, including those with non-Italian citizenship, the relationship with their families and the management of cultural diversity at school.