Turning to character: teachers’ narratives of youth futurity and educational responsibility

ABSTRACT

In this article, I connect two topics that are relevant to debates in educational studies today: an understanding of how educational discourses and practices convey and produce a definite kind of future, and the debate on what has been defined as the ‘turn to character’. I do so by means of interviews with secondary school teachers in Sardinia (Italy), discussing how participants conveyed a discourse characterized by an individualized view of their students’ futures (residing mainly within their character) and a narrowly ‘institutionalized’ view of the responsibility of the school in helping them to shape it. Both discourses allowed teachers to avoid taking on more of a direct, personal, and caring sense of responsibility regarding their students’ futures. I argue that, in order to reinforce the role of education in empowering students’ capacity to aspire, a stronger anticipatory responsibility must be activated.

KEYWORDS:

• Character
• future narratives
• teachers
• educational discourses
• educational responsibility
• capacity to aspire

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Secondary schools in Italy are organized into three main tracks: Licei, which are commonly seen as the more demanding and mainly university-oriented; vocational schools, which generally lead to more of an immediate entrance into the labour market; and technical schools, which are somewhere in between. There is a strong correlation between the class origins of the students and secondary school choice, Licei being the preferred path for those of middle-high class origin (Panichella & Triventi, 2014; Romito, 2014). Together with social class inequalities, territorial ones are also important in shaping educational opportunities. The teachers interviewed were from all tracks: four from Licei, three from vocational school, and three from technical school.

2 This sentence explains the editorial aim of the Journal of Character Education – https://www.infoagepub.com/jrce-issue.html?i=p5e65061367c85

3 In Italy, taking inspiration from the German and Swiss dual education system, educational reforms have been introduced in recent years offering school to work transition measures (in Italian, ‘Alternanza Scuola-Lavoro’). This policy established that a variable number of hours during the school year must be dedicated to work experience, both in public agencies and in private companies.