Considerations about FTF Italy 2014
Giovanna Barzanò, Sept 2014
1) The first implementation of Face to Faith in Italy: from the informal community
of practice to the Dialogues Network
2) The structuring of the FTF community of practice through the Dialogues
Network
3)The Dialogues Network’s activities: developing Face to Faith further
4)New ideas
5) Future developments
The 2014 National Residential Conference of the Dialogues Network, sponsored
by the Italian MIUR and organised in cooperation welcomed more than 70
selected participants from schools in various regions of Italy in Montegrotto
(PD) from 16 to 18 July. It offered a precious opportunity to reflect on the
“narrative” of the development of Face to Faith in Italy and its perspectives of
dissemination and expansion.
Below is a synthesis of Face to Faith’s history in Italy and some considerations,
both about the past and the future. These considerations derive from informal
conversations, discussions and specific Q&A developed during the conference
days, from meetings held at the conference, as well as from the evaluation of the
course, undertaken with an extensive open-ended questionnaire.
1) The first implementation of Face to Faith in Italy: from the informal
community of practice to the Dialogues Network
The strategy for initial implementation of FTF in 2011 was to have a core
group of dedicated teachers who would learn the programme and then
cascade out their expertise to other teachers in their regions, therefore
having a snowball effect. The quality and the intensity of the opportunities
made available by the programme, evidenced by what had been
experienced and documented by these “pioneers”, has always been the
core engine of the expansion.
A small group of very motivated and specifically trained teachers (the
lead teachers) and head teachers have progressively involved a larger
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number of colleagues providing support and leadership for their
participation in FTF, thus creating a community of practice of committed
professionals. They are very interested in the activities, but also in
exploiting the opportunities of professional exchange, feed-back and
discussion which arise from the context. The quality of the professional
development offered has always been a highly valued attraction and has a
relevant impact on teachers’ motivation, sense of professionalism and
their own continued learning.
In fact since the first experiences, it became clear that the FTF pedagogies
and approaches produced a rich and creative professional space around
them, creating opportunities for synergies to be developed with the
contents of the National Curriculum.
In 2012 the Dialogues Network was created, supported by the MIUR, under
the TBFF/MIUR MOU (through Giovanna Barzano, Inspector at the former
Directorate General of Foreign Relations and a coordinating team) and
coordinated by IC Settembrini-Rome, a lower secondary and primary
school led by Head teacher Massimo La Rocca, who is now also the chair of
the network (see note MIUR, 18.12.2012, prot. N.8127, following the MOU
MIUR-TBFF signed 27.06.2012).
The aims of the Dialogues Network is to develop the culture of dialogue
between different constituencies within the school experience of both
teachers and students, eliciting a healthy curiosity towards diversity. In
particular implementing and expanding Face to Faith is a major aim of the
Network which regards the programme as crucial opportunity to develop
a global culture within schools.
School networks, clustering a number of schools that share specific aims
and purposes and signing ad hoc agreements, are important and powerful
institutions within the Italian school autonomy framework and are
supported by strong legislation (art. 7 DPR 8/03/1999, n. 275).
The Dialogues Network clusters some 30 schools in Sicily, Apulia, Marche,
Latium, Tuscany, Veneto, Lombardy and Piedmont accounting for about
3,000 teachers and 30,000 students: a large audience surrounds the FTF
people and is more or less directly influenced by them.
The Network gives higher visibility and stability to the FTF community, a
real community of practice (Wenger), where the formal and institutional
coexist with the informal and the contents in focus have very good
chances to contribute to the local culture.
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2) The structuring of the FTF community of practice through the
Dialogues Network
In its first two years the network has progressively reinforced its
management and professional structures. It counts on a leading committee
(a steering group composed by experienced head teachers, teachers and a
head of administration), on a group of 10 expert lead teachers in
continuous contact both with TBFF and with the schools, on a number of
distinguished scholars and researchers from various Italian Universities
who provide advice and contribute to the planning from the perspectives
of anthropology, psychology, pedagogy and sociology.
The 10 lead teachers have undertaken intensive training (see their
presentations and portfolios on retedialogues.it) in the last three years
both in Italy and in the UK. They have piloted FTF since the very
beginning, interpreting its activities and “localising” the “global”
resources, following the Italian style. Indeed they have shown an intense
commitment as well as effectiveness in their action of involving and
supporting colleagues.
Despite the meaningless financial reward they have received so far, they
persist with passion: only one of the lead teachers withdrew in more than
3 years, for family reasons. Yet it is clear that the lead teachers’ work
would deserve a better support.
3) The Dialogues Network’s activities: developing Face to Faith
For almost two years the Dialogues Network has supported and
monitored its member schools’ participation in Face to Faith, taking care
of the translation of several resources as well as of a variety of
organisational issues.
There are currently 34 Italian schools involved in the Face to Faith
programme (some 4 do not belong yet to the Dialogues Network) . Of these
34 schools, 27 have made at least one global connection over the Face to
Faith moderated online community or through facilitated video
conferencing. Over 2000 Italian students have engaged in dialogue about
faith and belief with their global peers on the online learning community
and many more have taken part in over 100 video conferences that have
been facilitated by the TBFF for Italian schools.
14 schools have also taken part in a range of community engagement
activities; where students take part in an imaginative range of activities to
share their learning and inspiration from the programme with their
broader communities. Face to Faith and MIUR have worked together to
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train over 100 Italian teachers in the Face to Faith pedagogies and
programme materials.
Besides that, while developing and expanding FTF proposals in a local
perspective, the Network has taken several initiatives and realised specific
outcomes:
 The website retedialogues.it was created and launched in 2013. It
now contains several resources and offers a lively showcase of what
is done by the schools involved in Face to Faith in the different
corners of Italy.
 The film “Aspettando il maestro” (Waiting for the maestro, available
with English subtitles) produced by the Tuscan branch of the
Dialogues network (4 schools).
The film concerns adolescents and music at school and how learning
music can offer many opportunities for life -including hints to
overcome cultural and religious barriers and create contexts where
deep experiences of solidarity become possible.
Waiting for the Maestro” is a docu-fiction (66 min), sponsored by
public and private institutions around the schools. It is directed by
Rachid Benhadj, a well-known Italo-Algerian muslim film director
interested in religious and cultural issues. The idea developed when
Rachid was invited as a guest of the four Tuscan schools to discuss
his film “Bread Alone” with the students within a FTF celebration of
the Human Right Day.
 Two national residential seminars have been organised: “Between
words and Dialogue” (Montegrotto-PD July 2013, 60 participants)
and “Dialogue: tools and opportunities” (Montegrotto PD July 2014,
70 participants).
Both occasions have been highly appreciated by participants for the
key-note presentations offered by TBFF and Italian experts and for
the developmental work undertaken in the group activities.
4) The new ideas
The 2014 national seminar “Dialogue: tools and opportunities” in
particular had the aim of elaborating and discussing how to develop a
“manifesto on dialogue” that can be shared by a large number of schools
and offer useful hints and inspirations to the Italian educational world.
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The concreteness of the aim has enhanced an even more creative and
deeper relationship of the schools with the experts, who have felt
challenged and engaged by the ideas.
This has resulted in two important sub-projects:
A) The publication of an edited book, that will make available a selection of
the rich documentation collected. In the book, reports from the field
will be introduced and commented by scholars’ and experts’
contributions. Texts will have an electronic version in English and will
constitute the ground where the Dialogue Manifesto is rooted. The
publication is therefore expected to reinforce the Dialogues Network’s
identity as an important cultural/professional actor in the national
arena. As it was observed by one of the lead teachers:
“the beautiful words that we will want to see in our manifesto
need an evident empirical basis: I think that words can only
become inspiring if it is clear that they come from the experience,
that they pick up some truth from someone’s everyday practice.”
(Maria, lead teacher Turin).
B) An interesting professional development initiative on global
communication, to be implemented at regional/national level. A detailed
agenda will be prepared in the next weeks, concerning three itineraries
(tentative titles):
a) Global communication: blogs, chats and online messages
as a taught school writing
This blended module will make use of the FTF team blogging
pattern/structure to organise monitored workshop and on-going
laboratories across Italy (Italian) and in other FTF countries
(EN)which will result in a professional development activity for
about 30-50 new teachers.
b) Global communication: situating yourself and your
adventures in the world through pictures.
This blended module will concern the ways pictures and video
products can be used as a tool of dialogue, which capture
experiences, express concepts and emotions and lead to a deep
exchange.
Now that taking pictures and recording may be done with little
resources it is deemed crucial to improve teacher and student
confidence with new learning tools.
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The module will be organised with workshop, laboratories and
monitored practical experiences. The aim is the improvement of
the digital literacy skills for students, so that they can be better
producer and they can be able to evaluate reliability of pictures and
other media they are exposed to and be discerning users.
c) Global communication: exchanging stories and histories
This blended module will focus on the meaning of individual
histories and stories: how they can be captured through deep
listening and curiosity, how they can be told and represented. It will
make use of FTF resources about listening and dialoguing.
It will include, visits, interviews and a variety of exchanges between
people.
Within this module it is foreseen to invite FTF testimonials from
other countries.
5) Expected future developments
If the MOU is renewed, a development of the Face to Faith programme is
foreseen over the next 2 years (2014-2016) However it is essential that
sufficient resources are allocated to the Dialogues Network, in terms of
both political and financial support.
The Dialogues Network’s steering group is committed in promoting the
involvement of a larger group of schools. Nevertheless, all its members are
convinced that any possible quantitative expansion of the programme
should be matched by further developments in the quality, creativity and
visibility of the practice of the core schools that have been involved for
long.
Italian and European Schools can benefit from a variety of initiatives
concerning peace, human rights, inter-religious education etc. Several of
them require subscriptions, and offer participation in general actions, but
schools’ involvement does not go much further single initiatives. Their
impact on the school culture can rarely be deep. The great strengths of
Face to Faith lie in some original, to some extent unique, traits such as:
 Its continuously renewed proposals and opportunities to learn in
new ways
 The careful monitoring that the local group can implement in
connection with the global TBFF staff, acknowledging what is done,
providing feed-back
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 The creation of a virtual/concrete global landscape of reflection
exchange and discovery to which teachers and students can think
they belong,
 The development of a collective imagination rooted in the practice
of multiple dialogues
The Dialogues Network’s steering group would like to avoid, as much as
possible, the risk of formal involvement of schools that do not go beyond
the agreement of a statement and never become really active when they
are expected to be.
It would be disappointing if this happened too frequently. The whole
programme would loose its educational credibility and power of attraction
and the opportunities for impact of its ideas would be lowered
dramatically.
For this reason the Dialogues Network is committed:
 To develop further and make visible its identity documenting and
disseminating experiences
 To realise specific products and initiatives that can be shared simply,
thus creating a first level of impact (e.g. publications, website, movie)
 To understand better how the principles and the values of Face to
Faith can have a deeper impact on the educational culture
In order to make these values more desirable and embedded into the
school culture it is essential to give visibility to the evidences of how they
can inspire practice and lead to crucial achievements in many domains.
Moreover, it is considered relevant to notice how the experience of Face to
Faith has provided opportunities and hints for new activities that are
consistent with its values but go beyond its immediate aims. This is the
case for many community events, for the film, for much of the professional
development. Also the involvement of Italian experts and scholars may
become more dynamic and fruitful in the context of the FTF activities.
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