Insegnanti, competenze interculturali e pluralismo religioso. Un’analisi di situazioni-problema di fronte alla diversità religiosa

The article deals with the skills that teachers must develop in the face of the religious pluralism of students, starting with “problem situations” related to religious diversity in primary, lower and upper secondary schools. Thus, starting from the course “The trans-Mediterranean space and the Islamic world: integration in the school context”, organized by the Research Center on Intercultural Relations of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart as part of the project PriMED, narrations of teachers participating in the course are reported. They were asked to analyze three competences which, identified in the intercultural field, are applied to religious pluralism, namely, “interpreting religious cultures”, “reducing prejudices”, “finding shared horizons”. From the analysis of the narratives the need to overcome a widespread “religious illiteracy” emerges. While recalling the need for skills in action (know-how), central to the approach proposed in the essay, in fact, in the training of teachers and therefore in the didactic curricula, it is necessary to introduce theoretical knowledge (knowledge) concerning religions, as elements of the reference framework in which teachers operate.