Building social skills to ‘learn together’ in the intercultural primary school

The paper focuses on the effectiveness of the Learning Together model in building social skills in multicultural contexts; a process directly related to the academic success of all the pupils involved. A troubled multicultural classroom in Northern Italy was observed for six years, from the first primary school year to the first middle school year. Using the Grounded Theory Method, all the gradually collected data led to the emergence of a pedagogical model of social skills building. The Learning Together model has many benefits, among which I will highlight the real social skills that have been directly perceived and experienced by pupils, parents and teachers on this path. Some possible differences between native participants and those with an immigrant background are also discussed. The transformation of problems or risks into resources, and thus the building of an inclusive and intercultural learning community, will not come about through an a priori taxonomy of social skills, but as the result of an experiential and situated learning process, which understands social competences – the core category of this process – as the product of interactions between teachers’ ethical choices, effective teaching strategies and constructively lived multicultural experiences.