Signs of Success in Italian Schooling Andrea Renee Leone-Pizzighella University of Pennsylvania, [email protected]
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University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2019 Signs Of Success In Italian Schooling Andrea Renee Leone-Pizzighella University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics Commons, Education Commons, and the Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons Recommended Citation Leone-Pizzighella, Andrea Renee, "Signs Of Success In Italian Schooling" (2019). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 3353. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3353 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3353 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Signs Of Success In Italian Schooling Abstract Italy’s secondary schools—the product of the class-based division of the education system around the time of Italy’s unification in 1861—are divided into three branches: the vocational school, the technical institute, and the lyceum. These three types of schools, their students, and their academic rigor are continuously discursively constructed as qualitatively distinct from one another. In accordance with these distinctions made between them on both a national and local level, students are differently attracted to and socialized to participate in the types of schooling associated with each. This dissertation draws on everyday sociolinguistic practices and emergent language ideologies across the three schools in order to explore the intersection of language, class, education, and persona in the construction of the “good” or “successful” student. This dissertation draws on a nine-month linguistic ethnography of language-in-education in the central region of Umbria, Italy. Through participant observation, audiovisual recording, classroom discourse analysis, and analysis of narrative, I analyze how students perform academically and how they orient to various public and private performances of academic prowess across the three school types. Specifically, this dissertation aims to identify how the "successful student" comes to be realized through interaction, rather than treating it as a static trait. Further, by framing sociolinguistic metadiscourse as instances of de facto language policy, I demonstrate how everyday interactions in schools can have an impact on the ways that students learn to participate in academic endeavors and/or how they are excluded from them. This dissertation concludes that students are likely channeled into particular school models not according to what their interests are, but according to whether they conform to or flout a ap rticular set of qualities associated with the “good” or “successful” student. In this sense, students’ language backgrounds, previous school experiences, and family education background all play an important role in the education trajectory that they will pursue in secondary school and beyond. It is then within each of the three schools that students are socialized into specific caa demic discourses which continue to funnel them into specialized forms of knowledge and ways of being throughout their school careers. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Education First Advisor Betsy R. Rymes Keywords academic success, Italy, language of schooling, linguistic anthropology, secondary school, youth language This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3353 Subject Categories Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics | Education | Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3353 SIGNS OF SUCCESS IN ITALIAN SCHOOLING Andrea Leone-Pizzighella A DISSERTATION in Education Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2019 Supervisor of Dissertation: ___________________________ Betsy Rymes, Professor of Education Graduate Group Chairperson: ____________________________ J. Matthew Hartley, Professor of Education Dissertation Committee: Nancy H. Hornberger, Professor of Education Robert Moore, Senior Lecturer in Education Sabina Perrino, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics, Binghamton University (SUNY) SIGNS OF SUCCESS IN ITALIAN SCHOOLING COPYRIGHT 2019 Andrea Renée Leone-Pizzighella This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ ACKNOWLEDGMENT None of what I have accomplished in the past six years of my doctoral degree would have even been thinkable without the love, support, encouragement, and patience of my husband, Zeno Pizzighella. I would have crumbled a long time ago if it weren’t for you, Ni. I am forever grateful and indebted to my incredible dissertation committee— Betsy Rymes, Nancy Hornberger, Rob Moore, and Sabina Perrino—who have always read and listened to my ramblings with interest and have figured out how to direct them into productive pursuits. I still can’t believe the luck I’ve had, finding myself among such brilliant minds and kind souls. To all of my friends, colleagues, and professors at Penn and elsewhere who came to presentations, read my papers, gave me feedback, shared ideas, and generally helped this dissertation take shape, I am so, so grateful to have had you by my side through this process. Thank you also to my family (both my American one and my Italian one) for doing their best to understand what this project was about and why it took so long! Ma sopratutto, grazie infinite ai tanti residenti, docenti, e studenti di “Cittadina” che mi hanno ospitato nelle loro case e nelle loro aule, offrendomi innumerevoli caffé, pizze, gelati, e ore di chiacchierate. Grazie della vostra confidenza e pazienza. Mi avete dato molto di più di quanto potrei darvi in ricambio. Questa tesi è dedicata a voi. iii ABSTRACT SIGNS OF SUCCESS IN ITALIAN SCHOOLING Andrea Leone-Pizzighella Betsy Rymes Italy’s secondary schools—the product of the class-based division of the education system around the time of Italy’s unification in 1861—are divided into three branches: the vocational school, the technical institute, and the lyceum. These three types of schools, their students, and their academic rigor are continuously discursively constructed as qualitatively distinct from one another. In accordance with these distinctions made between them on both a national and local level, students are differently attracted to and socialized to participate in the types of schooling associated with each. This dissertation draws on everyday sociolinguistic practices and emergent language ideologies across the three schools in order to explore the intersection of language, class, education, and persona in the construction of the “good” or “successful” student. This dissertation draws on a nine-month linguistic ethnography of language-in- education in the central region of Umbria, Italy. Through participant observation, audiovisual recording, classroom discourse analysis, and analysis of narrative, I analyze how students perform academically and how they orient to various public and private performances of academic prowess across the three school types. Specifically, this dissertation aims to identify how the "successful student" comes to be realized through interaction, rather than treating it as a static trait. Further, by framing sociolinguistic metadiscourse as instances of de facto language policy, I demonstrate how everyday iv interactions in schools can have an impact on the ways that students learn to participate in academic endeavors and/or how they are excluded from them. This dissertation concludes that students are likely channeled into particular school models not according to what their interests are, but according to whether they conform to or flout a particular set of qualities associated with the “good” or “successful” student. In this sense, students’ language backgrounds, previous school experiences, and family education background all play an important role in the education trajectory that they will pursue in secondary school and beyond. It is then within each of the three schools that students are socialized into specific academic discourses which continue to funnel them into specialized forms of knowledge and ways of being throughout their school careers. v Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENT…………………………………………………………….…...iii ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...iv LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………………..ix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS……………………………………………………………..xi PREFACE………………………………………………………………………………..xii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND RESEARCH CONTEXT……………………….1 1.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………1 1.2 Research Context and Researcher Positionality………………………………………2 1.2.1 Ethnicity and Language in Cittadina…………………………………………….5 1.3 Overview of Chapters…………………………………………………………………8 CHAPTER 2: BACKGROUND,THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK, AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS…………………………………………………………………………….12 2.1 Background on Italian Secondary Schools…………………………………………..12 2.1.1 School Types & Enrollment………………………………………………..15 2.1.2 Italian Education Policy 1859-present……………………………………..23 2.2 La Questione della Lingua: Conceptualizing Standard Italian and Dialect.................28 2.3 Theoretical