Abstract:

Background:
Foreign-born students' present a high dropout rate in Italian school: 2.92% in the first degree of secondary school (compared to 0.45% of Italians); 10.5% in the second degree (compared to 3.3% of Italian students), (MIUR, 2019). This is the segment of the population with the highest growth rate in the coming years and therefore school failure has many consequences at the personal as well as at the social levels. The understanding of the scholastic difficulties experienced by foreign-born students are complex and difficult to interpret (i.e. linguistic disadvantages, emotional and motivational problems, and different attitudes towards the educational institution). In this contribution, we investigate the students’ points of view, by asking them how the school should change to support their learning pathway and which actions school should be implemented.

Method:
Sample
The survey involved a total of 527 students (first level n = 244; second level n = 283), developed inside the IMPACT FVG-FAMI project. 80 students (15.18%) come from Third Countries (TC), 75 (14.42%) have a Migratory Background (MB), and 371 (70.4%) belonging to the European Community (UE). The independent variables assumed in the analysis are: the "Background of origins" of the students and the risk of "Drop out".

Measure:
The students answered an online questionnaire, composed of closed items (Likert scale from 0 to 4). The questionnaire was structured to investigate different aspects involved in the learning process, and in the phenomenon of early school leaving.

Results:
We asked to the students what they would like to change at school, with respect to the relationship between teachers and students, between classmates or between school and family. Differences in student’s beliefs toward the school-family relationship emerge: the TC students believe significantly less than EU students that the school should change the school-family relationship (p <0.05). In addition, students generally believe that the priority task of the school is to help students. However, compared to this aspect, the TC students think significantly less than the students with MB, that the school should have this task (p <0.05).

Conclusion:
We found some differences in the students’ beliefs in respect to their expectations about the support they would like to receive in school.
TC students have different beliefs about family and school relationship, probably derived from specific cultural models about the role of schools and their relationships with families. Furthermore, TC students have different expectations about the role of schooling in their lives; we hypothesize that they probably assign a higher responsibility to students themselves in school success at school. The results suggest the need to rethinking the scholastic experience, through action-research initiatives, in order to modify the teaching practice and to support the learning processes of student at risk.

References:
[1] Suarez-Orozco, M., Darbes, T., Dias, S.I., & Sutin, M. (2011). Migration and Schooling. Annual Review of Anthropology, 40, 311-328.
[2] Ventura, M. (2012). Between intercultural and critical pedagogy: the subtle exclusion of immigrant students. Intercultural Education, 23(6), 555-565.
[3] MIUR – Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca (2019). La dispersione scolastica nell’anno scolastico 2016/2017 e nel passaggio all’anno scolastico 2017/2018, https://miur.gov.it/pubblicazioni.

Keywords:

Foreign-born students', Early school leaving, Relationship, School intervention.