A23: facciamo il punto!

Since the school year 2017/2018, for the first time, teachers that had successfully completed a structured course on teaching Italian as a foreign or second language have been included in the Italian public school staff. This moment is very important. In fact, for a long time the Italian public school had not had in its staff the highly qualified professionalism useful to face problems linked to learning Italian as a second language. Until the recruitment of A23 teachers, teachers identified as such, as per the February 2016 Decree of the President of the Italian Republic, the Italian school had attempted to face this situation by doing its best with the resource and the professionalism available. On the one hand, teachers not trained to deal with the foreign students had to do it; on the other, when skilled and trained teachers were required, they were recruited from specific calls outside the teacher’s school staff. This paper addresses the investigation of the major steps that led to the inclusion in the Italian public school staff of people qualified to teach Lingua italiana per discenti di lingua straniera. The paper will also investigate the role and professionalism of A23 teachers in the Italian school. These reflections are based on data collected by a survey carried out during the school year 2018/2019, February to April 2019. Conducted by a self-administered online questionnaire entitled A23: Chi? Come? Dove? Quando? Perché?, it involved 76 A23 teachers.