Interculturality, power and social change: the challenge of the ombudsman school

Abstract

This essay points out the educational and social profile of the School Mediator through a large sociological and anthropological confrontation on Mediation between actors in conflictive and unsymmetrical position (particularly the Sara Cobb’s ‘Circular Model’ and the Bush & Folger ‘ Transformative Model’) with the final aim of starting a social change. Therefore, the essay fixes the mainstays of a pedagogy of inequalities in multicultural societies by the re-elaboration of two concepts: power (from Weber to Foucault) and intercultural dialogue (referring to Plato’s diàlogos and to Paulo Freire’s dialogicitade). Finally, it supplies an educational value-oriented method which enables the Scholar Mediator to start up a culture of the dialog in day to day life leading to a reciprocal Exchange between alumnus and respective families, culturally differentiated, and the professorship and the world outside the school.

Keywords

• Interculturality
• Mediation
• Power/domain
• Inequalities
• Education
• Values
• Social change.