Essere “più inclusivi” basta? Diversità, inclusione e pratiche di cancellazione culturale nei manuali di italiano L2/LS

With three of the sixty-five million of Italian speakers being second language learners within and outside Italy’s borders (Ethonologue, 2023), Italian educators are now an active part of the broader conversation on critical approaches to language teaching materials. Scholars agree that textbooks are «curriculum artefacts that convey certain ideologies and legitimize certain types of knowledge» (Canale 2016: 225) and can perpetuate existing power relations by constructing meanings about the target learners and community (Gray, 2013; Uzum et al., 2020): therefore, the present work investigates the inclusive – or exclusive – relations promoted by a sample of seven Italian language textbooks published in the United States, United Kingdom, and Italy. The analysis reveals a wide distribution of inclusive practices, which mostly address racism and sexism. Results also point to the key role of explicitly intersectional pedagogical practices to create textbooks that not only openly inclusive, but also promote a diverse representation of both the imagined learners and community.