Inspired by the Deweyan vision of public schools as places where the skills of democracy can be practised, debated and analyzed, Unit 3 intends to invert the common perception of diversity as a mere reason of discrimination and to consider it, rather, an added value in the learning process. Teachers should be aware that diversity depends on subjective perception: if it often represents a cause of conflict is because of invisible power relations that innerves society as well as school environments. Participatory and reflexive methods in the school environment could help to focus on diversity as a source for learning. Participants in Unit 3 are expected to build specific competencies within qualitative research strategies and participatory methods to apply in diversity management within the educational environment and to organize their class-groups as learning communities, i.e. as open, democratic environments where everyone is able to contribute to the learning process. Adopting a reflexive perspective on their own didactical practices and confronting their own experiences with some good practises mean to make the course an educating community focused on active pedagogy methods that teachers can bear in their own schools environment.

The first part of Unit 3 will focus on both theoretical and practical in-depth analysis of participatory methods in educational environments. In particular, learners will be stimulated to utilize action-research as an educational tool aimed to reflect on their own perception of diversity and on methods utilized to manage conflict and discrimination among students. In the second phase, participants will learn to learn, in a reflexive perspective, on their own didactical practices by confronting their own experiences with different case studies of good practices relating diversity management and or culturally and genderly responsive pedagogies - both in school environments or other education contexts - which demonstrates that school can work as a space of exchange, reflection and confrontation between parents, teachers, students, researchers and educators. Learners will compare these good practices experiences with their professional experiences, debate with other learners and identify topics as research-questions.

Learning activities will consist in face to face lectures, team activities, individual homework and e-learning. Together with face to face lecture, participants will be stimulated to apply theoretical knowledge on participatory methods in the analysis of some real-life case, both individually and in team activities, and finally to discuss their beliefs and considerations with other participants and with teachers, who assumes the role of facilitator in this part of the course. Different kinds of materials will be provided to learners in order to stimulate reflection and analysis: in-depth interviews, videos, textual and photographic documentation relating to good practices in diversity management. All the materials will be available on the online platform.