ABSTRACT
How do our everyday language choices shape who feels visible and included in the Italian classroom? How can we modify our teaching practices to be more reflective of our gender diverse classrooms? What might a gender-expansive approach to Italian look like in practice, across different levels and contexts? How can we respond to resistance?
This interactive workshop invites teachers of Italian to explore these questions together. We will introduce our freely available e-book, Resources and Strategies for Gender-Expansive Language Education, created to support educators who wish to adopt more gender-expansive approaches in their practice. The e-book is organised into three interconnected parts.
Section 1, Grounded Beginnings, situates gender-expansive language teaching within its broader context. It introduces key terminology, outlines links to the Australian Curriculum and invites educators to reflect on how (grammatical) gender already operates in their classrooms.
Section 2, (Grammatical) Gender on Shifting Linguistic Grounds, explores how gender functions in and through language and why gender-expansive approaches matter for more just and affirming language classrooms. Grounded in research and classroom experience, this section offers practical strategies to help educators navigate complexity and make context responsive pedagogical choices.
Section 3, Staying with the Questions engages directly with typical questions educators have when working with gender-expansive language through guiding questions, provocations and discussion prompts.
During the session, participants will explore practical strategies for making gender-just choices in the classroom, engage with selected materials from the e-book and share their experiences. The workshop is designed as a practical, collaborative space where teachers of Italian can exchange ideas, experiment with new approaches and feel supported in developing inclusive practices that are meaningful within their own teaching contexts.
BIO
Riccardo Amorati, Elena Pirovano & Ariana Diaz
ADRIANA DÍAZ, Ph.D., (she/her/hers/ella) is a languages and critical intercultural education scholar born in Argentina, who for the last two decades has been living and working on the unceded lands of the Turrbal and Jagera People, colonised as Brisbane, Australia. She is Senior Lecturer in the Spanish and Latin American Studies Program, and recently appointed Director of Teaching and Learning for the School of Languages and Cultures, at the University of Queensland. Adriana’s theoretical and empirical work centres on how insights from critical pedagogy, intersectional feminism, and decolonial theories can help us un/re-learn the ways in which we engage with the world.
RICCARDO AMORATI, Ph.D., (he/lui) is a Lecturer in Italian Studies at the University of Melbourne. Following university studies at the University of Bologna (Italy), he worked as a secondary school teacher and then moved to Australia to complete his doctoral degree in Applied Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses primarily on the psychological factors that influence second language learning (motivation, anxiety, wellbeing), gender-expansive language education, and language teaching methodologies.
ELENA PIROVANO, Ph.D., (lei/she) is a Lecturer in Languages and Literacies Education at the University of Melbourne, Faculty of Education. She is an experienced teacher who worked in different countries (Italy, USA, Australia) and across educational sectors (from primary school to university) for the past 30 years. She taught Italian in primary schools in Victoria for nine years before undertaking her doctoral studies; during this time she had the opportunity to extend her teaching experience by teaching Italian to university students. Her research focuses on the affordances of plurilingual pedagogies and pedagogical translanguaging for learning additional languages. In her research and teaching practice, she also advocates for more inclusive and gender-just linguistic practices.