Detrimental educational practices deemed as culturally acceptable: Adultcentrism and Black Pedagogy in Italian primary schools

In a complex and systemic view of human development, the educational relationship is conceived as the keystone of development (Pianta, 1999; Pianta, 2001). However, harsh discipline practices may still be culturally rooted, thus affecting children’s well-being. Two constructs that may provide useful insights on this topic are Adultcentrism (AD) and Black Pedagogy (BP). AD is conceived as a paradigm of thought entailing a bias in the interpretation of children’s needs, hindering adults’ capability to truly understand children’s culture, and promoting a binary thinking based on the adult–child opposition. BP represents a label for those “old-fashioned” disciplinary methods (punishments or physical/mental violence) based on adults’ power and control over children, that may be still deemed as acceptable to a certain degree in a specific cultural and social context. Adultcentrism and Black Pedagogy Scales were administered to a sample of 294 Italian primary school teachers (age M = 47 years, SD = 8.96). Measures of authoritarian educational styles and of the ability to recognize subtle maltreating situations were also included. Results indicated that the higher the agreement with AD and BP, the lower the capacity to correctly recognize subtle maltreating situations in classroom. Adultcentrism proved to be a significant predictor of Black Pedagogy: F(1, 231) = 71.06, p =.000, with R2 =.24. Results support the idea that it is worth reflecting on the risk that Adultcentrism brings about detrimental Black Pedagogy educational practices, in order to provide suggestions about possible application models for family and professional caregivers to use to foster children’s well-being.