Intelligence, educational practices and school reform: Organisations change, representations persist

The Italian system of schooling is the target of legislative changes that allow all actors (public, private and religious) equal dignity in parcicipating at the building of the system, but debates on these issues are apparent. Our studies on social representations of intelligence and education (Mugny & Carugati, 1985) have been illustrating to what extent teachers are a special category of people sensible to social change and to the relative inexplicability of phenomena of intelligence and education. This contribution illustrates, 20 years later, and with a wider sample of teachers (elementary, junior high school and high school teachers) the influence of inexplicability of intelligence as anchoring point in building up a representation of it in terms of a gift unequally distributed among pupils. Moreover do teachers working in public vs. private schools, differ in sharing an interpretation of intelligence in terms of gift? The overall results confirm previous evidence: mystery teachers are more prone to the gift, conformism, assessment, and school success. No differences are shown in teachers according to their activity in private vs. public schools. These results are discussed in the wider theorecical framework of social representations approach