Implementing an intervention curriculum to promote adolescents' cultural identity development: first evidence from an international school

As globalization increases, barriers to international mobility are diminishing, allowing expatriates and their families to relocate more easily. International schools have developed to provide a unified program for these children in a diverse environment, benefiting both expatriate and local families. However, this creates unique developmental challenges for adolescents, especially in terms of cultural identity formation, making targeted school-based interventions essential but still limited. This thesis presents the first results from a pilot study of the Identity Project (IP), a school-based intervention targeting cultural identity formation in adolescence (Umaña-Taylor & Douglass, 2017), implemented in the past academic school year within a private international school in Padua, Italy. Specifically, the goal was to investigate whether the project could effectively benefit students in an international school, particularly by encouraging them to explore and resolve their cultural identity, while also examining the role that ethnocultural empathy might play in this process. Surveys were administered to students in four classrooms in ninth and eleventh grade before and after participating in eight weekly sessions. These sessions, facilitated by trained interns, covered topics such as cultural identity, stereotypes and discrimination, symbols and traditions, and some practical activities. Post-session surveys and voluntary focus groups were held to collect feedback about the sessions from students to assess the feasibility, salience and appropriateness of the IP intervention’s adaptation to this context based on their perspectives.