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The essay investigates educational counseling - which is provided by Italian junior high schools for upper secondary education - on a national scale but also focusing on the relevant impact on students from different social backgrounds. In Italy there are essentially two tracks of upper secondary school: a "liceo", which provides a more academic training, and an "istituto", where more practical and technical disciplines are taught. Teachers' guidance on what type of high school to choose tends to favor the academic track when the students come from highly educated families. The analysis suggests that there is a distortion in teachers' advice: at similar levels of school proficiency, teachers tend to promote especially students whose parents are the most highly educated to enroll in a liceo. Counseling appears to affect high school enrolment choices and creates a significant number of side effects. The evidence shows that the greatest distortion occurs in the case of students with medium-level academic performance. The analysis also shows that, among these mid-level adolescents coming from highly educated families who enroll in a liceo, the risk of failure is significantly higher despite teachers' advice to the contrary. On the whole, there is no geographic variance, and the evidence suggests that there is a bias in teachers' advice based on the students' social origin, which reinforces social inequality. Adequate measures need to be introduced to effectively address the way in which teachers counsel students on their high school choices, in order to prevent existing educational inequalities from being reinforced across the country.

This paper examines how the attitudes are towards the English education, in a school, among pupils in ninth, eighth, and sixth grade, and if monolingual and bilingual pupils feel that they have any advantages or disadvantages when learning English. This study also describes how teachers influence and establish attitudes among their pupils towards the English education.Both questionnaires and interviews were used in order to collect data valuable for the research questions. The results are thereafter discussed in relation to relevant background information, for example Gardner's (1991) theory about attitudes towards language learning and Ladberg's (1994) theory about second language learning and bilingualism.The results show that pupils' attitudes influence on the English education, that teachers' attitudes influence and establish pupils' attitudes towards the language learning, and that many of the bilingual pupils feel that they have advantages when learning English.

[ES] En este estudio se realiza un análisis de la gran influencia que los profesores ejercen sobre la integración escolar de los alumnos culturalmente minoritarios, a través de su forma de «ser» y de «actuar» en la dinámica cotidiana propia de la enseñanza diaria. La investigación y la teoría analizada en este artículo muestra cómo los profesores pueden —y deben— contribuir poderosamente a lograr una afectiva y social integración escolar de esta categoría de alumnado a través de las mil interacciones positivas diarias mantenidas con estos alumnos. También se pone claramente de manifiesto que los datos analizados deben contribuir, sobre todo, a despertar la conciencia profesional de los profesores a fin de capacitarlos para ser reflexivos, sensibles y comprometidos con la suerte escolar de este tipo de alumnado minoritario. En definitiva, la tesis central encerrada en este artículo es que los profesores resultan ser «los instrumentos por excelencia de los instrumentos pedagógicos», también para conseguir una genuina integración escolar de este tipo de alumnos diferentes., [EN] This study carnes out an analysis of the great influence that teachers have on the school integration concerning culturally minoritary students, both through the way they «are» and the way they «act» in the daily dynamics characteristic of ordinary teaching. The research and theory analized in this work show how the teachers can —and must— contribute strongly to the affective and social school integration of this kind of students in the thousand and one daily positive interactions with these students. Also it's strongly suggested that the data analysed should contribute to awaken the professional conscience of teachers in order to form a moral and professional responsibility in them that qualifies them to be reflective, sensitive and committed with this kind of minoritary students. In short, the central thesis which lies behind this paper is that the teachers are «the better instruments of the pedagogical instruments » for get a genuine school integration of these different students.