This publication comes from the Center for the Research of Ethnicity and Culture that provided research and expert oversight, and Nadácia otvorenej spoločnosti – Open Society Foundation that initiated the idea, and acted as contractor and publisher. It builds upon from a longer-term educational initiative that involved a range of people with different views and experience.
Multiculturalism is a cross-disciplinary topic in education. This publication aims to contribute to the public discourse on this important subject, and to partly fill the gap in identification of needs, analyses, research and evaluations that would precede new policies in practical education. By being an output of a research study, this publication offers valid quantitative data on current perceptions of culturally diverse groups among young people in Slovakia. It examines additional factors and social phenomena that affect these perceptions. The data are further interpreted in order to identify the degree to which pupils in the final forms of primary school are equipped for cultural interaction. It also explores the possibilities for an effective introduction of multicultural education at schools. Since we operate within a framework of the current educational policy, the publication aims to improve its quality, given the absence of definition of multicultural education and of identification of its needs in Slovakia.
The publication presents a scholarly sociological and pedagogical text written in an accessible manner. It contains a sociological study Perceptions of Cultural Diversity by Primary School Pupils in Slovakia with interpretation of findings and theoretical positions that place the data within a wider social context. The material also contains chapters that introduce a more specific context of pedagogical practice. Research questions led the respondents to answer primary questions related to implementation of multicultural education at schools, particularly in school management, teacher training and pedagogical methods. It did not aim to exclusively examine the pupils’ perceptions and the degree of their sensitivity to cultural diversity, but also examined the curricula in individual subjects, interactions of individual components, influences of school, family and external environment. Findings and recommendation for educational practice thus complement the theoretical part of this volume.
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Cultural Diversity and Its Perceptions by Primary School Pupils in Slovakia (.PDF)