Abstract:

Intercultural education is becoming a reality in the former Eastern Bloc countries that were prevented from interacting with other countries for many years. In other, more advanced, European countries in former Western Bloc are sceptics to solve intercultural problems by this type of eductaion, already. Intercultural education can have very diverse forms. To be really effective, it cannot be just talking and “preaching” about a need for intercultural understanding. It can be effective only when it provides experience of cultural diversity to people - if it enables them to meet with views and attitudes of members of different cultures. Intercultural education should be part of an updated curriculum of school subjects as an individual or cross-sectional issue in Slovakia. Not every school realizes this consistently.

The main objective of our research was to find out how the intercultural education is being fulfilled in the educational setting. Partial objectives was to find out subjects, into which intercultural education incorporated most frequently; find out content of intercultural education and teachers’ knowledge; interest of teachers in further education in themes relating to Roma issues. To find the implementation of intercultural education in elementary schools we used the method of questionnaire. Structured non-anonymous questionnaire was our own design and contained 25 items. The survey sample consisted of all 2 218 elementary schools. We sent a questionnaire to schools and asked the school management to fill it in. By e-mail distribution we received back only 277 filled questionnaires, which represent a return rate of 12.48 %.

As the survey shows, schools still have much to do in order to understand nature of intercultural education and fully implement it. We discovered that teachers feel a need for improving their skills and knowledge in many areas (ethnic, religious, cultural). Intercultural education in elementary education has found its place especially in ethics, Slovak language and literature, music and visual arts. We found out that most often teachers focus on Romani culture. Because we assumed that teachers most often link intercultural education with Romani issues, we were interested in which specific themes they would like to improve their competences? The highest level of interest was in methods used in dealing with Roma parents and pupils. On the other hand, schools have the lowest interest in the topic of further education in the Roma language.

Scientific analysis is uncovering a need for the focus of educational activities on other educational and developing competences not just teachers, who are realising this, but perhaps also among people.

Keywords:

Interculture ecucation, elementary schools.