DIVERSITY the meaning of interculturality Castano YMartines

Estudios sobre Educación, 2020

This paper analyses the evolution of intercultural discourses and practices in Catalan schools (Spain), based on two studies contextualised in different times. The fi rst study was conducted in the 2000/2001 academic year, a time of incipient immigration and the incorporation of the intercultural discourse. The second study (2015/2016), nevertheless, took place in a context of migratory stabilisation and consolidation of the intercultural discourse in the autonomous community. Both studies took the quantitative methodological approach. The results showed that intercultural discourses and practices have evolved positively (in terms of their presence in school documents, actions taken and teacher training) and in keeping with European Union guidelines over the years. However, it still remains the challenge of debunking the belief that intercultural education is related to students of foreign nationality, and therefore the practice that intercultural education is mainly addressed at schools with high percentages of students of foreign nationality.

International Journal of Contemporary Sociology, vol. 40 (1), pp. 75-89

During the last decade Spanish academic and political debates have borrowed the term 'multiculturalism'. Since it has become the motto that makes reference to immigration issues, it has also entered educational discourses. It is important to remind that Spain has been an emigration country for the most of the XX century, but has experienced an important increase of Latin American, Moroccan, Senegalian and other immigrants for the last fifteen years. For this reason, the ways whereby Spanish schools have understood cultural diversity deserve a close examination, and can suggest relevant observations for those interested in the influence of European integration on the Mediterranean Region. This article argues that educational policy splinters multiculturalism in Spain inasmuch as multicultural objectives have only been partially assumed by the official rhetoric and its connection with social rights has been overlooked. Three specific factors are analysed, namely policy contradictions, the restriction of poly-ethnic rights and the individualisation and normalisation of educational diversity.

Gatti, Irazuzta and Martinez address the intercultural public policies implemented in the education system of the Autonomous Region of the Basque Country (Spain). Focusing on the education system allows them to reconstruct the historicity of identity-alterity production in a region in which language has been central for the establishment of ethnic frontiers. More specifically, they examine the implementation of these policies in three pre-school and primary educational institutions in a multicultural neighbourhood of the city of Bilbao. They look at Euskara-the Basque language-as a key element of the us-them distinction. The various education models regarding language and the teaching in/of Euskara or Spanish pave the way for the specialization and spatialization of the schools analysed. 'Integration' policies are implemented in ethnically marked schools only, based on a rhetoric of interculturality that assumes that any 'racial or ethnic discrimination' can be overcome through knowledge of the Other. Moreover, the assessment of public policies through 'interculturality figures and best practice' developed to address the so-called 'immigration issue' promotes a protectionist intervention on behalf of the assumed social vulnerabilities of immigrant schoolchildren and their families, which are read as 'problematic characteristics'. The article argues that, as a result of the approach based on the social conditions of immigrant children and their families in the Basque Country, the race issue evaporates.

Ante el vacío existente en la formación de los profesionales de la educación para responder a la diversidad cultural y lingüística del alumnado, este libro presenta una visión de la educación que ayudará a comprender mejor los procesos, las oportunidades y las barreras que la escuela ofrece a sus alumnos. El libro se estructura en tres partes. La primera aborda las cuestiones conceptuales relacionadas con el contexto social, cultural y educativo en el que se enmarca la Educación Intercultural en España. La segunda analiza los procesos que atraviesa el alumnado (recién llegados de otros países, de origen inmigrante, género e interculturalidad, diversidad religiosa, etc.). La tercera estudia cómo llevar a cabo una educación que merezca el adjetivo de “intercultural”.

Estudios Fronterizos, 2019

The objective of the article is to describe and analyze cultural diversity in indigenous schools and the challenges of interculturality in the face of ethnic-racial discrimination. Methodologically, the article is based on a survey on cultural diversity to a sample of 14 schools and 21 focus groups, with students and teachers of the 70 schools of the indigenous education system in Baja California. The findings point to a school cultural diversity fed by the same elements that emerge as objects of ethnic-racial and migrant discrimination as the basis of the inferiorized construction of the indigenous-migrant and native categories-, around the practice of some indigenous language, the skin color, and ancestral origin. Some limitations of the article come from its attention to the population of students and although it considers the teaching interaction, it does not analyze the diversity of that actor in the school space.

International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 2006

Since the 1990s, cultural diversity in Spanish classrooms has increased notably with the arrival of immigrant origin students. This fact, together with the European Union discourses about consideration for cultural differences, have contributed to the appearance in Spain, and particularly in Catalonia, of an intercultural discourse. This article analyses the evolution of educational policies up to the current dominant discourse (from exclusion to incorporation in the school and the classroom, passing through segregationist actions) emphasising the difficulty nowadays of putting this into everyday practice, among other things for the lack of references and the absence of resources. This is done through the analysis of different official documents, as well as recouping different pieces of research on this question by both the author and others. r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Power and Education, 2012

There has been a significant increase in the number of immigrant students in Spain, particularly in the region of Andalusia. However, some of them do not speak Spanish (which is the language of instruction used to teach the core curriculum) and this situation has led the regional government to create language adaptation classes (Aulas Temporales de Adaptación Lingüística [ATALs]) at primary schools. This article examines some aspects of a research study on cultural diversity , and presents the main inconsistencies arising from the setting of the ATAL programme. These inconsistencies are related to power issues that underlie intercultural education. The model of intercultural education promoted by the programme is discussed. The ATAL programme warrants consideration, since it may in fact be an instrument that consolidates the status quo, and may place immigrant students in a disadvantaged position.

Revista Española de Sociología

This article aims to analyse the evolution, and current situation, of discourses and policies on cultural diversity in primary schools on both sides of Southern Mediterranean Spain around the Strait of Gibraltar (Andalusia, Murcia, Ceuta and Melilla). To do so, the methodology designed is based on two techniques: documentary analysis of secondary sources (regulations, statistics) and personal interviews with administrative and political personnel from the regional education administration (discourses). Based on the data analysed, the article shows how the arrival of students of foreign origin in the 1990s stimulated education policies of exogenous cultural diversity, whereas endogenous cultural diversity is inherent to historically multicultural societies (‘diversicracy’). The data lead to the conclusion that there is a need to re-politicise educational policy on cultural diversity to promote interculturality based on citizenship rights and social justice, for which a rights-based a...

Intercultural Education, 2017

Education is suffering from the consequences of strengthening neoliberal policies, which impose an education model that serves the interests of the hegemonic economic system. The market rationale is being implemented in schools, moving the interests from equity to efficiency, from equal opportunities to performance. Starting from setting out a panoramic view of the way in which the intercultural focus in Spain has been used, with an approach to the different educational spheres in which we have carried out our work and research-educational policies, teacher education, school practice and education outside the school-we discuss the paradoxes and ambiguities that remove the transformative capacity of intercultural education and propose the reformulation of interculturality as an ethical and political project to subvert inequality by mobilizing to collectively create and enable images of education that contribute to a sustained way of building an equitable and fair society. Assuming our role as academics, we design a specific collective proposal on who mobilizes, with whom, as well as the attributes of the processes to be generated are discussed as well.

2012

Summary With the international migrations that began to settle in the Basque Country from the 1990s onwards, its educational system experienced a relatively novel situation: schoolchildren who were foreign or the children of immigrants arrived in its classrooms with different cultural heritages that were to a certain extent alien to the autochthonous forms of socialisation.

Ensaio, 2018