Intercultural education and teacher education in the current context of immigrant students in Spain

Abstract

This paper is an invitation to discuss the relation between intercultural education and teacher education in a multicultural and multilingual context. Our starting points are migration – which has been an important issue in the world – and the cultural variety arising from this phenomenon, which generates political, ideological, ethnic and cultural conflicts. We have researched the role of schools and teachers in the current scenario and aim to present the results of a study conducted in Spain with teachers who receive immigrant students. Most of these students do not speak the local language and need to learn it to integrate into the school environment and into society. As for methodology, we have followed mixed research principles, using quantitative and qualitative approaches, of the interpretive paradigm, to analyze the data obtained through questionnaires and transcriptions of discussion group meetings. The data was collected from the teachers who work on Aulas Temporales de Adaptación Lingüística (ATAL – Language Adaptation Temporary Classes) in the province of Cadiz, in the autonomous region of Andalucia, Spain. The results obtained evidenced that there is a demand on teachers’ part for educational actions focused on intercultural education. This indicates that the discussion on this matter is important for the development of schools that encourage and understand meeting the other as part of intercultural relations.