Robi Kroflič

MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION IN SLOVENIA – THE ROLE OF THE INDUCTIVE APPROACH AND EDUCATION THROUGH ARTS IN INTERCULTURAL CLASSROOM(draft version)

ABSTRACT:In the first part of this article/chapter some facts about multicultural education in Slovenia are presented in accordance with research projects in last five years.In second part I present some theoretical ideas about how to exceed described problems in multicultural education on the level teacher’s prejudices and developing didactical solutions for intercultural classroom.Contemporary concern in intercultural education is strongly connected with some issues of postmodern pedagogy, like the importance of recognition of otherness of every individual and value of differences among cultures which leads toward respect as the core value and developing respectful mind (Gardner) as one of the most important aims of education. I would like to stress out the importance of inductive educational approach which confirms importance of recognition of other as different and leads to acceptance of respect as the most important (pre)ethical principle. Second important theoretical idea is thesis about aesthetics experience as educational tool for both deconstruction of exclusive cultural practices and promoting acceptance of otherness as the bridge to more suitable proper moral responses among people. I will also present some practical examples of pedagogical work that we have established in testing phase in To-Gather: European Multiple Choice Identity project and became a basis for teacher training course Inductive Educational Approach as the Basis for Intercultural Education and Identity Development (2009-2011).

Intro

Slovenia could be described as a small country in the center of Europe, surrounded with many cultural differences (German, Roman, Slavic and Hungarian - Finnish language traditions; rimo-catholic, protestant, orthodox, Islamic and in the last time selected new age religions; until recently NATO, Warsaw pact and nonalignment political movement; and socialist and capitalist economic systems), which have reached independency and step into European union in last twenty years. These two facts lead our cultural patterns toward two opposite directions. Long-lasted living with cultural differences makes us sensible for the importance of multicultural principles; but late independency still inflames strong notions on the protection of national cultural patterns at least in the part of political parties and media who has a big influence on public opinions. This contradiction can be recognized also in our educational system, which is in the one side an example of good practices of accepting minority rights of Italian and Hungarian minorities, but on the other side we can trace heavy problems with accepting similar standards of rights for Roma children and children of second generation from the former Yugoslav republics.

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In this article I would like to start with some facts about Slovenia as multicultural society, research data from recently published research projects about multicultural education in Slovenia, and than present a model of intercultural education, that we have recently developed on the basis of paradigm of inductive pedagogical approach together with recognizing importance of art for reaching basic aims of general education. This concept was formed in connection with international Erazmus project European Multiple Choice Identity (leaded from Ganzege University, Groningen, The Netherlands between 2006 and 2009) and is started in Slovenia in 2009 as an in service training program for pre-school and primary school teachers for deepening understanding of importance of intercultural dimension of education and developing some practical didactical approaches to this topics.

Slovenia as Multicultural Society

In Slovenia we can talk about two groups of ethnic minorities: (1) ethnic communities, i.e. Italian, Hungarian, and Romany, and (2) ethnic groups: Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, Albanian, Macedonian, and a few others (also called immigrant minorities). The term “ethnic community” refers to the three groups whose political subjectivity is regulated by the constitution and relevant legislation and which participate in the government system. Most of the other non-Slovenians trace their ethnic origins to republics of former Yugoslavia and have a different treatment. Their political subjectivity is not regulated by the constitution and legislation, but their human rights are guaranteed in a similar manner as those of other groups of this kind, e.g. linguistic groups (Ermenc-Skubic 2004).

The 2002 census tells us that the total population of about 2 million includes 12.3% of the citizens stated that their mother tongue is not Slovenian: 2258 Italians, 6242 Hungarians, 3246 Romanies, 21,542 Bosniaks, 35,642 Croats, 10,467 Muslims, 38,964 Serbs and others – a total of about 123,000 people. Only members of the Hungarian and the Italian community have the possibility to learn their own language and Slovenian as a second language but only in schools in areas declared as nationally mixed and not in other environments (ibid.). For Roma children we have accepted state recommendations for necessary adaptations of school regime to increase their school success (Strategija vzgoje in izobraževanja Romov v Republiki Sloveniji 2004), which mostly include support in learning of Slovene language as a second language and employment of so called Roma assistants who would help with breaking language barriers between Roma children and other children and adults in the school environment. For children from other ethnic groups we do not meet such systematic adaptations.

In the last couple of years we can find some interesting research projects that uncover the real situation in Slovenian public school system concerning treatment of pupils or students from different ethnic minorities.

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The results of the first research study, made and published by ISCOMET – Institute for Ethnic and Regional Studies uncovers some important facts about discrimination in Slovenian school system but also in wider society. As one of the researchers in this project, K. Skubic-Ermenc stress out, “…education and upbringing depend on society and are as such always linked to other social phenomena. Therefore they cannot be perceived as separate from society, its structure and changes. However, it is not true that they are determined solely by society. There is much research which proves that school has the power to transform – to a certain extent it can achieve educational goals which are not commonly endorsed by society. Therefore we may say that the school, teachers and pupils alike, also has a subversive power.” Skubic-Ermenc 2007, p. 66). Simply said, it is very hard but not impossible for teachers in schools to cope with problematic stereotypes and hidden examples of exclusion of pupils from minority groups, because pupils meet the same examples in everyday life outside the school.

The most common “targets” of stereotypes, hate speech and even discrimination are usually Roma people (specially their community in east-south part of Slovenia) and people from immigrant minorities from former Yugoslav republics. Unfortunately common praxis in Slovenian newspapers is discriminatory reporting about incidents, “committed by Roma people”. In order to create coherent meaning of the news text, journalists first reduce the definition of situation to only one event, which presents the majority population in a positive light, and in this technique they selectively (mis)use information, use discourse of difference with colonization of common-sense language, and the strategies of denial of discriminatory discourse (Erjavec 2001).

Second, politically and media very exposed phenomenon in the last two decades was “erasing” 18,000 members of nations and nationalities of the former Yugoslavia from the list of the citizens of the newly-formed country without being given any prior notice or chance of appeal, since they, due to various reasons, had not yet secured Slovene citizenship in February 1992 (Devetak 2007). Although The Slovenian Supreme Court decided to return rights to those people, it was only in the beginning of 2009 that new government started to follow the direction of The Slovenian Supreme Court, but even now this event is attended with lot of discriminatory discourse of nationalistic oriented politicians.

Next example of discriminative discourse is negative attitude of part of the population towards Islam, evident from decades of obstructing, by using various excuses, the building of a mosque in Ljubljana that would become the first Islamic religious and culture centre in the Republic of Slovenia. According to S. Devetak, the existence of discrimination phenomena on the grounds of ethnic origin or religious beliefs in the Republic of Slovenia as well as other European Union States, represents not only a legal and moral issue but also a latent political and security-related problem (ibid.). And as F. Mlinar adds, Slovenian institutions, obliged by the Constitution to protect minorities, have not done enough to this end and have not encouraged new protection projects (Mlinar 2007).

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K. Ermenc-Skubic concludes survey of unsold (or at least not solved properly and on time) problems of people from immigrant minorities, that “…young people are receiving a great number of messages, which strongly obstruct actual implementation of education for coexistence, because they create an environment in which hostility towards people different from us is the order of the day. In such conditions education in the belief which accepts diversity as a potential and not as a threat to society is very difficult. The school and the teacher must in these circumstances rely on general civilization norms and oppose discriminatory and stereotyped viewpoints with criticism. Such educational action requires a strong personality and adequately qualified teacher with resolved issues regarding prejudices and possible discriminatory practice and who is appropriately trained to carry out such a demanding educational process. It should be supported by a corresponding school climate.” (Ermenc-Skubic 2007, pp. 68).

How is Slovenian public school prepared for multicultural education?

One of the state institutions that should do a lot to strengthen a discourse of civic rights of minority people is public school. Two researchers from the international project “Training and Education for Combating Discrimination in Slovenia”, F. Mlinar (2007) and K. Ermenc-Skubic (2007) are arguing for a thesis, that only one class subject “Ethics and Civic Education” is not enough to teach a child to respect diversity. Interculturality as an educational principle should be present in all school activities, but sadly it is done only on the declarative level and only rarely in practice during the lectures on geography, history, Slovenian language and foreign languages. It has been confirmed once more that the education of pupils in a spirit of respect towards diversity and prohibition of discrimination is left to the personal initiative of individual school teachers.

Two more recent research projects on justice of Slovenian public school system, concerning different groups of pupils/students at risk, show that immigrant children are “condemned” to lower educational success (Medveš et all 2008), and teachers in Slovenian primary education show very little responsibility for educational achievements of Roma children and children from former Yugoslav republics and their views do not differ from the views of other citizens, which is the first indicator of serious obstacles in fulfilling the goals of education for coexistence (Peček and Lesar, 2006).

Slovenia was for the first time included to the project PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) in 2006 and the results show some very interesting dimensions for our problem of multiculturalism. In the joint assessment of literacy in natural sciences, 15-year olds achieved 12th place among 57 countries. But PISA showed for Slovenia a high level of dispersion (variance) of achievements, which is for Slovenia almost twice as high as the average of OECD, and so Slovenia is allocated to the high third place among the 57 participating countries according to the size of differences among achievements of 15-year olds: “

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A relatively very high share of variance in achievements is, namely, explained exactly with economic, social and cultural background of pupils. In the countries participating in the project PISA 2006, economic-socio-cultural factors should on average explain less than 20% of dispersion of achievements, while in Slovenia the percentage is 46%. Within that, low achievements of immigrants also have strong effect. PISA defines status of an immigrant also for pupils, the parents of which are not born in Slovenia. In Slovenia we have approximately 10% of such 'second generation’ immigrants. These pupils have, on average, lower achievements: not even 30% of second-generation immigrant pupils achieve the basic level of literacy in natural sciences, while there is only a bit more than 10% of such 'national' pupils.” (Medveš et al. 2008, p. 92)

Among possible answers to the question which are the most important causes of described under-achievements of immigrant pupils and how to react to such a problematic results of PISA, I would like to stress out the importance of teacher’s responsibility for educational success of immigrant pupils. Due to Rawls principles of justice and difference, the responsibility of school system is not only to assure equal distribution of rights, freedoms, opportunities, wealth and the social basis of self-respect, but also to compensate inequalities of frequently disregarded pupils according to “positive discrimination”, “… creating a situation in which the responsibility to empower the individual to take his opportunities are on the school... This would mean that different students should be treated differently with the view of equalising the objective differences and enabling them to achieve the same results. In order to realise this, the second Rawls principle (of difference) should not be implemented only on the formal institutional level, it is necessary that it also enters the relationship level. Hence it requires a teacher who has the sensitivity to assess what is fair and just for different students on a case-to-case basis and who can justify why she treats one student differently than others.” (Peček 2005, pp. 29-30).

Are teachers in Slovenian public schools prepared for taking such a responsibility on the relationship level also when cultural differences of pupils are objective obstacles for better educational achievements? Research on the primary school teacher’s responsibility to assure equal opportunities for pupils at risk (Peček and Lesar 2006), especially Roma/Gypsy shows, that “...teachers assign a staggering 35% to the child’s abilities and a further fifth to the child's activity. The degree of importance assigned to the teacher’s teaching method is just over 11%, and to the class atmosphere slightly over 10%. It seems that more than half of the Romani child’s school success depends on the child himself. Teachers assign less importance to what happens in school than to the family circumstances. We can therefore conclude that teachers do not think they play an important role in the educational achievements of Romani children; 18.5% of teachers even believe that what happens in school is not an important factor in the school results of Romani children at all.” (Lesar 2005, p. )

Similar results from the same research study, made on the representative sample of primary school teacher in Slovenia, where found in the attitude of teachers toward pupils from second generation families from former Yugoslav republics. If we add to these results the data, that Roma/Gypsy children are seven times more likely to be sent to schools with special programs

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than other children, we can conclude, that personal attitude of teachers who work in multicultural settings in Slovenian primary schools, need to be changed if we want to built more inclusive educational environments (Booth and Ainscow 2002) and strengthen teacher’s ethical responsibility and personal engagement (The GoodWork Project®: An Overview 2006) to provide immigrant children fair opportunities for a better educational success.

Inductive approach and use of art education as the basis for intercultural education

In 2008 I have prepared with a group of colleagues a program for improving the teacher’s attitudes and didactical knowledge on how to run intercultural activities in public kindergartens and primary schools, in 2009 we have started to implement this program for in-service training for teachers.

For the theoretical starting point we have used the following pedagogical ideas:

Implementation of inductive educational approach aimed at developing respectful and ethical relationships in a multicultural environment

Using art education for recognizing cultural differences as valuable and deconstruction of public prejudices and practices of exclusion

Using synchronization didactic model for teacher education

Inductive educational approach

In the late sixties of the twentieth century during his empirical research Martin Hoffman found a new pattern of parental discipline practices, which he called inductive approach. With inductive discipline, we:

Express our disapproval of the child’s act and indicate implicitly or explicitly that the act is wrong and that the child has committed an infraction (this dimension is present also in the other two concepts of discipline).

Call attention to the victim’s distress and make it salient to the child. Point up the role of the child’s action in causing that distress, which creates the condition

for feeling empathy-based guilt, which is a feeling of intense disesteem for oneself for wrongfully harming another.

Give the chance to the offender to improve the situation which was caused by his act (Hoffman 2000).

What is new in inductive discipline approach? A teacher is no longer pointing his finger to a moral rule that was not considered by the offender, nor is she expressing her disappointment with the offender behavior. She is expressing disapproval of the child’s act and making a

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pressure toward the offender by calling attention to the victim’s distress, showing him that this distress was caused by his act. The underlying condition for fostering the offender prosocial emotions and activities (giving a chance to improve the situation) lays on the belief that inductive discipline act will provoke the offender’s emphatic distress on the basis of emphatic guilt and intense disesteem.

Hoffman’s approach of empathy as a source of pro-social emotions enabled him to restore a thesis that empathy is the first source of moral competencies of the child in very early developmental period which can influence successfully further development of emotional, motivational and cognitive capacities for moral decision making and acting. Moral education in this period should therefore focus on fostering the development of empathy and pro-social emotions, which are tightly connected with emphatic guilt. With this basic statement Hoffman confirmed Levinas (2006) thesis about the responsibility toward the Face of the other as pre-ethical condition of moral acting and opened the opportunity for building of new, postmodern conception of moral development.

Under my opinion, this type of ethical reasoning, moral acting and educational settings creates important new opportunities for intercultural education. Classical enlightenment models of moral reasoning like reasoning according to Kant’s categorical imperative have already showed their weakness to be a successful tool for solving ethical and political dilemmas on the ground of multicultural conflicts. Let’s illustrate this thesis with the description of well known multicultural conflicts about wearing Muslim women scarf in the public school in France, and publishing Mohamed’s caricatures in the Danish newspaper. Both conflicts are in Europe usually described as an attack on basic human rights; the wearing of head scarves being seen as a symbol of the de-privileged status of women in Islamic cultures and the denial of equal rights between the sexes, and the protest against caricatures of Mohammed in a Danish newspaper being seen as a symbol of the denial of the right of free speech or the expression of personal opinions. Defenders of these kinds of judgments usually forget that in at least some Islamic cultures many women deliberately wear the head scarf as a way to protect themselves from being viewed as mere sexual objects. And profound analysis of first expulsions of Muslim girls from secondary schools, made by Sheila Benhabib (2008), showed that girls haven’t come from traditional Islamic families and that they decided to wear head scarf deliberately to express their identity, but their voices weren’t heard during the trial.Concerning protests of the proponents of Islamic culture against caricatures of Mohamed we usually forget that even in European cultures we condemn hate speech as an example of verbal attack following Locke’s argument of limiting the principle of tolerance when an intolerant person attacks a tolerant one in spite of the tolerant person’s willingness to be open to different arguments. However, in the West, we don’t usually consider comical caricatures of the Christian God as an assault on Western religion, so through Eurocentric view comical caricatures of Mohamed were not seen as an example of assault (or hate speech) which should be accused.

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The analysis of both cases shows that cultural conflicts arouse from different meaning of basic values, and what is more important, from denial of Levinasean “pre-ethical principle” of being respectful toward the difference of the other person. Possible gap between concrete understanding of profound meaning of ethical standards and prescribed respectful attitude shows the importance of Howard Gardner’s notion on the importance of two separate sets of competencies, respectful and ethical mind for the future of mankind (Gardner 2008). But when we follow Levinas (2006) concepts we have to admit the priority of respectful attitude before negotiation about the meaning of ethical standards. This is the core of Levinas thesis about respect for the other that is not the result, but the condition of ethics; and we can trace identical logic in Hoffman’s notions on the development of empathy and pro-social emotions according to the inductive educational approach.

So when a harmful act occurs in multicultural society, there is always a latent danger that victim and offender will not agree on the concrete meaning of moral principles or even on the legitimization of concrete moral norm. In spite of searching of “ultimate meaning”, which in concrete situation almost always confirm the statement of majority, in inductive approach we focus on subjective experience of the act where values of the person from minority group are of equal importance than values of majority. To achieve this aim, listening to the story of victim as well as to the story of the offender is of big importance. The same positive experiences aroused from using peer mediation as the method of solving school conflicts.

If M. Hoffman described inductive approach only as discipline technique, different from classical authoritative-assertive type of discipline (where discipline is recognized as responsibility to act according to moral demands of teacher as authority) and permissive type (where the teacher reacts to problematic behavior of a pupil with emotional conditioning, like “you’ve made me very sad with your behavior”), he has already mentioned that we can also build the educational method of inductive reactions to positive behavior (Hoffman 2000), but to speak about new educational concept/paradigm inductive method has to be widened to different types of activities and theoretically expanded with profound anthropological ideas. For the purpose of teachers course I have already spread the idea of inductive approach to Levinas concept of responsibility, M. Klein, S. Tood, N. Eisenberg and K. Kristjansson concepts of pro-social emotions and my own concept of self-limited authority of the teacher (Kroflic 2009). On this theoretical basis the three steps model of educational methodic was developed:

The child is in his or her first years capable of relations of love and friendship (even if ethical consciousness demands complex cognitive capacities), therefore pedagogy supporting those relationships enables the child to develop relational response-ability and normative agency for pro-social activities in a most authentic way.

Because personal engaged relations may be as well harmful, in case they lead to empathic over-arousal, empathic bias, pity and paternalism, the next important focus is to develop the sense of respect toward concrete persons or activities.

Last step of moral education is to become aware of ethical principles and humanistic demands, especially concerning human rights and ecological values, and learn how to use them as a basis for democratic negotiation in cases of interpersonal conflicts.

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What is important to add to this short description is that “…the proposed model should not be understood as a step model of classical linear development (like Kohlberg’s model of the development of moral reasoning) because every phase of the model remains important for morality even when the next developmental step is reached. As we have already seen through the short analysis of conflicts about the meaning of Muslim cultural symbols, keeping in mind the principle of respect while we are trying to apply the logic of justice in public space is especially important in multicultural societies. And the second notion is that the best way of using the inductive model of moral development is within an inclusive school environment and not only as an abstract learning of solving moral dilemmas in the classroom.” (Ibid.)

Intercultural education and artistic experience

Concerning the spreading of educational activities in inductive approach from solely discipline practices, artistic experiences can be used very successfully. When we become aware of the characteristics of life in the post-modern era as liquid (Z. Bauman) and risky time (U. Beck) which demands from us constant reflection on our identity in a world of constant changes and cultural interactions (A. Giddens), we can emphasize several positive roles of artistic experiences.

The first one is connected with the fact that the world we live in is composed of an uncountable number of simultaneously existing perspectives and viewpoints, so our personal growth to become different has to include searching for our personal voice and playing participatory and well articulated roles in the communities. According to M. Greene (1995), artistic imagination is a cognitive capacity, which enables us to reach a coherent image of the world with the use of empathy. Artistic imagination is the means to reach the world of the Other in a way that we become accustomed to “as if” worlds, that were created by writers, painters, sculptors, movie directors, choreographers, and composers, and enabled us to gain new perspectives on life (ibid.) - so important for the post-modern conception of humanity and ethical consciousness. It motivates us to become accustomed to the artistic created person or event, empathic with its destiny, to restrict our ego fantasies about ourselves as centers of the universe, to reflect life events we would never experience, and to create visions about possible worlds that abolish selfishness and injustice. So it is not a coincidence that in the last few decades we can find more and more proof that human moral understanding is fundamentally imaginative and that metaphor is one of the principal mechanisms of imaginative cognition (Johnson 1993).

M. Nussbaum in her influential work Cultivating humanity (1997) identifies three important dimensions of the artistic imagination: narrative imagination, deliberative imagination, and compassionate imagination. In its central chapter “Narrative imagination” she claims, that cultivating humanity through / by art was what form Socrates, stoics and Seneca held as the central part of basic education. In one picturesque passage she writes: “Habits of empathy and community conduce to a certain type of citizenship and a certain form of community: one that

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cultivates a sympathetic responsiveness to another's needs, and understands the way circumstances shape those needs, while respecting separateness and privacy. This is so because of the way in which literary imagining both inspires intense concern with the fate of characters and defines those characters as containing a rich inner life, not all of which is open to view; in the process, the reader learns to have respect for the hidden contents of that inner world, seeing its importance in defining a creature as fully human.” (Nussbaum 1997, p. 90). This description of penetrating into the soul of a literal hero liberates the reader’s stereotypical perception (what literary critic L. Trilling describes with the term ‘deliberative imagination’; ibid.) and enables empathy and compassion: “Compassion involves the recognition that another person, in some ways similar to oneself, has suffered some significant pain or misfortune in a way for which that person is not, or not fully, to blame.” (Ibid., pp. 90-91). Compassion includes one more important dimension that is the sense of my own vulnerability, which tells me that I could experience a similar destiny to the literary hero in my future, which causes my readiness to generously help. This last dimension of imagination M. Nussbaum describes as compassionate imagination, and its value is connected with our readiness to have an empathic recognition of the social position of different, marginalized, invisible persons in a global world of differences (ibid.).

As we see from profound descriptions of artistic imagination, art can really motivate pupil to recognize cultural differences as valuable and deconstruct public prejudices and practices of exclusion. Both aims are according to Burbules and Rice (1991) the most important aims of post-modern pedagogy. To reach them in the context of intercultural education, we have to foster pupil’s relational response-ability and normative agency for pro-social activities, but at the same time help her to lose fear from the radical otherness of persons that are handicapped or using cultural habits, strange from the point of view of our own culture. How can we reach both aims by using inductive educational approach, artistic experience and seven step didactical model (Kratsborn 2004) I will present in the last chapter of this article.

“The Other” project for pre-school kids in Vodmat, Ljubljana

In November-December 2007 period we tested root five – “The Other” of the To-Gather: European Multiple Choice Identity project in kindergarten Vodmat, Ljubljana (Štirn-Koren 2008). Because of its big success we still use documentation of this educational project as an example of good educational practice in teacher training course Inductive Educational Approach as the Basis for Intercultural Education and Identity Development.

In the period of time when most of kindergartens in Slovenia prepare several activities to celebrate arriving of the New Year, we decided to make festive time in a different way, so children could get to know how this period is celebrated in different cultural and religious communities. Basic aims of this project were, that a child:

understands his own view of life and respects the different world-views and identities;

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expresses selected worldview through symbols, music, symbolic play, photos, movie and design and presents her/his findings to children from other groups and their parents;

communicates with others about the key-terms of this route (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Humanism);

integrates these worldviews, reflecting as well on the previous routes (identity, family and friends, good work, migration and mobility – in the same kindergarten we have prepared project activities on those topics before in a period between 2006 and 2007) to form a save ground for the child to enter the process of » multiple choice identity«.

Children of every group were first asked to explore how people from different cultures and religions celebrate arriving of the New Year and then every group selected one of the world views which they wanted to know better. The whole project was designed on W. Kratsborn (2004) seven steps didactical model The Route to the Multiple Intelligent Citizen.

In Step 1 – The sense opened citizen: children were opening their senses for different world-views and religions. To achieve this aim, children:

Asked grandparents about celebrations in their times. Were bringing different materials, which are connected with their family celebrations. Expressed their feelings through drawings. Were collecting material and symbols from different parts of the world. In playrooms they prepared “holy places” for special objects, which they brought and

collected. They were asked to treat the objects with special respect. Weaved flying carpets to flow around the world and look how people live in different

places, according to their culture and religion. Were developing their image of the world.

In Step 2 – The knowledge based citizen children started to gather information about celebrations, habits, food, symbols, sound, big names from different cultures and images about different world-views and religions. Teachers were invited guests to talk to children about their religious practices and habits during celebrations (Christian priest, Muslim, Buddhist). Children were also getting familiar with trips of Marco Polo and made a map of his travel along the Silk Road. Teachers told them stories based on different cultures and religions.

After getting information children were asked to explain some selected religious concepts. There are some of their explanations: Who is GOD? (Statements from children 3 to 6 years):

• He is the one from heaven. • God is Jesus, I saw him in the church and he told us what we have to pray.• God is in the clouds.

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• I have a book about god at home. We have Jesus in grandmother's kitchen.• He is the one that we don't see. He has big eyes so that he can see all people.• God helps you.• We have hip on our body. (In Slovenian language we have almost the same

expression for the word god/bog and flank/bok.) God could be also in church. I don't know how he looks like, because I don't go in the church. If you have cross on your grave it means that you go in the church.

…and what is CHURCH?

• I saw clowns in the church.• When you go to the church you have to be quiet, because others speak.• In the church bells are ringing so that we know what‘s the time.• Once when I was driving by bicycle I saw house without the door and there was a man

stucked to the wood.• In church you see girls which are appearing in public (singing and reading).• Mummy and daddy got married there.• Church is house with spire roof. Anybody can go there, but you are not allowed to

take anything.• When grandmother had heartache, she went to the church.• In church we pray for health and that daddy will return from America until summer.

In Step 3 – The active citizen: children were visiting different houses of religion, they were sinking into the world of different religions and ways of life through symbolic play, modeling symbols of different world-views and religions and went to pilgrimage around the kindergarten with best wishes for everybody. This step enables the children to make new meanings and connects these new information, knowledge and different perspective to concrete new experiences in his environment.

In Step 4 – The communicative citizen: children were communicating about step 2 and 3 and they connected dilemmas with their life experiences. Parents visited the group and together with children they prepared products and symbols from chosen religion. After this, children created cartoon bricks with important information about selected religion or world-view (drawings and photos).

In Step 5 – The productive (creative) citizen children were asked to prepare their ‘world-view market place’ with information, objects, images, drama and music. So every group prepared a short drama presentation, dance and singing on the music from selected culture, and a stand for selling products, typical for selected culture (biscuits, souvenirs with religious symbols, etc.).

In Step 6 – The cooperative citizen: children presented their ‘world-view market place’ and communicate with children from other groups and parents in the kindergarten hale. During the

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presentation of every group with drama, dancing and singing, children created a tower of religions and worldviews from cartoon bricks which they have prepared during the step 4.

From the Step 7 – The reflective citizen: I would like to present only a statement of one of the parents, who expressed her reflection of the project activities with these words:

“Activities during the project are invaluable and they will have big influence on Marko‘s attitude. Each child has his/her own personality who has to meet with differences, so (s)he can be tolerant to others in the future.” (Ibid.)

Conclusion

Short survey of research on the topics of intercultural dimensions of education showed that quality of education of immigrant pupils does not depend only on legal frames, but also in cultural and didactical dimension of school work (Booth and Ainscow 2002). As long as teacher in public schools will not accept their responsibility for better educational results of immigrant children but also their responsibility to create inclusive culture of relationships and avoid stereotypes and prejudices about disabilities of those pupils for successful school work and participation in public life, classroom life will not be recognized as a model of interculturalism.

I also hope that described example of good practice in kindergarten Vodmat, Ljubljana, as well as planned teacher training course Inductive Educational Approach as the Basis for Intercultural Education and Identity Development shows one of possible didactical innovations in desired direction of creating simulative educational environments in public schools along the Europe.

Literature:

Benhabib, S. (2008). L’affaire du foulard (The scarf Affair). Why do we Educate? Renewing the Conversation. (ed. By Coulter, D. L. et al.). Massachusetts: The national Society for the Study of Education. Pp. 100-111.

Booth, T. and Ainscow, M. (2002). Index for Inclusion: developing learning and participation in schools. (Mark Vaughan, ed.) UK: Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education.

Devetak, S. (2007). Discrimination on ethnic and religious grounds – A moral, political and security dilemma concerning the development of Slovenia. The Success Story with the Aftertaste of Bitterness Discrimination in Slovenia (ed. By Devetak, S.). Maribor: ISCOMET – Institute for Ethnic and Regional Studies. Pp. 29-36.

Erjavec, K. (2001). Europe: The Case of Slovenia. Media Representation of the Discrimination against the Roma in Eastern. Discourse & Society. Vol. 12. Pp. 699- 727.

Ermenc-Skubic, K. (2004). The response of the Slovenian school to cultural pluralism in the country. Theory, facts and interpretation in educational and social research (ed. By Kožuh, B., Kozłowska, A., Kahn, R.). Los Angeles: University of California; Czestochowa: Pedagogical University. Pp. 195-210.

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Ermenc-Skubic, K. (2007). Is education for the coexistence of different cultures only possible as a subversive activity of the teacher? The Success Story with the Aftertaste of Bitterness Discrimination in Slovenia (ed. By Devetak, S.). Maribor: ISCOMET – Institute for Ethnic and Regional Studies. Pp. 66-74.

Gardner, H. (2008). Five minds for the future. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press.

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