A working meeting was held between university teachers of disciplines in the field of intercultural education

On July 11 and 12, 2023, in parallel with the annual conference on intercultural education of the directors of schools and kindergartens included in the Amalipe Center network, a first-of-its-kind working meeting between university professors on disciplines related to intercultural education was held. The lecturers took part in a general meeting to open the conference and listened to the plenary reports of Prof. Dr. Plamen Makariev and Associate Professor Dr. Yosif Nunev, as well as in its final part, where they presented their solutions. The rest of the time they worked independently.

During the working meeting, the university professors debated the following topics:

• Why do we need the study of disciplines related to intercultural education in universities so much?
• Identification of objective and subjective obstacles in the teaching of disciplines related to intercultural education, among which the most important are:

 – the existence of inequality with the university discipline “Inclusive Education”, which is mandatory, and intercultural education is optional and often ignored by students;

 – serious difficulties for teachers, due to lack of centralized and specialized training for successful teaching of disciplines in the field of intercultural education, i.e. who and how to train in this regard the teachers who prepare the future teachers, etc.;

• Data from separate empirical studies were shared with pedagogical specialists in the secondary education system, which show a persistent ignorance of the similarities and differences between intercultural education and inclusive education in the vast majority of them – more than 80% of pedagogical specialists equate them or claim that intercultural education is contained in inclusive education.
• Concerns were expressed by the participants that in the secondary education system there is a gradual but permanent process of depersonalization of intercultural education and its displacement from the agenda of the education system by favoring inclusive education. As examples of this, the following statements were made:
• normatively inclusive education is in a separate regulation, and intercultural education is gathered together in one regulation with health, environmental and civic education (there is a lack of normative equality between the individual educational policies);
• an “inclusive education” directorate has been created within the structure of the Ministry of Education, and there is even a lack of a recognizable expert in the field of intercultural education;
• the traditional competition of the Ministry of Education with the Bulgarian teachers’ union for good practices in the field of educational integration from last year has a new title, in which instead of “educational integration” appears “inclusion of children and students from vulnerable groups”, i.e. the focus of the event has been shifted;
• the Advisory Council on the Education of Children and Students from Ethnic Minorities to the Minister of Education and Science was closed, which directly monitored the implementation of this educational policy and met twice a year to report on its activities, directly led by the relevant Deputy Minister;

• Agreement to form a network for mutual assistance between the university professors in the field of intercultural education and the Amalipe Center as an organization working in the field with one of the largest networks of schools in which the personnel prepared in higher education institutions are realized.
• The participants, university professors of intercultural education, strongly desire to be partners and assistants of the Ministry of Education in identifying and solving the problems of intercultural education in the system of secondary and higher education.
• Two university professors – Prof. Makariev and Assoc. Nunev – were authorized to meet with the Minister of Education and Science and talk with him about the following issues:
• to seek the consent of the Ministry of Education to conduct and finance a nationally representative study, which would confirm or deny the identified problems with the implementation of intercultural education and inclusive education in the secondary education system and with the training of specialists in the higher education system;
• under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, university lecturers on intercultural education and experts working on the subject, to offer opportunities for normative equalization of intercultural education and inclusive education;
• supplementing the Strategic Framework of the Ministry of Education with adequate content in the field of intercultural education;
• joint search for opportunities for specialized training of university teachers in intercultural education and the maintenance of their qualification.

The meeting launched a series of activities that will yet include other experts and educators who are interested in the topic.

The meeting was held within the framework of the annual conference on intercultural education of the directors of schools and kindergartens included in the Amalipe Center network, financed by the Trust for a Social Alternative.

See also

Together for the success of every student: a national meeting brought together principals, teachers, students, university professors, representatives of the Ministry of Education and social partners