Intercultural education practice in Secondary Education

This article describes the results of a study carried out by the Department of General and Specific Teaching and Theory of Education within the Faculty of Education at the University of Leon, co-funded by the Ministry for Employment and Immigration and the Regional Government of Castile and Leon, together with Leon City Council, within the context of the Constructing Citizenship project. The aim of this study was to determine the opinions and attitudes held by Secondary Education Centre (SEC) Management Teams in the city of Leon concerning the intercultural education practices and strategies being implemented in their education centres, and the results that these are producing in terms of improved coexistence and integration of the entire student body. Participants in the study included all the SEC management teams in Leon, together with the coexistence coordinators working in these centres. The research comprised exhaustive, rigorous, in-depth, semi-structured group interviews with each of the SEC teams. The interview consisted of 35 open questions divided into six categories related to the present situation in each centre regarding multiculturality, the philosophy and practice of intercultural education being implemented, the resources available, the curricular and organisational approach taken to intercultural education and the training received by the teaching staff. We found that although the concept of intercultural education has entered the educational discourse, the approach and the specific actions taken for implementation in the SEC focused more on a compensatory education model. Intercultural education is basically associated with an increased presence of foreign immigrants in the education centre, and represents actions aimed primarily at the children of foreign migrants or members of ethnic minorities.