Educational agents and multiculturalism in the classroom

Abstract

The dissemination of schooling of immigrant students and from other cultures together with the spread of inadequate school patterns of welcome and regrettable events concerning the ways these students are treated makes it necessary to study and to optmize the attitudes of teachers, students, and parents. Only the perceptive-attitudinal agreement/ coherence around suitable patterns will prevent the cultivation of conflicts badly resolved that lead to the reproduction of unwanted situations. Three sectors or cases of different characteristics and contexts were interviewed in order to ensure representativeness, with the purpose of establishing patterns and differences between the groups and among them. For such, the statements of each interviewee were categorized e duly coded by using a system of a posteriori categories, in the absence of consolidated theoretical framework regarding the phenomenon which would have allowed the use of a priori categories. Further, content analysis was carried out by grouping and reducing the categories by means of metacategories; thus, perceptive patterns, not always appropriate, were detected in the groups studied, around the information of other cultures and formation for its treatment. Data have undergone percentage and differential analyses that point to significant divergences between parents and teachers as well as between them and their children and students. Minor are the internal differences among the members of each sector. Since the first ones are bigger than the second ones, as it appeared in this study, there is a generation conflict that needs to be resolved.