Multicultural Education from the Perspective of Students of Secondary Schools in South Bohemian Region

Abstract

Today's society is characterized by its multicultural diversity. Within the European Union you can travel and work freely in other countries, the same is true on the other hand, when in the Czech Republic there are still more foreigners who are trying to find a new home. Because of the ever increasing cultural pluralism may arise conflicts that may arise from disparities and the unknown. It was one of the reasons why schools introduced multicultural education. This thesis is called "Multicultural Education from the Perspective of Students of Secondary Schools in South Bohemian Region" and is divided into two parts. The first is the theoretical and the second part is practical. The theoretical part discusses the basic concepts of multicultural education such as the multiculturalism, ethnic group, nation, race, prejudice, etc., without which it would be difficult to orient in the area of multicultural education. The second half of the theoretical part deals with multicultural education in Czech schools, where the emphasis is on the curricula of multicultural education which came with us, talking about what should a teacher be, who is trying to implement multicultural education, etc. The practical section discusses the stated objectives of work and mentions the methodology used in the research and describes the research file. In the practical part it presents the results of the data obtained. This work has established two goals and two research questions. The aim of this study was to determine whether and how it is implemented multicultural education in secondary schools in South Bohemia and the second objective was to determine the attitudes and knowledge of students in the first and fourth years of school with the issue of multiculturalism in our country and the world. To achieve the objectives of qualitative the research was used in which eighteen semi-structured interviews with teachers who work at eleven secondary schools in South Bohemia were carried out. Interview questions were divided into four categories for better evaluation. To achieve the second objective it was compiled the questionnaire with mainly open-ended questions which were designed for students of the first and fourth years of four year schools. The questionnaire was completed so that the data could then be used to evaluate 130 first-year students and 130 fourth grade students on eleven secondary schools in South Bohemia. The results of interviews showed that to implement the education is not an easy task even though all respondents try to fulfill the Framework educational program for secondary school, which says that multicultural education should go throughout all the subjects. Teachers in the implementation of this education face difficulties. In most cases respondents, who teach social science, agreed that they have lack of time for teaching. This is precisely this subject in which multicultural education is crucial and should be implemented. Another problem is that teachers at all or poorly attend courses related to this cross-cutting theme. It is precisely at these seminars where the teachers can draw ideas on how to incorporate multicultural education into their lessons. Also they could obtain guidance documents, which all respondents are missing, at these seminars and perhaps this is the reason why multicultural education is little integrated. The results of the questionnaires helped to clarify that multicultural education is beneficial, at least in terms of knowledge and awareness of students with this issue. The fourth grade students in this area are more familiar and have larger insight than the first-year students. In the area of attitudes minor differences are seen when students of the first and fourth grades in most cases correspond to different views and attitudes