Teachers' attitudes toward multiculturalism in Vojvodina

Abstract

The multicultural context of a society continues to indicate new requirements to which it must respond, with new solutions in the form of competence in interactions with different cultural minorities, and providing the opportunity to acquire intercultural competence, taking into account and respecting the culture and traditions of cultural minorities. The goal of this research is to analyse the teachers? views of multiculturalism in high school teaching. The data were collected on the attitudes of the respondents toward minority cultures, the willingness to cooperate with the culturally different, the efficacy of intercultural content in different areas, the presence of prejudices of the respondents to different nationalities, and so on. The survey was conducted as a cross-sectional study; 90 teachers were interviewed in the municipalities of Subotica and Novi Sad. The survey instrument was a questionnaire. The research results show that there is a positive openness to the acceptance of cultural diversity. Teachers think that it is important for students to know their own culture and to respect other cultures. Further?more, tolerance should be given more attention during classes. As for the content of the curriculum, teachers are interested the most in the contents regarding addictions and sexual education. In addition to that, the majority of the teachers would like to include in their lessons more facts about different cultural traditions and ethnic minorities, which shows their motivation to deal with the issues mentioned beforehand.