Equal opportunities in shaping pupils' identity in a multicultural school environment.: A pilotage concept of work for transcultural education in grades I-III

Abstract

Shaping children`s and youth`s identities from the perspective of dynamically changing societies after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian attack on Ukraine is one of the fundamental problems of educational and upbringing institutions. There is a lack of system solutions that take into account in the teaching and learning process both the pupil’s home culture (often different from the environment of current residence) and the culture experienced in the perspective of life and education. Coexistence, building the cultural structure of individuals in multicultural societies, is possible by introducing, from the first stages of education, a transcultural approach to creating the school`s reality. It also balances the chances of each pupil to find its references: experiences and values that shape individual and collective identity while establishing protection against “getting lost”. This article aims to present a pilot concept of work, which points to theoretical and practical solutions in the field of education for trans-culturalism in grades I-III. The concept should then be verified in the school environment from both teachers’ and students’ perspectives. It will make it possible to determine whether the planned activities and how they are presented are appropriate for children at the first stage of education and whether, based on the prepared material, it is possible to balance the chances of shaping the identity of individuals in multicultural environments.

Keywords

• early school education
• individual identity
• collective identity
• transculturality