Towards a democratic and intercultural citizenship. Notes for teacher training

Abstract

Nowadays, the building of democratic citizenship cannot be understood apart from the considerations of respect and measures aimed at encourage cultural diversity; especially with the aggravation in racist discourses and manifestations, and the successive humanitarian crisis with respect to immigration. In light of this situation, in this paper we propose to combine civic education from the intercultural paradigm. For this, we reclaim, for the one hand, the role of the school as a cultural mediation place and encou- raging of intercultural coexistence; on the other hand, we emphasize the importance role that teachers play as social agents with broad involvement in the formation of democratic citizenship; both aspects as complementary. From this, we investigate different studies that stand out some deficiencies in many of the proposals for service teaching [of the teachers] that are developed from an intercultural perspective. Finally, we insist on the urgency to reinforce a type of service teaching in intercultural key; so, it is necessary to encourage the “self knowledge” as an important element of the relationship with “the other”.

Keywords

• ciudadanía democrática
• educación intercultural
• formación del profesorado
• autoconocimiento