Cultural Diversity in Russian School: Results of Research of Elementary School Teachers’ Experience with the Immigrant Children

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the results of a multiphase research of the teachers’ cultural attitudes and experience in a multicultural class in Russia. The goal of this article is to describe the teaching methods used by elementary class teachers in working with immigrant children, their stances towards immigrant children and their families. The collection of empirical material was done through questionnaires and interviews. 82 teachers of elementary classes have participated in the study. The results show that teachers mostly rely on individual work for the linguistic and academic support of the immigrant children and actively use ethnocultural technologies, group and interactive methods of work. This study have proven the need for the active inclusion of multicultural-oriented disciplines into teacher’s training system, the most important of which is the method of teaching Russian as a foreign language. The study have also shown that majority of teachers has a positive opinion of the immigrant children; meanwhile, their stance towards their parents and different ethnicities may be mixed. In majority of cases, positive opinion leads to high expectations regarding the academic performance of the immigrant children.

Keywords

• immigrant children
• multicultural competences
• ele