2.5 Knowledge of language, learning, and intercultural coexistence

This manuscript has been peer-reviewed, accepted, and endorsed by the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA) as a significant contribution to the scholarship and practice of education administration. In addition to publication in the Connexions Content Commons, this module is published in the International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation , Volume 5, Number 1 (January – March 2010). Formatted and edited in Connexions by Julia Stanka, Texas A&M University.

Knowledge of language, learning, and intercultural coexistence

José Luis Calvo Buezas

The scenario of immigrant education

The phenomenon of immigration, as all social phenomena, is very complex. It is even more complex when it is put in relation to education. In order to approach such a precise subject, as is the knowledge of a language and its functions, one has to keep in mind the general requirements of this process that serve as a suitable context.

• Schematically refer to the fundamental parameters that must be considered.
• Coexistence in school among the diverse is much easier and effective if one begins at an early age because the plasticity of the subjects is much greater.
• There is a need to begin thinking of the second generation, so that the immediacy of the present problems does not prevent us from looking ahead and confronting the immediate future.
• The active and passive scholastic absenteeism should be avoided at all costs. It is difficult to find a job that is easy-going, stable, adequate, and worthy without having a minimum formation.
• The centers must implement plans to welcome new students as much as possible because schooling a child, especially if it is an immigrant, is much more complex then just sitting her or him at a desk.

Schooling centers must count who is a foreigner by specifically documenting records, reflecting the social surroundings to which each center serves. The Educative Project must establish objectives of mestization; the Curricular Project must gather cultural elements of foreigners; and the Internal Regulation must establish norms of intercultural coexistence and categorize the xenophobia and the racial insults to eradicate them. The center’s organization must attend to diversity a much as possible; that is not only a fact, but a norm as well, with flexible groupings, compensating course and social guarantee, modalities of professional initiation, job formation, and professional workshops.

There has to be a sufficient number of professors to take care of schooling necessities with the corresponding curricular adaptations for the students present in the classrooms. Specific and complementary formation in this field is demanded by many of the students as very necessary.