Plurilingual and Intercultural Education in the Republic of Croatia

Abstract

This paper investigates the legal framework governing the possibilities for implementation of plurilingual and intercultural education in foreign language teaching in the Republic of Croatia, the contents of initial and lifelong education programmes for students and foreign language teachers which enable them to implement plurilingual and intercultural teaching approaches, and the self- perception of 270 research participants, i.e. 180 foreign language teachers, 51 students of Philology (teacher training), 23 language instructors and 16 key education professionals about these approaches and their ability to implement them in future teaching situations. The analyses were conducted using an analytical matrix designed according to the Framework of reference for pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures (Candelier et al., 2012). The results showed that legal presumptions for plurilingual and intercultural education exist in the Republic of Croatia, both in the Act on Education in Primary and Secondary Schools and related regulations, and in the four analysed foreign language curricula, and that knowledge, attitudes and skills, which reflect plurilingual and intercultural education, are represented to varying degrees within all analysed study programmes.