engleski

What is big and what is small? - Majority and minority language(s) in educational system in Croatia

In the Republic of Croatia the national and majority language (Croatian) is taught at all educational levels: from pre-school programs to higher education. The national minorities have a Constitutional right to be educated in their mother tongue and script. As a result, the national minorites are educated (and minority languages are taught) in one of 3 models, which differentiate between degrees to which the pupils are exposed to their mother tongue. In Model A all subjects are taught in a minority language/mother tongue of the pupils ; in Model B one half of subjects is taught in a minority language and another in Croatian ; in Model C all subjects are taught in Croatian and a minority language/mother tongue is an additional subject. For some national minorities several different models of education are organized (e.g. Czech), since for the others (i.e. Albanian minority) only Model C is organized. At the moment, for Roma minority there is none school that offers any of the minority educational models. However, there are summer courses of Romani language organized. According to Census (2001, 2011), the number of speakers of Albanian and Romani language as mother tongue is increasing ; yet, the children cannot be educated in their mother tongue. More over, research on Roma children shows a considerable lack of Croatian language knowledge at the first-graders (Cvikic Kuvac 2007, Turza-Bogdan i Ciglar 2010, Jelaska i Cvikic 2011). The situation of impossibility to education in mother tongue and the lack of knowledge of the language of education raise a question of the accessibility of education for all children. This paper deals with changes in the Croatian educational system that led to more equal position in education for the children with insufficient knowledge of Croatian - the language of education. Besides the analysis of the documents of educational policy that regulate the education of non-native Croatian speakers in Croatia, more emphasis will be given to the results of the interviews with teachers that work with children whose mother tongues are Albanian and Romani. Teachers’ attitudes toward both, majority and minority language are investigated, as well as the main challenges they face in teaching non-native speakers. The results are discussed in the context of current approaches to language education and the possibility of their implementation in Croatian educational system.

minority education; models of minority education; Albanian minority; Roma minority

nije evidentirano