Europe has through the course of history been an area where considerable migrations of nations due to social, economic or other reasons have taken place. Slovenia is no exception. Ever since 1991, i.e. the declaration of its independence, Slovenia has been experiencing the trend of increased immigration. This has been mostly the result of the economic immigration of families from former Yugoslav republics. Coming to a new environment with these families are children, some of whom have experience with education in their home country. The Slovenian integration policy follows the principle to include newly immigrated children in a primary school, provided they are recognized as children. This is also mandated by The Convention of children’s rights (1989).
The thesis deals with students of the first-generation immigrants who attend Slovenian primary schools and have already attended schools their home country. The selected group of students is treated as a marginal group as they encounter numerous challenges and obstacles when facing an entirely new environment and a new education system. When an increased number of student immigrants entered the Slovenian primary schools, the legislators reacted since there was a need for a change and adjustment of existing educational practices. Many new formal and non-formal solutions and adjustments have been implemented, with the aim to ensure successful inclusion of newly immigrated students into primary education. Today, the signs of progress are evident, however research studies still point to certain problems and obstacles faced by these students in their daily lives, for example: violation of their rights, inequality and discrimination of student immigrants, and a lack of teacher competencies on the integration of these students into schools.
The subject of the thesis is a general review of documentation, international documents and other, both formal and non-formal, strategies, principles, concepts and practices that have been so far accepted and executed and deal with the integration and working with children of the first-generation immigrants in Slovenian primary schools. The identification of students with school is analysed in more detail, especially in terms of its relevance to well-being of students and school inclusion as it has been proven that the identification of students with school has a positive impact on the students’ attitude towards school, education and learning in general.
The empirical part focuses on the analysis of differences between the education process in Slovenia and the education process the students had received before arriving to Slovenia. The analysis focuses on aspects such as well-being of students of the first-generation immigrants in primary school, their attitude towards school and education, their attitude towards learning of Slovene, and the quality of relationships with classmates. The descriptive method of pedagogical research was used in the research. The data has been collected using a qualitative technique, namely semi-structured interviews. Included in the sample were 30 students, all children of the first-generation immigrants, who have received education in their country and in Slovenia.
The results show that children immigrants are in most cases well accepted by teachers and classmates in Slovenia and that they feel well at school. However, there are still events that reflect rejection, intolerance, and social exclusion of student immigrants, during both current and previous schooling. There are also differences between both types of schooling, taking into consideration aspects that are elaborated in more detail in the research.
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