MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION: WORLD AND DOMESTIC ARTICULATION OF THE PROBLEM

Abstract

The article considers the formation peculiarities of the subject field in studying the pedagogical phenomenon – multicultural education in the world and domestic scientific discourse. It is stated that multicultural education as a pedagogical phenomenon in the domestic cultural and political space is associated with the “national question”, which has always had state significance. It is emphasized that formation of multicultural ideas in education is caused by social problems aggravation related to the necessity of integration of different ethnic groups representatives into a single socio-cultural space. Multicultural education, which generally ensures the stable society development, should be aimed at overcoming the above-mentioned problem. Based on the author’s appeal to the domestic scientists works on multiculturalism in education problem, a significant difference between foreign and domestic directions of the problem studying is identified. It is emphasized that in the world discourse multicultural education is represented by various concepts designed to promote the cultural adaptation of a person as a carrier of ethnic culture to a common space within a certain state formation. In the domestic version, multicultural education is a way of integrating people into the world cultural space, so much attention of scientists in the educational perspective is mainly focused on language training. Positive trends in domestic multicultural education development are aimed at broad understanding of multiculturalism (education of tolerance, overcoming/preventing discriminatory practices in education, promoting comprehensive human development, taking into account the cultural heritage of the ethnic group, to which it belongs) are noted. It is proved that the existing concepts have their own national specifics, so the “proposed” by the world community options for solving the problem cannot be fully explained on domestic soil. It is concluded that Ukrainian scholars should offer “their version” of both polycultural and multicultural education, which would reflect the peculiarities of Ukrainian state development, it’s multinational composition, and reflect the general trends of the European community in their interest for sociocultural dialogue.