The Law Act 2413/1996 regarding intercultural education and the creation of Intercultural Education Schools (IES) came as a response to the new educational needs created in the Greek educational system since the 1990s due to the massive presence of immigrant children. However, the absence of a coherent central direction, the shortages, and contradictions in the institutional framework of the IES have resulted in ambiguities as to both their character and their objectives. The functioning of the IES as well as the practices of their teachers, vary from school to school.
This research has attempted to explore the character of the IES through the eyes and experiences of teachers themselves. It explores the teachers’ perceptions of their role, the professional identities they form in the context of the IES, the reasons why they choose to work in such schools along with the practices they adopt. This regards a qualitative research based on semi-structured interviews with eleven (11) teachers from two IES based in Athens who also had previous educational experience in conventional schools.
The research highlighted the supportive role that the IES play in the integration of refugee and immigrant students in the context of the Greek educational system acting as a pre-institutional intermediate stage before they attend conventional schools. As it turns out, these are schools that not only have to deal with linguistic-cultural differences, but also with serious social problems and inequalities. The role of the teachers remains focused on providing psycho-emotional support to their pupils as well as providing essential knowledge by modifying the basic curriculum and the syllabus which is adapted to the pupils’ individual needs. The research highlighted the fluidity of the student population as a particular characteristic of the IES as well as the greater autonomy of these schools which qualifies teachers’ initiatives. The teachers’ statements shed light on the reality of the IES, the needs, the functional limitations of these schools and their contribution to the personal and professional change brought about by the experience of teaching in them, while overall a general sense of framework abandonment emerges.