This paper aims to discuss Social Justice and Intercultural Education by interrogating how schools value intercultural competencies in a way that may be a contributor for policies and practice.

Intercultural Education is a growing subject of discussion in a vast majority of European Educational Systems (Gobbo, 2011; Silva & Silva, 2018) as we saw an increasing differentiation of population in societies and, consequently, in schools and it requires a deeper relation and attention to what constitutes Intercultural Education and Intercultural Competencies. The educational field, in general, and schools, in particular, represent one of the most challenged contexts regarding questions related to multicultural societies, namely in the effect on how pupils are integrated or how curricula might be more inclusive. These schools’ daily challenges take the discussion to a policy and practice level in order to understand how the integration of diversity is promoted when they also may originate differences and combined inequalities (Silva, 2016). It is recognized that schools may be the drivers for local strategies to develop interculturality aiming to provide a quality education for all students (Soeiro & Pinto, 2006). But who would be the main developers? The school board or other school bodies, teachers alone, families? In this paper, we argue that, beyond the layered challenges faced by professionals who work in diverse contexts, namely ethnic and migrant diversity, we understand that is fundamental a co-construction of knowledge and practices to better approach diversity. We may find schools that succeed in exploring the benefits of having a heterogeneous population (Bleszynska, 2008; Siekmann and Webster, 2019). Nevertheless, there is a controversial understanding about the meaning of inclusive schools and how to promote and integrate Intercultural Education.

Developed in the scope of a Ph.D. project in Educational Sciences, in this place we aim to understand how professionals and young people in educational contexts may collaboratively construct intercultural competencies. The concept of intercultural competencies demands an interested, curious, and “free-thinking” spirit about communities that have distinctive cultural imprints and the ability to understand and interpret their practices, values, and speeches (Huber & Reynolds, 2014). At the same time, these competencies settle a relational dimension among those who are involved in the daily interaction. This is the dimension that young people seem to value the most (Silva & Silva, 2018).

The main goal of this proposal is to present the perspectives of different figures of the school community about diversity and ways to deal with it in the school space, namely which intercultural competencies they value the most.

At the beginning of the research project, we developed exploratory research in order to get to know the reality of Porto Metropolitan Area (PMA) schools, in the north of Portugal: 1st) document analysis (Bowen, 2009; Punch, 2014) of “Educational Projects” (EP) from 104 schools’ clusters. The document analysis involved the following procedures: - Researching of all the schools’ clusters in PMA on the Portuguese General Direction of Education website, leading to 118 schools. - Researching of the EP on the school’s clusters websites, leading only to 104 schools’ clusters had the EP available; - The search looked for schools that described, in their EP, the type of student’s population: ethnicity, migrant background, social class, and other information about their population and projects/practices that can promote integration and/or an understanding about multiculturalism and approaches to an intercultural education; - Giving the previous information, we separated schools that have intercultural concerns from those that don’t have these concerns based on EP analysis. EP document analyses showed us that from the 104 schools only 14 from PMA have these concerns explicit in their EP; 2nd) We contacted the 14 schools to interview their school directors to understand better the school context, their practices, projects, and real concerns with intercultural education. After this, we selected 2 schools to participate in deeper in the project considering the promising approaches that it revealed concerning dealing with diversity. The PhD project used a participatory action-research methodology with two classes in two different schools situated in PMA (one class from 7th grade – 11 and 12 years old- and one class from 11th grade – 15 and 16 years old-). Before the intervention with these classes, it was used semi-structured interviews with the school directors and focus group discussions with 5 students in each class in order to understand their perspectives and experiences in the school, namely concerning the ethnic minorities and migrant students in the school. After this exploratory data collection, the participatory action-research methodology was put into practice and the students, themselves, made semi-structured interviews with members of the school community (parents, teachers, students, employees, and school director). The 7th class made 8 interviews and the 11th class made 7 interviews. After the work with the schools, the researcher made more deep interviews with these participants. This proposal results, empirically, from a total of 44 semi-structured interviews and researcher field notes during the process.

From an analysis of the directors’ interviews, we can conclude that schools have concerns related to ethnic and migrant diversity, namely related to integration outcomes. However, in most cases, they do not present specific activities, projects or intentions planed. This integration work seems to be done in a not intentional way and does not have structured organization or moments. We can conclude that, besides this concern related to migrant integration, schools do not seem to demonstrate that diversity is a problem or a question. In most cases, diversity is seen as a source of knowledge and as an opportunity to discuss global issues. From a primary analysis on the interviews made by students and the researcher to school community members it shows that, in general, students with minority background and their parents are pleased with their integration in this school. Despite that there is no evidence of so much specific activities, all the school community members emphasize that there are no integration problems. Students seem to value the most the competences related to the interpersonal relationship such as patience, friendship, and comprehension. On the other hand, teachers, staff, and parents seem to value most competencies related to attention to students individualities, knowing languages, and promote interdisciplinary methods. In what concerns diversity, it seems to exist a very positive image concerning ethnic minorities and students with a migrant background mostly related to an opportunity to learn more about their cultures and be more sensitive to diverse contexts.

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