Are there significant differences in the attitudes towards immigration of secondary school students aged 16 to 18 in Spain, Sweden and Denmark? This is the question a with which our research project has begun, consisting of a comparison of attitudes towards immigration and the cultural diversity of secondary school students in three different European countries.

Our objectives, when conducting this comparative study, were to look for similarities and differences between three countries: Spain, Sweden and Denmark, regarding attitudes towards immigration and cultural diversity, and relate them with three variables: gender of the students, the origin of students in terms of social and economic background and the methodology used by the teaching staff to teach the History class. We try, in particular, to analyze the following dimensions: 1. Rejection of racist attitudes (as the possibility of segregation of immigrants in school and population distribution and any type of social exclusion of immigrants (in rental housing, access to certain establishments…), or the establishment of preferences in living with people because of their geographical or ethnic origin; 2. Rejection of the forms of institutional racism (greater identifications by the police, for example). 2. Rejection of ethnocentric attitudes as the belief in some way of superiority of some cultures over others. 3. Rejection of assimilationist attitudes (for example, acceptation of an intercultural concept of integration and coexistence). 4. Defense of the equality of rights for immigrants (not discriminatory attitudes by nationality in access to social rights (health, education, social assistance). 5. Advocacy for equal opportunities in the labor market.

Our project was born in Spain, as part of a broader research on the impact of active methodologies - such as case studies or cooperative learning - in the development of intercultural competencies. Since we are in a multicultural society, we felt the need to review our own research instruments from a intercultural perspective that tries to avoid adopting a perspective not only Spanish. We have thought, for this, in multicultural societies in which the educational policies of integration of immigration were more advanced than in our country. We chose, therefore, Scandinavia, and specifically southern Denmark and southern Sweden, where we looked for experts who could help us reformulate our Likert scale.

Several authors warned of the need for the school to respond to the challenge posed by the re-emergence of far-right, nationalist extremism and racism despite advances in the legal recognition of human rights. The subject of History acquires, in this context, a special relevance for the promotion of the civic values of a democratic citizenship. There is, on the other hand, a widespread agreement in the scientific literature on the effectiveness of active teaching methodologies, and especially cooperative learning techniques, in intercultural education. Slavin (1999) had emphasized the benefits, such as increased motivation and performance, of creating in school situations in which collaboration becomes essential.

Our study considers attitudes as one of the dimensions of intercultural competence, as defined by different models, such as Deardorff's Process Model of Intercultural Competence, Fantini's Intercultural Competences Dimensions Model, Byram's Intercultural Competence Model, Development Model of Bennet's Intercultural Sensitivity. The scientific literature makes also possible to identify the most determining factors in the development of intercultural competence. Various studies conducted in recent decades in Europe argue that women do develop greater intercultural competence than men. Several authors pay aslo attention to the concept of intersectionality between gender, race, social class. Research on the development of intercultural competence can thus establish a dialogue with critical pedagogy and radical theory.

We are still finishing the data collection phase (the coronavirus crisis has greatly complicated our fieldwork, above all in Spain), but we will count a total of 500 responses to our scale: 150 from Denmark, 150 from Sweden and 200 from Spain. The scale has been applied in secondary schools in the three countries, in students between 16 and 18 years old. The sample was made based on two criteria. The first, that they were gymnasiums with the presence of students of various nationalities, cultures and ethnicities (a fact that in the case of northwestern Spain we could not take for granted, since not all high schools occur). The second was to try to balance the number of institutes in which the students came from the upper-middle class and the lower-middle class, as well as the number of groups working in class with a more active or more traditional methodology. To know this latest data, a first phase of observation of the work of the teachers was carried out. As for the Likert scale, it contains 42 statements about immigration and intercultural relations, plus some questions aimed at knowing the gender and age of the student, as well as their possible migratory family past or the level of studies and the profession of the parents, as well as the profession desired by the student for his future. This scale was validated in Sweden and Spain through a review by group of experts in each of the two countries. Results will be compared with the support of a data analysis program.

It is too early to talk about conclusions because we are still finishing the field work, although both the field work and the analysis will be finished by the time of the conference. But the still partial analyzes that we have carried out allow us to anticipate that there are significant differences in terms of intercultural attitudes based on gender, (women show more ethical perspectives), as well as depending on the social and economic background of the student. Similarly, we are not finding, in general terms, large differences between the three countries in terms of attitudes towards immigration, despite the greater tradition of immigration integration policies in Scandinavian and, above all, Swedish education systems. It does seem to be relevant the type of methodology applied by teachers, since active methodologies seem to favor more the development of intercultural competences in terms of the ability to analyze the phenomenon of immigration from a more ethical perspective.

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