By Gillian Ginley, CSEEES Spring 2023 Intern
Dr. Marijanca Ajša Vižintin was named by the Board of the Slovene Research Initiative (SRI) in Slovenia as their Visiting SRI Scholar to The Ohio State University for 2023. Vižintin works at the Slovenian Migration Institute (Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts) and at the School of Humanities (University of Nova Gorica). Her research interests include integration, inclusion, intercultural education and Slovenian emigration and immigration. During her time in Ohio she visited various institutions in Columbus and Cleveland to find connections for possible future collaboration. Vižintin also participated in the 2023 Midwest Slavic Conference with a presentation on Slovenian organizations in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She kindly agreed to an interview with CSEEES intern Gillian Ginley.  

How would you explain intercultural competence to someone who is unfamiliar with the topic?

I strongly believe that intercultural competence and inclusion doesn’t simply mean learning a new language, but it is much more than that, as I try to explain in my intercultural education model. Often, we pretend that migration doesn’t exist, and we are surprised when it does occur, but we shouldn’t be surprised because people have always migrated. They migrate today, and they will migrate in the future. Some immigrants come to a new country because they want to, some come because they have to in order to offer a better future for their children, and some come because they are forced to in order to stay alive. I believe this is something that needs to be talked about in schools and classes and shouldn’t be treated as something special but rather something quite normal.

The intercultural education model that I have developed has many components. The first component is interculturality as a principle. This is the idea that people have always migrated, they migrate today, and they will migrate in the future. It is imperative that these people feel included and are given professional support. It also helps if we hire teachers that have migrant experience to provide extra support for migrant children. The second component is systematic support. We need legislation that will support inclusion and officially offer individual language classes and cultivate individual plans because not all kids learn the same way or have the same motivation to assimilate into their new culture. The third component is intercultural competence [which is the lifelong development of the effective communication skills necessary to understand the beliefs and values of others in order to properly navigate interactions with others]. The fourth component is intercultural dialogue, which I strongly believe must be done together with migrants themselves. We shouldn’t just talk about them but rather include them in conversations and give them a voice so that they can explain why they came, what discrimination they faced, and what suggestions they have for improving intercultural education. It’s important that this dialogue occurs in all school classes, which brings us to the fifth component: multi-perspective curricula. So very often, our school’s curricula are a one-way road and nationalistic and Eurocentric. But if we have different communities living in our country, we should listen to their perspectives. And then, we should collaborate with migrant parents, who can explain the school system in their home country, what areas of language study their kids are strongest and not so strong in. In turn, the school system can also provide resources for parents on where they can find support in their own communities. This is why we as a school need to incorporate our local community into these discussions so we can provide additional resources to the parents on how to find language classes, get jobs and find local events or organizations that are centered around their mother tongue.

What influences impacted your decision to conduct research on this topic?

I used to work as a teacher of Slovenian language and a librarian in primary school. Primary school in Slovenia is for kids 6-14 or 15 and it is obligatory education. I was a fresh teacher, full of new ideas. Migrant children began to enroll in the school system and my children were from Kosovo and Macedonia, and the legislation in Slovenia permits them to be immediately enrolled in the school system. At this point, I had no experience with teaching Slovenian as a second language. We didn’t have legislation that offered two years of support for these children, like we have today, and we didn’t talk about intercultural competence or intercultural education at all. So, I started asking questions and went abroad in search of best practices. This led to my decision to go back to school, receive my master’s degree and PhD in intercultural education, and I am continuing research into intercultural education today.

Why is it important for students to receive education on intercultural competence and how can we get students interested in the topic?

I think this is very important because at some point in time, everyone will have an encounter where a person from a different country of origin or environment joins their class. Even though they may come from different countries, they still have valuable experiences and knowledge to share with us. It is very important that when we develop our intercultural competence, it is meant for all students not just migrant students. Migrant students are thrown into developing intercultural competence in order to learn about the unspoken rules of the new culture they are in, but intercultural competence must be developed by all students. If we do that early on in primary school, using intercultural competence skills will become second nature.

Part 2 of this interview will be posted on Monday, April 17.