Intercultural mediation as a tool for inclusion: analysis of a school experience

Abstract

The last decades have been characterized by important social changes, mainly due to migration and globalization. This reality has been reflected in schools across the country. To deal with this situation we need professionals who could help us in rebuilding the social schemes that identify personal relationships: the intercultural mediators. In the paper we show a naturalistic research based on an instrumental study case about intercultural mediators’ practices on and beyond the classroom. After the discursive analysis of data, we decided to present the results on three major axes: a) the purpose of intercultural mediation; b) the mediator in school organization; and c) the mediator practice’ in classroom. The conclusions we achieved, highlight the teaching staff's lack of knowledge about mediator's work and the intercultural mediator's presence in the centre; a prompt and inclusive intercultural education’s conceptualization; a collaborative inter professional work's absence and the weight of a macro organizational and macro cultural structure of schools about the work of external agents, who finishes to follow rules, which inevitably undermine their work.