Polish Teacher Competencies in Teaching Students from Migrant Backgrounds in Preparatory Classes

Abstract

The number of students in the Polish education system from migrant backgrounds has regularly increased in the second decade of the 21st century. Many of them arrive with little to no literacy in Polish. The educational system was not prepared to accommodate these new students; Poland was previously considered an emigration country as opposed to an immigration one. Polish classes were linguistically and culturally homogeneous and teachers rarely had Polish language learners in their classrooms. They were not used to teaching multicultural, mixed, and heterogeneous groups of students and most have to find teaching strategies to best respond to new students who were also learning Polish. Changes in Polish educational laws in 2016 opened up the possibility of preparatory classes (PC) (oddziały przygotowawcze) in schools, although some schools decided to challenge this. In this paper, teachers’ competencies in teaching the newly arrived students in reception classes is discussed. This research was carried out with the goal of understanding teachers’ beliefs, experiences, attitudes, and competencies in this completely new context in their professional experience, namely teaching students from a migrant background in preparatory classes, as well as students who need language or academic support, require intercultural education and a friendly learning environment, or for whom curricula in regular classes were not accessible.