From labelling to social aid for immigrants in the 21st Century

Migration is as old as humanity, but since the 1990s migration flows in Western Europe have led to societies that are not just multicultural but so-called «super-diverse». As a result, Western towns now have very complex social structures, with amongst others large amounts of small immigrant communities that are in constant change. In this paper we argue that for social workers to be able to offer adequate professional help to non-native residents in town, they will need balanced view of ‘culture’ and of the role culture plays in social aid. Culture is never static, but is continually changing. By teaching social workers about how to look at cultural backgrounds of immigrant groups and about the limitations of then role that culture plays in communication, they will be better equipped to provide adequate aid and will contribute to making various groups grow towards each other and to avoid people thinking in terms of ‘out-group-homogeneity’. Nowadays, inclusion is a priority in social work that almost every social worker supports. Social workers should have an open attitude to allow them to approach every individual as a unique person. They will see the other person as the person they are, and not as a part of a specific cultural group. Knowledge about the others makes them see the cultural heterogeneity in every group. The social sector, though, must be aware not to fall into the trap of the ‘inclusion mania’! This will cause the social deprivation of a particular group to be forgotten. An inclusive policy requires an inclusive society. Otherwise, this could result in even more deprivation of other groups, already discriminated against. Emancipation of deprived people demands a certain target-group policymaking. Categorized aid will raise efficiency of working with immigrants and of acknowledging the cultural identity of the non-natives group. It will also create the possibility to work on fighting social deprivation, in which most immigrants can be found.

Concept maps as a tool to analyze the ideas of teacher training students regarding what to teach on human nutrition in Primary Education

Concept maps are a technique used to obtain a visual representation of a person's ideas about a concept or a set of related concepts. Specifically, in this paper, through a qualitative methodology, we analyze the concept maps proposed by 52 groups of teacher training students in order to find out the characteristics of the maps and the degree of adequacy of the contents with regard to the teaching of human nutrition in the 3rd cycle of primary education. The participants were enrolled in the Teacher Training Degree majoring in Primary Education, and the data collection was carried out through a training activity under the theme of what to teach about Science in Primary School? The results show that the maps are a useful tool for working in teacher education as they allow organizing, synthesizing, and communicating what students know. Moreover, through this work, it has been possible to see that future teachers have acceptable skills for representing the concepts/ideas in a concept map, although the level of adequacy of concepts/ideas about human nutrition and its relations is usually medium or low. These results are a wake-up call for teacher training, both initial and ongoing, because they shows the inability to change priorities as far as the selection of content is concerned.