Cross-community work in schools : Reflections from a Malmo context

Abstract

Cross-community work is a method to work against social injustice by letting two groups of people with different economic, ethnic or religious background meet for mutual experience. Two school classes, during the school years 3-5, from two very different districts of the segregated city of Malmo, have met regularly. The aims have been, when working together, the children should get a deeper understanding and knowledge of each other and the possibility to get new friends with another background than themselves. The overall aim was to fight prejudice and segregation. A Research Circle is a dialogue meeting with teachers and researchers from Malmo University. In such a Research Circle during the school year 2009, teachers working in the above mentioned school classes, reflected on their experiences of cross community work together with me as a researcher. In the paper I will describe and discuss teachers reflected experiences on concrete actions and why some school class meetings but not others, in their opinion, could be seen as good examples but not others. The dialogue schoolwork as Cross-community work, in the paper, is discussed and linked to the Contact hypothesis.