PRESCHOOL TEACHERS’ INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION IN THE CONTEXT OF TRADITIONAL MUSIC

Future preschool teachers have an important role in acquisition of the intercultural competence in early childhood education and care. Study programs in higher education could provide a lot of opportunities to promote intercultural communication. In this research we analyzed and compared a model of Dionyssiou (2017) and his three parameters – the process of creation (the moment when music is created and when a person understands it), the music event (sharing the tradition among the members of the community) and the sense of place (the moment when music becomes a symbol of tradition and identity). The aim of this research was to analyze the early and preschool education study programs in the context of intercultural communication. A total of 964 syllabuses from all Croatian faculties were analyzed. The implementation of intercultural communication is observed in terms of learning outcomes and topics. The results show that a special place for intercultural communication belongs to the music syllabuses (N = 72) whose content can motivate students to preserve traditional and intercultural culture. Regarding the model of Dionyssiou (2017) learning outcomes mostly belong to the music event (N = 53), and to a sense of place (N = 29), but there are the fewest learning outcomes that belong to the process of creation (N = 26). The implications of these findings can be explained by the suggestion that in the 21st century, intercultural communication should be addressed more in early childhood education and care to nurture traditional music.