Early Intercultural Education in the Danube Region: A Comparative Analysis of the Preschool Curriculum in Five Riparian States

Objectives. The paper examines how the intercultural dimension is integrated into the early childhood education curriculum of five Danube basinstates — Romania, the Republic of Moldova, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Serbia — and identifies the convergences and divergences among these systems. Prior work. Comparative scholarship on Central and Eastern European education systems deals predominantly with primary and secondary levels, leaving the preschool link insufficiently explored from a regional perspective. Approach. The study applies a qualitative-comparative analysis of the curricular documents adopted during the 2016–2022 reform generation and of the related normative acts in force, using a six-dimension grid constructed deductively and refined inductively. Results. Convergence in declared principles is found, together with marked functional divergence in concrete solutions, particularly in the treatment of linguistic diversity; on this basis, a typology of three models of integrating interculturality is proposed. Implications. The current challenge is no longer the recognition of principles, but implementation capacity — the training of teaching staff and support for disadvantaged institutions. Value. The article provides the first systematic comparison of the intercultural dimension of the preschool curriculum in five Danubian systems, explicitly distinguishing pedagogical regulation from structural policy.