On 23-25 March, the Director of the Centre for Innovative Educational Technologies “PNU EcoSystem” and Professor of the Department of Primary Education and Educational Innovations, Olena Budnyk, took part in the international symposium “Intercultural Relations in the Age of Polarisation”, which was held at Jagiellonian University in Kraków (Poland). Over the course of three days, researchers from Poland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, Slovakia, Ukraine and other countries worked on identifying new educational paradigms. A key focus of the discussions was the issue of building ‘bridges of understanding’ in today’s fragmented world and the role of education in overcoming global polarisation.
In her presentation on ‘Inclusive education as a catalyst for social cohesion in polarised societies’, Olena Budnyk outlined the general aspects of inclusive education in an era of polarisation, the principles of accessibility, and ways to overcome barriers in times of crisis. She emphasised the concept of inclusion not merely as technical access to education, but as a tool for fostering empathy and a culture of dialogue between different social and ethnic groups, and presented to the symposium participants the collective monograph ‘Inclusive Education: Voices from Ukraine and Beyond’, published by Brill.
After all, this is an attempt by the Ukrainian academic community to highlight the realities and challenges of inclusion to the world, particularly in times of war and global polarisation. Ultimately, the participants discussed the idea of a joint project to build on the themes of the symposium.