Conference Program

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine fundamentally reshaped educational realities across Europe, leading to a substantial increase in Ukrainian pupils within the Czech school system. While national policies emphasize inclusive education, a gap remains between institutional aspirations and students' everyday social experiences. This study explores the research question: What impact does Czech parents’ opinion towards Ukrainians in Czech society have on relations between Ukrainian and Czech students?

Adopting a qualitative design, the study utilizes semi-structured interviews with 16 Czech parents of lower secondary pupils in the South Moravian Region. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify how parental discourse regarding social dynamics and national identity influences their children’s peer interactions with Ukrainians classmates.

The findings reveal that parental attitudes function as a hidden curriculum through four primary dimensions. First, the linguistic burden of integration establishes Czech proficiency not merely as a skill, but as a moral metric of effort and a threshold for social acceptance. Second, a distinction emerges between instrumental and transformative views of inclusion: while some parents focus purely on the blending in of Ukrainian pupils, a significant subset perceives the inclusive classroom as a future asset, equipping their children with social competencies for a globalized world. Third, the study identifies a home-to-school attitude transfer, where parental skepticism reinforces linguistic clustering, while parental appreciation for diversity fosters deeper peer-to-peer relationship building. Finally, these dynamics suggest meritocratic expectations of belonging, where social inclusion is viewed as a status Ukrainian pupils must earn through proactive motivation. As an implication to teaching practice, these findings suggest that student inclusion does not occur in a vacuum; rather, effective support necessitates a triadic approach involving the school, the student, and the home. To foster a truly democratic school community, schools must actively engage parents to reframe diversity as a long-term societal asset. This shift is essential for transforming the presence of displaced pupils from an exceptional condition into a standard, valued feature of the school environment.