Socio-demographic factors and the level of teachers’ motivation in Slovak national schools in Hungary

The intense rate of globalization, increasing migration and the still unresolved historical minority issue are an alarming problem (not only) in today’s Europe. The Member States of the European Union (EU) have many statistics at their disposal which point to the necessity to address this situation.

One of the most pressing minority problems is the provision of minority education and minority school infrastructure. Part of the functioning of the EU and its efforts to minimize racism, discrimination and other forms of social exclusion is the regular mapping of integration, inclusion and equal access to education for minorities and migrants in individual EU Member States1. According to Brind, Harper, Moore, there is a growing consensus at European level that promoting education as a key player and an important factor in integration and European cohesion can support, improve and save minority edu-cation2.

Only local or regional research predominate in current research efforts on the above issue. Cross-border, international, comparative case-by-case analyses are to be complemented in order to apply working methodologies and solutions more effectively. The research responds to the current tenor in the social sciences and humanities by linking interdisciplinary methods and seeks to emphasize the importance of Slovak minority education in Hungary, whose current situation is deplorable and paradoxically depends on its quality to maintain the next generation of Slovak minority identity in Hungary.

According to the newest research in sociology, most students with Slovak ethnic background, who do not go to Slovak schools, lose their ethnicity. In this environment, schools became the decisive factor in maintaining Slovak language and culture and the Slovak population in Hungary3. Currently, the vast majority of Slovak families are not – or are only partially – able to pass on the linguistic and cultural heritage of their ancestors to their descendants. Significantly, students learn the basics of Slovak at school and meet Slovak culture there, and according to Uhrinová, these first experiences determine their lifelong attitude towards the Slovak minority4. The importance and responsibility of ethnic schools and Slovak teachers has thus increased enormously.

Taking into account the historical, political, geographical and demographic background of Slovaks in Hungary, we can find the reasons for persistence of Slovaks in Hungary in the international environment despite considerable political tension between Slovakia and Hungary in the character of the Slovak minority in Hungary, its origin and functioning. The main characteristic of the Slovak minority in Hungary is that it is not a quasi-diaspora – as at the time of its creation they did not cross state borders (it was a gradual internal migration), and also the attitude of the so-called Lost homeland , at present the Slovak Republic, is not a relevant identification component for Slovaks living in Hungary. The Slovaks in Hungary have created a conglomeration of geographically concentrated rural communities with an age population characteristic of an advanced stage of assimilation (without significant prejudices against the ethnic majority, or without a strong cultural link to Slovak identity or local patriotism) [1].

Since the fall of the communist regime, the state has recognized all the rights and obligations of ethnic minorities in Hungary, allowing the members of these minorities to maintain and further develop their cultural traditions and education in their mother tongue. Pursuant to the Hungarian Act on National Public Education of 2011, and the Decree no. 20/2012 of the Ministry of Human Resources on the functioning and use of the names of educational institutions, the

Hungarian School Office corrects the activities of ethnic schools and mediates the ethnic language [2].

Currently, ethnic education is carried out following the Hungarian Act on the Rights of Ethnic Minorities5 – at the request of eight parents, ethnic education may be organized in a particular municipality. In the 2018/2019 school year, there were 34 Slovak schools in Hungary: one monolingual, 4 bilingual and 29 schools teaching Slovak as a subject. In the monolingual school (in Budapest), the language of teaching is an ethnic (i.e. Slovak) language. In bilingual schools, (in Békéscsa-ba, Sátoraljaújhely, Szarvas and Tótkomlós), 50% of lessons are held in Slovak. At schools teaching the ethnic language as a separate subject, students are educated in Hungarian; however, the class time-table also contains Slovak language and literature, along with “Slovak studies”, amounting to 5 + 1 lessons per week (Informácia o školstve = Information on the education system, 5–6)6. In the 2018/2019 school year, 3,494 pupils studied at these schools. The number of teachers teaching Slovak or in Slovak was 1477.

In this study, we analyse the degree of motivation of teachers teaching at ethnic Slovak schools in Hungary, taking into consideration socio-demographic factors (age, gender and school type). We determined the degree of motivation using four factors – examples of teachers’ motivation to teach Slovak language – according to the Expectancy-Value Theory. These were as follows:

• 1.    The personal priority of the teacher and/or interest in teaching;

• 2.    The importance of Slovak in strengthening ethnic identity;

• 3.    Mastery of Slovak as a benefit for students in the future;

• 4.    Fulfilment of the educator’s work duties.

These items were chosen deliberately – we expect teachers working at Slovak ethnic schools to be interested in teaching Slovak. For this reason, we wanted to know which of these factors motivated them to the highest degree.

Since the motivation of Slovak teachers should be high to maintain Slovak ethnic identity in Hungary, it is necessary to know the current level of teacher motivation. The research carried out, as described above, allows the design of effective solutions to maintain the identity of Slovaks in Hungary through teaching their language. This study is part of a comprehensive research of Slovak education in Hungary, including almost the entire population of Slovak teachers in Hungary; it fills in the gap in the only partial research that had previously been carried out.