Developing of intercultural competence in early and preschool upbringing and education

Sa？etak Meetings of different cultures in today's global multicultural society are occurring almost every moment in the most diverse forms of communication. Intercultural communication due to an increased interdependence between people of different cultures, religions, languages and world view becomes a reality of everyday life, where encounters culture imply the necessity of quality mutual correlation based on the idea of interculturalism. Given that childhood is considered an extremely important period of human life, 18 institutions of early and preschool upbringing and education are the places of the first formal outbound socialization and the earliest institutional transfer of socially accepted norms and values, as well as the places where the forms of intercultural relations are applied in society. This paper gives an overview of the results of empirical research aimed at determining the level of basic knowledge in the field of interculturalism and examining the desirable intercultural competence of the educators, and the effectiveness of intercultural action in the early and preschool upbringing and education process