Thanks to the Paris declaration on promoting citizenship and the common EU values, there is a political momentum to promote intercultural dialogue through education. As EFIL we see teacher’s intercultural education, pupil’s mobility and the focus of intercultural competence within the new EU key competence framework, as key steps in this direction.
The EU has launched an public consultation to gather input for a Recommendation to Member states on Promoting social inclusion and shared values through formal and non-formal learning: EFIL has contributed to this publication.
EFIL has also contributed to the public consultation on the revision of the key competence frameworkand the report on the results of the consultation shows the need of focusing on ICL and states exactly the input provided by EFIL within this policy process (page 29).
Finally, the European Commission has released the Communication ‘School development and excellent teaching for a great start in life‘ which follows the initiative of December 2016 ‘Improving and modernising education‘. In this document measures for promoting intercultural dialogue are foreseen, such as training for teachers on dealing with diversity and pupil mobility as a measure for developing better and more inclusive schools. The Commission also underlines the importance of teacher mobility for fostering excellence in teaching and learning. EFIL welcomes this Communication of the European Commission, however we see that for pupil and teacher mobility there are constraints in how national education system are built, which do not allow to spend a period abroad. Finally, we believe that modernisation of education is not only about digitalisation: school systems need to be up to date in the way they approach the teaching of subjects by providing multiple perspectives in order to advance critical thinking and intercultural learning. This can only be done through the development of competence-based curricula, shifting away from a nationalistic approach to education.
You can read the LLLplatform policy statement ‘Adapting European education systems to meet society’s challenges in an ever changing world’ which is a reaction to this Communication of the Commission.
For more information contact elisa.briga@afs.org