The Erasmus+ project Intercultural Learning for Pupils and Teachers has so far reached more than 4000 pupils thanks to the 200 teachers that have been trained. Furthermore, 400 people registered to the newsletter and the website is visited by 7.000 visitors on average per month… reaching 11.000 in June 2018!
To learn more about the project you can watch this video in:
By the end of September you will find online the training sessions developed by the project, to be used by teacher trainers to run trainings targeting teachers, school heads and educators in the field of school.
Based on the feedback from the piloting of the teacher training course, and research related to the current legislation and practice in the five European countries involved, the project team is drafting policy recommendations to ensure the inclusion of intercultural learning in the education of teachers and the curricula of upper secondary schools. The main recommendations are:
⦁ Promote mobility programmes as part of teacher initial education to enhance the intercultural competence of teachers;
⦁ Link intercultural learning with the learning outcomes foreseen for each school subject;
⦁ Ensure intercultural learning is promoted through a whole school approach and included in the school mission, and not an isolated activity of some teachers: offering a training on intercultural learning to the whole group of teachers of a school, aiming at planning intercultural learning activities together and across the curriculum, would support this approach;
⦁ Ensure teachers are prepared to use non formal education methods and experiential learning and build on the reactions of students to these approaches which unleash creativity, participation and critical thinking;
⦁ Promote pupil mobility, by facilitating recognition of the learning period abroad, shifting from a “traditional” content-based curriculum to a competence-based approach, which recognises “real-world learning” through non formal and informal learning, and promotes the development of attitudes and skills, in addition to subject knowledge.
During the past few months, the project partners have discussed the policy recommendations with the following organisations:
⦁ Humboldt University of Berlin
⦁ School administration of the city of Berlin
⦁ French Ministry of Education, CSPE department in charge of drafting the school curriculum
⦁ Belgian Ministry of Higher Education in the French community – responsible for the Initial Training of Teachers
⦁ ESPE Orleans – initial teacher training university
⦁ ESPE Nancy – initial teacher training university
⦁ Italian Ministry of Education, department responsible for Languages, CLIL and international projects
⦁ National association of principals in Italy
The project partners met in Bierges at the Ecole Internationale Le Verseau on 5-6 June to discuss the next steps and are now developing the final outputs which will be presented at the final event which is part of the IX Forum on Intercultural Learning and Exchange taking place on 24-26 October in Brussels.