Decoding the Disciplines in European Institutions of Higher Education: Interdisciplinary and Inter-Cultural Approach to Teaching and Learning is a transnational project that aims at introducing to European institutions of higher education a set of innovative teaching tools that will help European professors to integrate students of immigrant and refugee background into the European educational system. The project will utilize teaching tools from the three-year “History Learning Project” (2008–2011), developed by an international scholarly team at Indiana University (IU) in the U.S.A., which included Dr. Jolanta Mickute, now an assistant professor of history at Vytautas Magnus University, a holder of Ph.D. in Jewish History from IU, and an academic expert and consultant at the Ethnic Kitchen, a partnering organization in this project. The expert team of the project also includes an expert from another partnering organization, National University of Ireland, Galway: Dr. Simon Warren, a pedagogy specialist, who has been applying the HLP's teaching tools in his work as well as helping his colleagues apply these tools in their teaching.This innovative teaching pedagogy titled “Decoding the Disciplines” (DD) has already been applied in such varied disciplines as polar science, creative writing, literature, law, computer science, and others—not just in the field of history, as the HLP title suggests. The pedagogy teaches, among other things, to identify bottlenecks in teaching topics that are discipline-specific, multi-layered, and emotionally charged. In substantive disciplines and the humanities in particular, it shows how to approach subjects in question from multiple viewpoints in order to develop a more rounded, objective, and hence a much more empathetic understanding of historical individuals belonging to another ethnicity, gender, race, age or class. In other words, in the sphere of higher education it will address the ever-growing ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity on the European continent at both institutional and personal levels. In addition to three local student conferences at Vytautas Magnus University, National University of Ireland in Galway, Roma Tre University, an international conference at VIVES University College, a scholarly journal, and an Open Educational Resource, the project will set in place an elaborate peer monitoring scheme among teaching staff of all partnering institutions that will ensure efficient implementation of the new methodological tools on the part of every participating professor. Throughout the project the participating professors, under the close supervision of project experts, will prepare a set of guidelines that will help other professors, who have not directly participated in the project, use the new methodological tool set in their classes after the project is over. This way the sustainability of the project will be ensured. The focus groups of students on whom the new methodological tool set has already been tested show 10-30% improvement in their performance. Thus, it is expected that introduction of this methodological tool set to European institutions of higher education will help improve student performance and excellence of teaching in the increasingly inter-cultural environment across Europe.In the sphere of higher education, this project will address the ever-growing ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity on the European continent at both institutional and personal levels. On the one hand, it will help the teaching profession to address the challenges arising out of the refugee crisis and the immigrant integration dilemma, which has greatly influenced the EU member states on European, national, regional, and local levels. On the other hand, this project will help the new immigrant and refugee students to adjust to their new learning environments while allowing the Europe-based students to address their discomfort with the fast pace of social and cultural change in their respective societies and schools. By way of the new DD methodology, all participating institutions will develop common educational frameworks of reference at their institutions of higher learning, which they all need as they are currently facing the growing numbers of immigrants of diverse backgrounds in the EU: war refugees, asylum seekers, economic migrants, people escaping gender-based or religious discrimination, and others. They will exchange and validate their knowledge, practices, and competencies, engaging into an inter-cultural dialogue at the European educational level.
In the course of the Project, it has been established that the Decoding the Disciplines methodology can be used as a practical pedagogical strategy for helping students with difficult material or a basis for research in the scholarship of teaching and learning (or both). For instance, in the study of immigration history students usually bring an assumption that immigration is a one-directional process similar to an invasion. This assumption can be deconstructed with an example of migration patterns of Monarch butterflies. As soon as students learn that in nature migration is often cyclical, not linear, they become less resistant to learning the history of immigration from a different viewpoint, or that of immigrants. Similarly, students’ critical reading, which is essential to any academic study, can be improved by helping them understand the difference between description and synthesis of information, or helping them understand how a reasoned argument is structured. Such approaches can model ways of thinking about a topic or skill that brings new insight and understanding. The Decoding method avoids the old-fashioned rote learning and does not turn the professor into “a sage on the stage” who is supposed to know everything about her or his subject matter and is there to impart students with the right answers. Rather, the method takes both the professor and the student on a journey of exploration as it engages more creative inquiry approaches to teaching and learning. Both students and professors learned—and often relearned or remembered—the steps that lead to diverse types of solutions and answers. Our Google-driven era of study has given us easy access to mounds of information and data. It has not taught us, however, how to sort through them in order to find the most reliable and relevant pieces necessary for an informed opinion or an innovative solution. Here Decoding comes in handy. It teaches us to analyze and synthesize, or learn in ways that are more diverse, reflective, and critical. And from a broader perspective, those who can think analytically can participate in a democracy more actively, responsibly, and meaningfully. The Decoding model leads to “intellectual diversity” in thinking in the classroom: to finding different solutions to problems in the field of science, to seeing positions different from those of the author in literature, or, in history, to understanding the values of historical persons without judging them. In short, it teaches the art of critical thinking that is at the root of every European democracy and inter-cultural dialogue at national, regional, and local levels. The Decoding method responds to a dire need, in the EU educational system, for integrative (inter-disciplinary), formal (lecture-based), and alternative (project-based and experiential) means of education, critical thinking, media and digital literacy, as well as professional and intercultural competences. All of this fosters the values of democracy (fundamental rights, respect, and responsible citizenship), alongside the need for a higher degree of social inclusion in European societies. The following 5 European institutions of higher education participated in the project: Lithuanian non-for-profit organisation The Ethnic Kitchen, Vytautas Magnus University from Lithuania, Roma Tre University from Italy, National University of Ireland, Galway from Ireland, and VIVES University of Applied Sciences from Belgium. 53 members of academic staff from the participating organisations in Italy, Ireland, Belgium and Lithuania tested the Decoding the Disciplines methodology in their classes. 153 participants from outside the partnering institutions took part in the project's multiplier events in Italy, Ireland, Belgium and Lithuania. Two important intellectual outputs have been produced as a result of the Project: an Open Educational Resource and an electronic Scholarly Journal that accumulate the participating instructors' experience with the Decoding the Disciplines methodology in a way that can help instructors from other countries and institutions apply this methodology to their own teaching in an efficient and meaningful manner. Both of these intellectual outputs can be accessed at http://www.decoding.education/