The project ENABLE or “Self-learning for Arab refugee children - Building a concept for mother-tongue trainers and teachers” is a transnational project across four European countries testing and implementing innovative pedagogical methods in the field of school education of refugee children by working directly with native Arabic speaking teachers, volunteer trainers and tutors (from now on “trainers”). The aim of the project is to develop an extra-curricular training model for Arab mother-tongue trainers that supports refugee children to enhance their self-regulating learning strategies and to strengthen their self-efficacy. Refugee children will be supported to motivate themselves and adapt their own learning behavior to the environment and the desired outcome. This training model as the first intellectual output will be made public accessible as an on- and offline booklet in Arabic and English. It will moreover be explained and further developed in a highly user-friendly interactive web-based teaching platform as a second intellectual output. In order to develop a Europe-wide training model that considers the contextual differences in Europe, the experiences of mother-tongue trainers and the special needs of Arab refugee children, the training model will be developed, evaluated and optimized in a community-based participatory research process. During four collaborative transnational five-day immersive training activities in non-formal settings, the concept will be passed on to 40 mother-tongue trainers and at the same time optimized based on their experience. The target groups are Arab speaking refugee children and youth between the age of 9 and 15 years as well as Arab speaking refugee trainers in the European Union and Turkey. Refugee children in the European Union and Turkey have accumulated a big gap in their education during their histories of flight and face difficulties being integrated into national education systems. This is also due to linguistic problems since they are confronted with a new language. We believe that promoting a positive self-concept, strengthening their self-efficacy and supporting them in self-regulating learning strategies will be critical and impactful tools to bridging educational gaps, to integrate sustainably in new educational systems and empower them in order to build perspectives for their future. This also supports efforts in preventing radicalization of youth. However, these training models have to be adjusted to the precarious emotional environments of refugee children. This is why we work with mother-tongue trainers. Mother-tongue teachers, trainers, mentors and volunteers are often neglected and underutilized in European educational systems due to high bureaucratic hurdles, requirements of linguistic skills of the national language and the difference in teaching methods. However, they are the ones who have most ground experiences and background knowledge with refugee children and at the same time can gain their trust by using Arabic. Their activity as trainers for refugee children as well as their use of Arabic will form the main criteria for participation in this project. Focusing on the potential of these educators, this project promotes inter-cultural dialogue and higher diversity in school and outer-school sector and impacts positively onto their professionalization by acquiring new teaching methods and competences. The participating universities are able to provide recognition of the acquired skills through certification. Roughly 400 children, trainers as well as associated partners and fellow researchers will benefit from the project outside of the project partners as all participant organizations and their affiliated partners gain a new pedagogical concept to be applied directly in their work. Eventually this training concept and the hiring of mother tongue trainers can be included in school curricula by collaborating with various municipalities. Our five partners from Germany, Sweden, Italy and Turkey are dedicated to promote equity and inclusion of refugee children and trainers through a mother-tongue mentoring approach between these two in non-formal training settings. This collective research, lead by the applicant organization, will lead to the development of a new innovative training concept in a context where it does not exist yet, hence create an output to be used by other relevant stakeholders after project implementation. Five project and 15 associated partners will form a European network including academic institutions, NGO’s, municipalities, social entrepreneurs and coordinating platforms in order to promote the ENABLE project, to support refugee children’s integration as well as the professionalization of refugee trainers. Five multiplier events will be organized to support the dissemination of project results and documentation in addition to a cross-medi
“ENABLE: Self-learning for Arab refugee children” was a European project of the University of Education Schwäbisch Gmünd (Germany), the NGO Back on Track Syria e.V. in Berlin, University of Calabria (Italy), University in Gävle (Sweden) and the Muğla Sitki Kocman University (Turkey). The project aimed at the better integration of refugee children in local school contexts by directly working with Arab mother-tongue educators. The objective was to offer those educators a training so they can support children in developing a positive self-concept, a positive and self-organized learning attitude and tackle subjects such as exclusion, stereotypization and the effect of trauma. Another objective was to further educate and professionalize mother-tongue trainers and teachers but also learn from their experiences on the ground. Since the situation in different countries in Europe is very diverse, the partner consortium gathered and exchanged experience in diverse formalized and non-formalized school and integration contexts, thereby targeting a variety of different educators and practitioners in schools, NGOs, Asylum institutions and universities. During the project, four transnational trainings in Berlin (Germany), Calabria (Italy), Gävle (Sweden) and Muğla (Turkey) were conducted, reaching a total number of 66 local mother-tongue trainers who migrated from Syria, Algeria, Libya, Iraq and Yemen who migrated and now worked as teachers, teacher assistants, voluntary mentors, cultural mediators and students with refugee children in Germany, Sweden, Italy and Turkey. Moreover the partner representatives took part in the training by sharing their knowledge and learning from other settings in the partner countries. Based on this in-dense on the ground experience, the ENABLE partner consortium developed and evaluated a highly accessible training concept for Arab mother-tongue educators as well as for other practitioners in an iterative way, consisting of seven modules in English and Arabic. This training was further transformed into a training platform (www.enable-tamkin.com/training-platform) where tutors worldwide can learn with it in English and Arabic about self-learning, the concept of self-efficacy and motivation, inclusion and exclusion dynamics in the classroom and trauma in refugee contexts. A further element of the project, which lasted from 2017 to 2019, was the implementation of six multiplier events (two in Berlin, one in Calabria, two in Sweden, one in Muğla) reaching a wide variety of local and international participants working in the field of education and integration in addition to the project partners' network. The project results have also been disseminated at more than 25 international and national conferences and seminars and through four publications to an audience of researchers, teachers, pedagogues, teacher students (further publications are already in the making). The project has given the often underrepresented and unprivileged group of Arab mother-tongue teachers in their new societies an initial professionalization and visibility in the public discourse. Moreover, mother-tongue trainers highly benefited from the trainings by better understanding the situation of refugee children, better knowing how to deal with children in different situations and becoming a better learning mentor. The children profited from teachers that understood better their situation and could better become positive learning mentors. Finally, Enable managed to open up an intensive knowledge exchange about the integration in schools, the Asylum systems and the role mother-tongue educators in diverse European contexts.