Mainstreaming Intercultural Competencies into Education Project

Project summary

Socio-economic developments these last two decades and more so critical events (e.g. terrorism, migration crises) affecting European countries these days show that Europe needs more cohesive and inclusive societies which allow citizens to live together in diversity and to play an active role in democratic life. Education, training and social interventions are key instruments to enhance intercultural understanding, sense of belonging to a community and to promote the inclusion of all individuals in society. Hence students in education and social interventions should be better prepared for working in multicultural settings and to support and reinforce the bases of the mutual relations between people, but also between the majority and minority cultural groups. However, we have noticed that even though it is now largely admitted that intercultural understanding and intercultural competences are more relevant than ever because they make it possible for us to address the root causes of some of the problems of today’s societies in the form of misunderstandings across cultural, socio-cultural, ethnic and other lines (discrimination, racism, hate speech and so on), the pedagogical innovations in this domain are hardly integrated in the programmes offered at Universities nor are they also integrated in the planning and the implementation of education or social intervention projects, except when the project target groups are migrants or refugees. Besides, we have noticed that there exists a gap between students’ knowledge and their ability to tackle real situations on the field. Students in different specialisations are not always to apply the knowledge, ideas and concept they acquire through their training to meet the concrete needs and challenges once on the field. It seems that training in university and activities on the field are disconnected. In this context our project wishes to mainstream intercultural competences so as to help students in education and social interventions to become cultural-sensitive professionals. More specifically, our objectives are: 1. To facilitate the transformation of acquired knowledge and theory into skills and competences applicable on the field for students of education / training/social intervention 2. To valorise pedagogical innovations especially in the field of interculturality 3. To integrate an intercultural approach into educational and social intervention projects in their planning, their implementation and evaluation 4. To develop ICT based learning tools that enhance the sharing and collaborative development of practices in educational projects To reach these objectives we will develop, test and assess: 1- A module on mainstreaming interculturality for students and for lecturers (how to take into account the intercultural dimension in education projects: overview of methodologies, different paradigms of intercultural approach). 2- A compendium of pedagogical innovations in interculturality (Methods likely to facilitate taking into account the dimension of diversity in the methodologies of education/social intervention projects. 3- An ideas Bank for education projects, i.e. a web-based space for sharing and discussing ideas on intercultural projects in education by students and professionals involved in the field. 4- An E-platform for construction of education projects mainstreaming the intercultural approach (how to address the intercultural dimension in projects from the phase of needs assessment, project construction, preparation to the delivery and evaluation) 5- Guide for NGO-university partnerships, i.e. a guide for constituting partnerships between Universities and organization involved in the field, taking into account a problem-based learning approach. how to create, maintain such collaborations) During our project we will directly involve in activities approximately 60 university staff, 56 professionals from social and education field and 125 students. Including our dissemination activities we’ll reach approximately 2700-3000 people. Or long term ambition is to propose working tools and strategies that allow a better teaching of intercultural competences and knowledge in Higher education and a better taking into account of cultural diversity in the development of education and social interventions projects on the field for mutual understanding in modern European intercultural societies. To achieve this, we will take steps to present our conclusions and results to decision-makers, actors in universities and teacher training, in particular: IO1 – the module on mainstreaming interculturality can serve as inspiration or concrete content material to include in university programmes. IO2 – the compendium of pedagogical innovations can also serve as a manual or concrete training material to include in teachers’ initial or continuous trainings The assessment report on IO3, 4 & 5 can give arguments for the introduction of such activities into all university programmes.