In a situation where the number of migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and unaccompanied minors increases substantially every year in Europe, educational institutions are faced with the problem of meeting new education and training needs, especially regarding the development and improvement of language skills. It is necessary to train educational staff (L1 and L2 teachers and educators for each level and type of school, as part of initial and continuing training) so that new language learners acquire appropriate communication skills in the host country's language. Also, it is fundamental to equip operators with the methodological tools to enhance multilingualism and the linguistic diversity of educational contexts, without ignoring or deleting the richness of the linguistic repertoires which new learners bring with them. It is therefore necessary to train teachers and educators so that they can analyze the educational contexts in which they operate, become aware of the skills possessed and those still needed to meet educational needs, develop strategies to facilitate the transfer of skills between languages on the part of the learners, introduce reconstruction tools (linguistic autobiographies) regarding their own and the learner’s linguistic experiences in order to develop self-reflection skills and promote L2 learning. These practices will also have a positive impact on "native" students, enhancement their awareness of cultural and linguistic diversity. The analysis also will allow IRIS partners to measure and compare the quality and degree of integration in the culture of the host contexts on the part of the new students and to understand how and to what extent intergenerational transmission takes place for them. The IRIS network includes Universities, institutional teacher training centers and educational associations from 6 countries (AT, FR, GR, IT, RO, SE) who wish to cooperate in designing and testing training modules to guarantee the acquisition of the above skills by teachers of all grade levels and educators involved in social work. These skills will make the teachers from these 6 countries more employable since currently in Europe recruitment is increasingly based on curricula articulated skills as well as specific qualifications. First, the network intends to collect information concerning the objective situations and practices in effect in the education systems in the countries involved. This material will form the basis for developing training modules to be tested in a residential course with trainers during the following year, with a demultiplexer role in their decentralized contexts. They will work with school teachers who have signed an agreement which commits them to experimenting with the blended action/training materials. During action/training course, the materials will be developed online using digital tools made available by the UNIMI platform that will be enriched with innovative features in order to achieve the goals. The trainers and teachers/educators will thus acquire specific digital and innovative skills. The training course will be certified by each individual department, all of which are approved training centers. The project will conclude with the delivery of some intellectual output. In particular: the comparison between the various education systems, grids for the analysis and knowledge of the languages present in the multi/plurilingual target groups, the blended e-learning training modules, the tested teaching materials, the most significant productions by learners in different contexts and the recommendations for the various linguistic policy makers, containing the conclusions of the detailed work carried out by the partnership. The course will then be loaded on the European “School Education Gateway” portal. Wide dissemination will ensure the visibility of the process and products which thanks to the UNIMI platform features, guarantee that the training practices launched by the IRIS framework are adopted on an on-going basis by the institutions involved as well as others reached through dissemination and multiplier events. The products will then become an integral part of the educational offering of universities and training centers involved in the initial and continuing training of teachers and educators.
The IRIS project is addressed as a priority audience to European teachers interacting with multilingual classes where multilingual students are now prevalent. The project aims: - to offer them educational and didactic tools to enhance the multilingual repertoires in the classes, - to improve the basic skills of the students, - to develop respect for linguistics diversity, - to promote multilingual curricula and the ability of bi / multilingual students to transfer skills from one language to another, - to help refugee students, asylum seekers and migrants to consolidate their multilingual skills. Furthermore, as a first necessary training moment, IRIS offers this target group the tools to draft their own personal language autobiography. IRIS products have been developed in a network by the 8 partners divided into transnational groups. The products have been tested and improved through specific training/action activities carried out locally. The platform that collects IRIS products has been structured in such a way as to allow the use of training and educational materials in an interactive way. - Module 1 on the platform (developed in 5 languages and built with different materials depending on the language) accompanies teachers in a self-reflection path that, starting from the analysis of texts by different authors, ends with the writing of their own language autobiography as a preparatory step before addressing the similar proposal to learners. - The Compendium and modules 2 and 3 on the platform are highly effective tools to develop basic skills (linguistic and communicative), social and intercultural competences and openness to diversity in learners. The materials aimed at promoting individual multilingualism and at giving value to the languages present in the classes; the learners' linguistic auto/biographies and the activities aimed at stimulating their awareness of their own linguistic repertoires and their construction, of the multiple identities resulting from their varied personal experiences are particularly interesting. Module 2 also proposes activities and strategies that allow multilingual learners to become aware of the transversal skills they possess in their mother tongue (e.g. reading, writing, translation/mediation skills), which can be reused in the acquisition/use of other languages. Teachers can use these materials to promote students' awareness of their ability to move between idioms, overcoming the image of languages as closed and "compartmentalised" systems. - The comparative analysis of language policies (accompanied by a glossary in the various languages of the partnership) stems from an examination of the partners' responses to a questionnaire that investigated language policies at various levels and good practices in the partner countries. This work has scientific validity and can be used as a basis and model for further investigations into institutional practices at the language level in different countries and contexts. - Finally, the recommendations are the result of local experiences with the many associated partners (especially the schools involved in the experiments in the various contexts) and of the comparison between different institutions and sometimes different conceptions of education and school institution, a synthesis of discussions and verifications that have enriched those who elaborated them and that can stimulate similar analyses and comparisons in groups acting within educational institutions.