Intercultural competences (IC) in today's reality are a major key competence. The importance of IC has been recognised by EC and is being recognised by more and more educational entities. Nonetheless it is still not yet prevalent or even common for every country to include intercultural education into every educational path. The extent to which the competence development is included in VET varies from country to country. The Migrant Integration Policy Index shows the following data (2016 last avail.): for the indicator ‘intercultural education for all’ (are all pupils and Teachers supported to learn and work together in diverse society?): 52/100pts for EU28., for the indicator: ‘Teacher training to reflect diversity’ (Teacher training and professional development require intercultural education) the values are low (0 for BG, PL). The indicators relating to the interculturality of curricula are also rather low. The situation is even worse when it comes specifically to the VET sector and VET Trainers. Interculturality has never been a major concern in vocational education. Instead, professional skills have always been regarded as being of the most importance. VET Trainers have learned intercultural issues themselves. Consequently, there are many VET trainers who are Experts in their field but when it comes to knowledge or experience in delivering their classes to learners from diverse cultural backgrounds, they have a real deficit detrimental to the content and delivery of their teaching. Taking into account the current situation in Europe, where the mobility of workers not only between EU countries, but especially from non-EU countries is so high, VET Trainers need to be aware of intercultural differences and to be able to deal with various cultures every day. With more immigrants arriving constantly, understanding different cultures continues to become an urgent need. For VET Trainers who deal with those that need to be trained to do various jobs, intercultural diversity has become a challenge that they face and deal with on a daily basis. Knowing the differences between cultures in order to be able to train effectively, is the crucial need for VET Trainers. The project consortium would like to address this need for intercultural competences in VET education, by achieving its aim which is to develop and increase intercultural competences of VET Trainers' dealing with diverse learners in Germany, Italy, Poland, Bulgaria, Ireland and Netherlands by the end of 2020. The project will achieve it through providing easy access to tools in the area of interculturality and provide intercultural training materials including instructions on how to apply theory into intercultural trainings. In particular the specific objective is to design and implement an innovative Open Online Catalogue of Intercultural Tools which will be an on-line application available as OER. The Catalogue will be composed of 3 parts: 1) database of intercultural tools – collection of tools developed within previous various initiatives and projects as OERs and that relate to intercultural education, 2) training materials about culture – materials in the form of e-learning, with exercises and tests allowing for self-assessment of IC, 3) guide (with template) on how to develop simulations for intercultural training. The target group of the project are VET Trainers working with diverse learners from different cultural backgrounds, staff of VET providers which deal with diverse learners and public officials responsible for VET management and policy-making at the level of VET education. The project will directly involve over 2000 participants. VET Trainers and VET providers will be involved in searching for tools, providing feedback about developing outputs, testing and exploiting the Catalogue and participating in multiplier events. The expected impact of the project concerns partners’ organizations, their staff and learners, VET providers, VET Trainers of various sectors and VET learners. It is expected that VET Trainers will increase their vocational skills not only by learning about intercultural issues but also by rising their awareness about existence of various tools and skills to use them. Together with the instructions on how to apply theory in practice, how to use simulations in their training, they will get a powerful tool at their disposal which can be used by themselves to rise qualifications or being taught and used during conducting their vocational classes. The desired impact is also that all participating organisations will use the outcomes in their daily training activities, that they will include the Catalogue into own educational offer.
The project idea came from analysis of the situation regarding the intercultural competences (IC) which in today's reality are a major key competence. The importance of IC has been recognised by EC and educational entities but it is still not yet prevalent or even common for every country to include intercultural education into every educational path. The extent to which the competence development is included in VET varies from country to country but interculturality has never been a major concern in vocational education. Instead, professional skills have always been regarded as being of the most importance. Consequently, there are many VET trainers who are experts in their field but when it comes to knowledge or experience in delivering their classes to learners from diverse cultural backgrounds, they have a real deficit detrimental to the content and delivery of their teaching. Taking into account the mobility of workers not only between EU countries, but especially from non-EU countries, VET Trainers need to be aware of intercultural differences and to be able to deal with various cultures every day. In view of this situation, the main objective of the project was to develop and increase intercultural competences of VET Trainers' dealing with diverse learners in Germany, Italy, Poland, Bulgaria, Ireland and Netherlands. The partnership consisted of organisations working in VET education area and dealing with diverse learners: assist (coordinator), Danmar Computers, Diciannove, ITT, IBI, CKE and RUNI. Each member in the consortium organizes VET courses and in addition, Danmar has IT expertise sufficient for development of digital part of the intellectual outputs. The target group of the project were VET Trainers working with diverse learners from different cultural backgrounds, staff of VET providers which deal with diverse learners and public officials responsible for VET management and policy-making at the level of VET education. The project directly involved over 2000 participants. The main undertaken activities in the project included work on the main results, meaning that the activities included searching for tools, preparing database, work on content, digitalizing the materials and their extensive testing and improving. Important activities included quality assurance and dissemination of the outcomes in order to assure their exploitation also in other EU countries and other fields. The dissemination included Multiplier Events. The results of the project include tangible results which are two main intellectual outputs: 1) Open Online Catalogue of Intercultural Tools implemented as an on-line application available as OER consisting of three parts: - database of intercultural tools (collection of tools developed within previous various initiatives and projects as OERs and that relate to intercultural education), - training materials about culture in the form of e-learning, - guide on how to develop simulations for intercultural training. 2) Guidelines for Practical Application of Intercultural Aspects in VET Context. Besides intellectual outputs, the project created dissemination materials (website, social channels, leaflets, newsletters, articles, presentations) and working materials including plans and very important intangible results. Those are: increased intercultural competence and through that, vocational skills of VET trainers, increased awareness of VET trainers but also other stakeholders about existence of various tools they didn’t know before, opportunity of being involved into European project which brought new knowledge and experiences for target groups, stakeholders, participating organisations and participants. Other intangible results are: stronger cooperation networks of those who worked on the results or participated in various activities of the project. In case of VET providers, they gained useful and innovative tools that they could include into own educational offer. The impact of the project exceeded the expectations. It can be seen in partners’ organizations, their staff and learners, VET trainers, operators in the field of VET education. The most important is that all who participated in activities or at least heard about its results, have better awareness about intercultural issues and available tools that can help in rising intercultural skills. Moreover the usage of the Catalogue itself helps in increasing ICT skills. In addition, the open character of the Catalogue (possibility of adding new tools) assures its self-expandability which might bring benefits to interested groups of users in the long-term.