Our large consortial partner DRK Bildungswerk Sachen, location Leipzig enables the trainees in the field of educators to participate in the elective subject "peace research at home and abroad". The aim was to enable the trainees to do a 2-week internship in another country in a crèche, kindergarten, school or youth club and to deal with the other educational systems in a "contrastive comparison". The trainees were intensively prepared for the stays, were given tasks and assignments to complete abroad, and the stay was graded, evaluated and assessed. In addition to the professional competencies, the linguistic, personal and social competencies of the participants were expanded and the general orientation of the DRK Bildungswerk Sachen, Leipzig was further advanced by this project. FAIRbund e.V. itself is responsible for 6 kindergartens and trains up to 10 kindergarten teachers per year in within the dual educational path. As an association, we want to follow the European developments in pedagogy and offer our employees and trainees the opportunity to further their education and broaden their horizons. The DPFA sent a vocational teacher who wanted to establish a similar program in his school. Due to the Corona crisis, the Johanniter Academy was also included in this application and sent trainees and vocational school teachers. All four partners have the idea to further internationalize their companies/organizations and to promote intercultural competences of employees and managers, trainees and vocational trainers and thus to become sustainable. In times of increasing migration, the organizations working together here would like to make a contribution to promoting diversity and interculturality and counteracting xenophobia and fear of foreigners.
The application was submitted as a consortium of 3 institutions and, due to the Corona crisis, extended to include the Johanniter Academy in order to enable trainees to participate in an internship abroad. The vocational schools in the educator training have included a foreign internship as a possible elective subject in the curriculum to give the future educators the opportunity to build their respective intercultural competencies and to learn new methods and ways of working in the professional field. While abroad, the participants had to use English as a bridge language and relied on their body language and their own abilities to adapt. The self-reflection has helped the future pedagogues to self- reflect and helped them to understand the situation of migrants in Germany and to gain knowledge about different educational systems, other methods and practical suggestions for their own work in Germany. The participants are mostly taking part in an apprenticeship in the dual system. On the other hand, those who learn the profession within the framework of school education are dependent on the implementation of internships for the acquisition of practical background. The visits of the teachers during the internships also gave the participants the opportunity to reflect on and classify their experiences with an experienced teacher on site. The vocational school teachers themselves were able to better assess and evaluate what the trainees had learned and experienced and were also able to gain a lot of insight into the other countries and their images. The trainees were also supported by the mentors at work and the mentors of the mediating organizations in understanding cultural misunderstandings and getting questions answered.