The project goals for the apprentices contained organisational, professional-vocational, and intercultural competences: - to gain country-specific knowledge of educational language concepts and enactments in early years education, - intercultural sensitivity and competences e.g. in terms of an altered perception and accordingly alterations in thinking and actions, - to recognise intercultural problem areas as such and to work out concrete solutions - to experience and to get to know cultural characteristics through everyday experiences and collegial encounters - to realise how important foreign language skills are for the day-to-day work, - to extend the skills of independently organising assignments abroad and their vocational mobility. For the teaching staff the project goals were: - to experience a professionalization through the assignment abroad, - to experience and to get to know cultural characteristics through everyday experiences and collegial encounters - to enhance the abilities in developing assignments and evaluation material for work placements, - to strengthen the skills of passing on the understanding of intercultural approaches and to transform these n in the areas of intercultural and comparative pedagogy.
In the past few years the significance of multilingualism has changed. Today the reality of the multilingual child is acknowledged and the all the spoken languages are appreciated. Additionally society has started recognizing multilingualism as a hard skill. From this viewpoint child care workers are challenged with an increasing professional demand. Based on the individual and familial concepts of education a competent and skilful interaction with cultural diversity is a key qualification for pedagogical work. They are to encourage and optimize welcoming, integrational and educational processes for children and adolescent especially for immigrated adolescents and families. This includes learning, experiencing and applying an adequate behaviour towards multilingual children/youths. Examining language development and the effects of simultaneously or gradually learning additional languages excellently suits preparing the students for the complex requirements of cultural diversity. Because of the increasing professional demands of the graduates, it is necessary to broaden the teaching staff’s knowledge in multilingualism and to improve their skills for a systematic curricular enhancement.