The aims of the project were: -strengthen the teaching profession by providing methodology and tools to help teachers assess their refugee/migrant students’ prior knowledge -promote intercultural education and intercultural dialogue - enrich teachers’ existing knowledge on differentiation teaching -promote an inclusive, encouraging, supportive and non-discriminative learning environment -encourage lifelong learning and professional development -Improving efficiency and flexibility in education systems by allowing alternative learning pathways -Promoting social inclusion and equity for disadvantaged groups We wanted to offer resources to educators in learning how to recognise the prior knowledge of their migrant and refugee learners, and thereby contributing to the integration and empowerment of migrants and refugees in the project regions as well as around Europe.
We applied for the project because teachers should be able to meet the diverse needs of all students and foster tolerance, respect for diversity and civic responsibility. Whereas most European countries already faced challenges in matching teaching methods and quality with the needs of diverse classrooms, the challenges intensified with the arrival of large numbers of refugee students and their particular needs. This project set out to create a curriculum on how to assess and recognize prior learning and other linguistic and cultural resources a student and/or an adult refugee/migrant has. This assessment and recognition will help teachers develop lessons which meet their refugee/migrant students’ needs, facilitating their inclusion in the host country’s educational system. The new teaching and learning material we created along with the training platform for teachers has provided, during the project and afterwards, an excellent database for all teachers, all over Europe, covering the gap and discontinuity which exists in most European countries.