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Teaching in Diversity

Respect for and tolerance to diversity are fundamental European values. Nevertheless, the recent financial crisis, and the flow of refugees have reinforced negative attitudes towards „others“, towards people with different cultural backgrounds. Diversity has been a challenge that people deal with on a daily basis.

Because educational institutions are the first point where diversities meet and interact, the Teaching in Diversity project aims to address the needs of teachers, as they are the key actors in the process of transfer of knowledge, values, skills and competences. 

The project aims at clarifying why teachers need to teach diversity, how to teach in diversity and how to manage diversity.

Project Activities     Products      
      Events         
     Online       

Research Theme: Multilingualism and Language learning
Duration: 11/2016 – 11/2018
Coordinating partner: European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)
Mercator staff: Marlous Visser, Cor van der Meer
Funding: Erasmus+ programme of the European Union
Collaboration with: European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI) (coordinator, Germany), European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano (EURAC) (Italy), Workers Education and Training College (WETCO) (Bulgaria), Asociatia Paradigme Educationale, (Romania), Danmar Computers LLC (Poland), Kairos Europe Limited (UK,) MEDEA: Media and Learning (Belgium), CSP - Innovazione Nelle ICT (Italy).

Project Activities

The project goals are to equip school teachers with the needed knowledge and understanding of diversity; to establish an international educators network; to develop a training module and open educational resources, and to create a training package for online training in diversity for teachers. The project envisions five types of activities to reach these goals:

  • Teachers’ empowerment through:
    • Development of solid knowledge and understanding of diversity management (training packages, handbooks, methodology)
    • Enabling the knowledge-based transfer and development of civic competences from teachers to their students (testing and monitoring)
    • Raising awareness about diversity management mechanisms and development of new skills and approaches to diversity (dissemination activities)
  • Supporting the early societal integration at school level through recruiting educational staff aware of and knowledgeable about culture-sensitive learning, mechanisms for mitigating intercultural conflicts, facilitating intercultural communication
  • Establishment of an international educators’ network for real time self-support in addressing diversity challenges and of a mobile application for facilitating the network’s interaction
  • Development of a training module and open educational resources in diversity management for teachers and
  • Adapting the developed training package for online training in diversity management for teachers

Target Groups

  • Teachers and educators from all levels of preschool and school education
  • Teachers and educators working with refugees and migrants
  • School management and support staff
  • Public officials responsible for school management and policy making at the level of primary and secondary education

Online

The Teach-D project has its own website, hosted by ECMI (European Center for Minority Issues, Flensburg, Germany.

Please visit http://www.teach-d.eu/ for more information.

 

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