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Toolbox

The Toolbox is aimed at supporting teachers in including intercultural learning in any activity run in the school. Whatever the activity, what is most important are the intercultural competences of teachers.

To develop your skills which are essential to facilitate intercultural learning you can attend a training offered by the project partners.

The toolbox is not meant to be an exhaustive tool: it promotes a method to include an intercultural dimension to the educating practices, and provides examples of activities to implement for this purpose.

The Toolbox is available in English, French, German and Italian and is now being tested in 8 European countries until June 2018. Therefore the version you find online is a first draft which will then be improved o the basis of feedback received. Here is the brochure about the Toolbox.

 

Objectives

  •  Encourage school staff to give an intercultural dimension to the educating practices
  • Provide practical tools that will enable school staff to give their lessons an intercultural dimension.
  • Promote the existing educational resources related to intercultural learning.

Target group

Educators within the secondary school system, hereafter referred to as ‘school staff’. These can be different depending on the school system of the country. In most of the European countries, the target groups would be headmasters, teachers who are in charge of a class (headteachers), teachers, educators coming in for specific projects, educators from outside of school cooperating with the school.

Pedagogical principles of the Toolbox

Intercultural competence

Intercultural competence is understood as the ability to mobilise and deploy relevant attitudes, skills and knowledge in order to interact effectively and appropriately in different intercultural situations(D.K. Deardoff, The SAGE book of intercultural competence; CoE, Competences for democratic culture). See more here.

Overall pedagogical project

The Toolbox activities should be combined together in an overall pedagogical project aimed at intercultural learning, based on the identified needs of the school, and not conducted as one-off activities, eg. students should develop their intercultural competence through a mix of learning mobility experiences, cross-curricular activities and subject specific activities.

competence based

The Toolbox activities refer to competences which are subdivided into 4 different groups: values, attitudes, skills and knowledge. The competences were taken from the model outlined in the competence framework called « Competences for democratic culture. Living together as equal in culturally diverse democratic societies » designed by the Council of Europe.

Promotion of volunteering and active citizenship

The Toolbox activities should be run in cooperation with out-of-school educational organisations promoting active citizenship and volunteering. Here you can access a list of organisations that you might want to involve.

Whole school approach

Including intercultural learning in all aspects of the school life. This means that the activities of the toolbox are meant to be conducted with the cooperation and involvement of all the stakeholders within the school and in the local community, eg. teachers and students, parents, non-formal education organisations expert on intercultural learning and mobility.

Feedback

the Toolbox activities are based on the culture of feedback between learners and teachers, therefore evaluation at the end of each activity is always included. Suggestions on how to carry on visual evaluation with students is present at this link;

Reference to national school curriculum

The activities are referenced to the learning objectives of the secondary school curriculum of the country where they are implemented. This will allow teachers, headmasters and educators to better integrate the activities in their lessons and the school programme. This feature will be made available in September 2018. In the meantime, if you want to know more about the national legislation in different European countries regarding the promotion of intercultural learning at school, click here.

HELP US CREATE THE TOOLBOX!

We can all learn from each other. Good practices in Scotland may be applicable in Turkey. A teacher in France may help a concerned school head in Hungary. Counsellors in the UK may learn from their colleagues in Slovenia.

Please send us your info, so we can get in touch with you about submitting your good practices.

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