Supporting Intercultural Learning
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 use the project resources to organise a training at your school.
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, Italian and Greek and was tested in 8 European countries until June 2018. 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.
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.
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.
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. E.g. students should develop their intercultural competence through a mix of learning mobility experiences, cross-curricular activities and subject specific activities.
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.
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 reference learning objectives that can be tied to the secondary school curriculum of the country where they are implemented in. This allows teachers, headmasters and educators to better integrate the activities in their lessons and the school programme.
Learn more about the national legislation regarding for Germany, Belgium and Italy here.
