TICKLE-Project EU Final Report
Teachers Intercultural Competences as Keystones for Learning in Europe
Bernd Hainmüller
Teachers Intercultural Competences
as Keystone to Learning in Europe (TICKLE)
Final Report Public Part
Reporting Period: 01. 11. 2007 – 31. 10. 2009
Project information
Project acronym: TICKLE
Project title: Teachers Intercultural Competences as Keystone to Learning in Europe
Project number: 134317-LLP-1-2007-1-DE-COMENIUS-CMP
Sub-programme or KA: COMENIUS
Project website: www.tickle-project.eu
Reporting period: From 01.11.07 -To 31.10.2009
Report version: Final Report
Date of preparation: 20. 02. 2010
Beneficiary organisation: Staatliches Seminar für Didaktik und Lehrerbildung GHS- OFFENBURG
Project coordinator: Dr. Bernd Hainmüller
Project coordinator organisation: Staatliches Seminar für Didaktik und Lehrerbildung GHS- OFFENBURG
Project coordinator telephone number: 0049 – 781 – 92389-34
Project coordinator email address: Bernd.Hainmueller@seminar-ghs-og.kv.bwl.de
Staatliches Seminar für Lehrerbildung und Didaktik –GHS- Offenburg (Germany) Weingartenstrasse 34 c
77654 Offenburg
Tel. 0049 781 92389-34
Fax 0049 781 92389-39
European Coordinator:
Dr. Bernd Hainmüller
Head of Department Project Management
eMail: Bernd.Hainmueller@Seminar-GHS-OG.kv.bwl.de
private: janhai@aol.com
Abb. 1: TICKLE Logo
THE PARTNERS
Luleå tekniska universitet, Luleå University of Technology, Department of Teacher Education
S 974 51 Luleå, Sweden
National Coordinator:Gunilla Johansson, Dr, Senior lecturer
Email: Gunilla.Johansson@ltu.se
Tallinna Ülikool/Tallinn University, Department of Teacher education
Viru Väljak 2, 10111 Tallinn, Estonia
National Coordinator: Inge Timostsuk, Head of the Centre of Pedagogical Practice at the Teacher Education Department of the Educational Sciences Faculty of Tallinn University
Email: inget@tlu.ee
Esterhazy Karoly College, EKF,TKTK
Klapkav 12, 3300 Eger/Hungary
National Coordinator:Maria Nagy,Head of Department of Education
Email: nagymaria@ektf.hu
University of West Hungary , Apáczai Csere János Faculty, Liszt Ferenc utca 42
9022 Györ/Hungary
National Coordinator:Sandor Remsei, PhD, Associate professor
Email: remsei@atif.hu
Institute Universitaire de Formation des Maitres (IUFM CFEB) Rue 4.fevrier 68500 Guebwiller, France
National Coordinator:Edith Weber, Head of Department , in charge of CFEB/IUFM d'Alsace (Center of teacher formation for bilingual learning)
Email: Edith.weber@alsace.iufm.fr
PABO Arnhem
Ruitenberglaan 27 6802 CB Arnhem, Netherlands
National Coordinator: Henk Boer
Head of section of pedagogy Pabo-Arnhem / Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen
Email: Henk.boer@han.nl
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Abb. 2: TICKLE working group from 7 european countries
Executive Summary
Tickle has in most parts of its project life fulfilled, what had been promised: To develop keystones for intercultural competences in future teacher education and training in Europe. We followed with some minor changes the path of our working plan until the final close down of the project in December 2009. The overall 8 project meetings from November 2007 in Frankfurt/Germany until the sunset meeting in the home of the coordinating Unit, Offenburg/Germany from September 17th to september 20th were highlights not only for the tickle project members, but had also a great impact on the extended national Tickle teams, who worked for two years confidentially together and collaborated closely with the partner teams in the times between the meetings. The atmosphere of the TICKLE project was respectful, trustful and a role model for intercultural dialoguing. The toolbox, which the Tickle partners developed in the last two years and which contains keystones for the processing and developing of intercultural competences – materials, that are addressed to trainers and adult educators working in the field of education, who are conducting or are interested in conducting training programs for future teachers. The toolbox and its differentiated shape of tools for:
- raising awareness of intercultural issues
- dealing with attitudes towards intercultural competences
- adding knowledge on interculturality
- developing new skills and methodological proficiency for classroom work
are not only tools, which came out of some books or academic discussions – they were developed by teacher trainers from the participating countries, and were also tested with the target group – future teachers in Europe, by now only teacher students or trainees. More than 300 of these future teachers took the opportunity, to get the various tools presented on one day conferences and participated on discussions about the practical implications of the tools for themselves, the chances of implementing them in their own institutes and the fruitfulness or uselessness of bringing them to life in the multicultural classrooms. The Tickle tools are just offers, an open box offering possible answers to the issue of what kind of training, which objectives and content could be offered to cultural competent future teachers, in order to provide them with those skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary for developing the educational dimension of their intercultural classrooms. Each tool can be treated in multiple ways. The use one can give to this material is flexible and diverse as the domain approached is vast. It was not the intention of the project to produce a professional standard, a generally valid and applicable model, but to start from particular situations and come up with proposals based on facts. The initial research and needs assessment were carried out in the six countries, in actual organizational contexts, trying from the very beginning of the project to embrace a variety of situations, organizational and professional backgrounds. The toolbox is set to reflect this variety, as it was tested in an interactive manner in groups of future teachers, teacher students and trainees from the six countries involved, and their opinions and reflections were taken into consideration in the elaboration of the final form. The toolbox emphasizes the learning objectives for participants, as it is the core around which any training program is being organized and defined. The different priority levels were set according to the actual options expressed by participants in testing sessions and this could be considered one of the most significant results of the testing sessions for the toolbox.
After two years of work – the Tickle team members are quite aware about the fact, that not all tools can be used in all countries or instuitutional settings – some may, some may not. It is a clear consequence of the fact, that the wheels of interculturality in Europe differ quite a lot; we had to learn, that in the range from the Polar Circle to the deep hungarian South each country, each region, each teacher institute, each tickle member group has its own speed and own imagination of what is necessary now. Enshrined in a different history, different societal, economic and cultural background, each european country must find its own ways of dealing with cultural diversity, intercultural understanding and educational transformations. No agency in Bruxelles can give more than advice, what do do with rascist behaviours, ignorant treatment of minorities or violation of human rights in schools. What the TICKLERS learnt as a EU group was, that beeing on the way, sharing a lot of hours working together this is itself a intercultural experience, which cannot be appreciated more – a side effect, which was very helpful for the personal process in the biography of each participant.
1. PROJECT OBJECTIVES
1. Aims
The project aims were to develop, test and disseminate didactical tools for the development of intercultural competences for teacher trainers, teacher trainees and teachers. The prerequisite for this task was the identification of the areas and con-texts, in which cultural diversity is of a manifest relevance for the teaching and learning processes in schools and classrooms of the participating countries. We wanted to raise the awareness of cultural diversity of professionals, who do or did not have to deal with that question yet and make the professional community aware, that cultural diversity is not threatening thorn, but a supportive pathways to European citizenship as one of the main future issues in a wider European horizon. By doing this we can build up cultural diversity competences and attitudes into the general profile of the teaching profession. In following these aims, we have actively applied newly devel-oped teaching methodologies from previous EU and Comenius 2. 1. projects in learning situations e. G. – the diagnostic tools of the previous Comenius 2.1. project “Appraisal of Potential for Teaching” 2003-2006, coordinated by the Offenburg Seminar, which are characterized by a severe cultural diversity issue and expand the range of methodology in this area of teaching and learning by using these synergies.
2. Activities
The main activities of the project in the six countries was to create 42 keystone tools or methodological approaches, which can be used to enlarge intercultural compe-tences. Each partner had to develop 6 Keystones. During the 8 project meeting in the participating countries, these tools were presented in 5 one-day training units to teacher trainers, teacher trainees and teachers of the guest country. Every one day conference was evaluated the same day (see evaluation results on the homepage). Overall more than 300 teachers, teacher students and teacher trainees participated in these conferences in Arnhem (NL), Tallinn (EST), Eger (HU), Györ (HU) and Guebwille FR. From the national Tickle members one or two persons of each partner country was responsible for the presentation of one keystone per meeting; the other members of the national task groups attended the training units of colleagues. The keystones were immediately evaluated by the attendants and the day after dis-cussed by a meeting of all national group members with support of the external con-sultant. The main question here was always, whether the presented keystones could be implemented as useful tools in one's own national or regional initial teacher training. This approach created 'real life laboratories' based on the methodology of intercultural competences for teachers. The national task groups disseminated in the time between the project meetings the results to their own professional community and altered the keystones if necessary for their own setting. This created significant and immediate dissemination and valorisation effects in all participating coun-tries (see the list of dissemination activities on our homepage). All keystone training units are now placed for public download on the TICKLE webpage directly after the end of the project. Now a tool box with ore than 42 training units for the development of intercultural competences is ready for use, and should be used in other European pedagogical environments as an added value for the teaching profession. We have reached several hundred practitioners as active multipliers and feed backers in the participating countries and exchanged best practice models with the help of personal and professional assessment of the tools by the external consultant and the external evaluation (see their final reports on the homepage). In this sense the workplan of TICKLE, contractually signed with the EACEA in Bruxelles 2007 has been accurately fulfilled.
2. PROJECT APPROACH
The TICKLE project has tried to give teacher Trainers, teacher trainees and teachers a new orientation - acceptance and the mutual understanding of cultural diversities. We believe that “Getting along with it” is not enough: Teachers in cultural diverted classrooms need coping mechanisms, which means, that they must deve-lop actively formed or shaped processes of cultural understanding before they can think of having “integrated Classrooms.
The developmental approach of Milton Bennett who stretches along 5 phases of acting as a prerequisite of a successful integration process in given communities:
1. Denial;
2. Defence;
3. Minimisation;
4. Acceptance;
5. Adaptation and finally
6. Integration,
was in the beginning of the Tickle process very helpful. In the midterm of the project, the range of Bennetts ap-proach was not helpful anymore: Of course we could identify on the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity the state of the art in the participating countries (let us frankly say, that for example Hungary and Estonia is more in a situation of Denial, and Defence, France more in a state of Minimisation, Germany, Netherlands and Sweden more in an acceptance and adaptation process, but for the creation of tools, that can give answers to the different settings in each country, the DMIS scale is too roughly shaped to work along. One of the main areas, where the tools were in-tended to be used, was the process in the different participating teacher training ins-titutions: Development, monitoring and successfull implementation have their own settings also and combined with the different setting in the country the Tickle groups were very busy to distinguish between realistic and unrealistic efforts. The tools could not even matched to the totality of different classrooms and their several actors like pupils and their families, the teachers, which teach cultural diverse young people, the staff, the school management and some more. We have therefore been concentrating on the reachable area of our main actors: Teachers, teacher trainees and teacher trainers. The TICKLE project keystones – now to be found in the ready to use toolbox - are intended to reach the teachers personality. The distribution of “skills” for the teaching profession still depends to a large extent on initial and in-service teacher education. But skills or subject knowledge is not enough for a future teacher. He must adjust his teaching to individual student needs, but also taking a tough stance on minority rights, on religious beliefs, on antiracist declarations and attitudes, on the different cultural backgrounds students. How can all teachers – and not just the most motivated – be encouraged to challenge such questions, which arise daily in each classroom – far from subject-matter content? One of the new roles – all the national Tickle member groups found this very important is the need for competence clarity in dealing with diversity in today’s classrooms. The precondition of understanding values and belief systems of students from different social, cultural or religious back-grounds is at first hand the reflection of one’s own value and belief system. This raised the question of methodology – are we or others allowed to experiment with others – e. G. Teacher trainees “Self”? Every new teacher entering the profession nowadays should be provided with tools that create a deeper understanding of his own personal motivation entering the profession, a deep reflection about his own personal competences, his own value and belief system. These aspects of good teaching, especially dealing with issues like attitudes, behaviour, value clarity and respect are competences that lie far beyond the knowledge of subjects. Attitudes of teachers or teacher trainees towards intercultural dialogue can seldom be taught. They cannot be “downsized” to “ethical subjects” in the university or the school curriculum. They form part of a process, which can deeply influence the future of young students and can contribute to the upbringing of a sense of Eu-ropean citizenship. The only way of implementing the training of these competences in different European teacher training systems is: Do it! That is why we have plan-ned the training units. They differ from partner country to partner country, but this acceptance of a variety of approaches and build ups of intercultural competences in the participating countries was also one of our aims. Preconditions in the partner countries were predictably too different to get one shape of tools. That’s why also the target groups differed: The teacher education systems in the six countries have some similarities, but some fundamental differences also (see homepage Overview on teacher education systems) Due to the problem description in each country target groups were finally the teacher trainers, the teacher trainees or the mentors in teacher practice schools (or all of them). As one result of our previous Comenius 2. 1. project APT from 2003 – 2006 the Offenburg coordination unit of Tickle knew for sure, that TICKLE tools cannot be exported or imported like economic goods. But we have developed tools, based on the situations, problems and educational background of the participating countries, presented them to teacher trainers, teacher trainees and teachers as training units during our project meetings and then discussed, whether they could be implemented in the various teacher education systems in the participating countries or not. The national project outcomes and results in the various differ on one hand and show implementation possibilities on the other hands. Some examples
Estonia, Tallinn:
• “We built a team of teacher educators for creating a concept of intercultural competences in pre-service teacher training in Tallinn University
• We investigated what the term multicultural learning environment mean in Es-tonian schools and for students in University (results presented on Estonian workshop in Arnhem)
• We implemented the structured interview and the feedback sessions
1. To give students the opportunity to reflect on their understanding of the teaching profession in the modern world, including understanding of and managing on multicultural learning environment.
2. To give students feedback about their reflection in order to support their understanding about teacher profession in multicultural context.
3. To strengthen student teachers and teachers professional self-confidence and self-awareness and hence to reinforce their personal attitudes to their own cultural identity and to professional responsibilities, including responsibility of creating supportive intercultural learning environment for every pupil.
At autumn 2009 the interviews and feedback sessions are implemented as regular activity into TLU students consultation system.
• We know more about methods and activities to teach and learn about intercultural competences
• We implemented several methods and activities into the teacher training courses in order to evaluate their efficiency
• Our students use methods from TICKLE “toolbox” in their pedagogical prac-tice”
(from the Final Report, Estonia)
Hungary: Eger
“The group has developed an MA course in Multicultural Education. We plan to start this course in the near future, and use several of the TICKLE tools in the course. We also plan to give more emphasize to intercultural issues in teacher training and in-sercice training, and use the approaches of the TICKLE group. We also plan to go on with our developing work on our own and keeping con-tacts with TICKLE partners”.
(from the Final Report, Hungary Eger)
Netherlands, Arnhem:
• “We have transferred the difficulties on going on Camp for Islam students in possibilities and new chances to participate intercultural student group inter-com(intercultural communication)
• We are part of the workgroup dealing with diversity and we have started an intercul-tural student group ‘intercom’ (intercultural communication)
• Interculturality has become one of the core issues on the agenda of our insti-tute
• The theory of the ABCD crown has become our leading concept
• We have constructed a diversity of tools regarding the concept of the ABCD-Crown‘. Autobiography’, ‘Biography’ , ‘Conflicts’ and ‘Dialogue’.
• We have constructed an intercultural program based on the theory of the ABCD crown and with the intention on in a creasing intercultural competen-cy
• We have integrated interculturality in world citizenship and have integrated interculturality, including world citizenship, in our curriculum (major).
• We have constructed an intercultural workbook, based on the theory of the ABCD crown, for students and this handbook will be published .
• We are constructing an intercultural program for our minor courses”
(from the Final Report, Netherlands)
France, IUFM Guebwiller- since 1. 1. 09 University of Strasbourg:
“The university of Strasbourg - and our ‘integrated teacher training centre’ IUFM – are autonomous state institutions.
The teaching and training courses are evaluated every four years when the diplo-mas are approved.
Our estimation of the number of persons that have gone through a training course in the teacher training centre:
- Awareness campaign of the teacher trainees: 600.
- Awareness campaign of the teacher trainers: 70.
- A teacher trainer meeting is programmed for the end of October for seven teacher training centre from the north-east of France: an information will be given to the 80 attending teacher trainers.
- Students of the university of Haute-Alsace (in Mulhouse): 200.
The effects of our work can only be evaluated by the observation of real teaching practices in the classes of our teacher trainees in the next years.”
(from the Final Report, France)
Sweden, Lulea:
“Intercultural competence: The Project broke new grounds in bringing together teacher educators and academics, to identify good practice, obstacles and to suggest ways to overcome these. The meetings during the project were excellent ways to meet the culture in each country and to bring together staff and some students in participating institutions. This way presented a range of challenges, which are noted and valued. The crucial recommendations arising from the project are the need for universities to maintain active contact within this area, to work more closely promot-ing and developing teacher education programs and to recognise the need for clos-er co-operation with professional bodies. Especially for Luleå University these areas as outcomes and results were important to develop:
- Development of a profile “ Diversity in Education” for teacher education pro-grams.
- Seminars concerning “ Teachers intercultural competence “ for teacher trainees has been and are conducted in a continuation during the period
- A graduate course “ Leadership in a multicultural school” has been developed
- Logbooks have been introduced in courses in this area
- Reflective dialogues in form of interview
- Articles and method “ Culture based school curricula”
- Teacher trainees have a choice to work with degree projects in the area
- Workshops for in-service training of teachers is on the agenda and has started.
Teacher training programs and the profile area Diversity in Education , at Luleå Uni-versity has started and is formulated in strategic texts.
The areas and arenas of awareness on personal and environmental levels, attitudes in constructing self-concept and enlightening self-concept, knowledge of own cul-ture and other cultures and skills methodical in teaching behaviour, curriculum de-velopment and in subject level are going on”.
(from the Final Report, Sweden)
Germany, Offenburg:
“ Based on the competences needed for teacher-trainees teaching in intercultural classrooms we developed different tools concerning the awareness, attitudes, knowledge and skills. That means that the person, the environment, the self-concept, other cultures, the own culture, the teaching behaviour and the curriculum with the subject matters are part of the education of the teacher-trainees. We put our plans for the future into reality. We have installed an intercultural day for all teacher trainees (140 persons) every course. We decided to transfer all the experience and knew knowledge from the TICKLE-Project into our system. We installed a TICKLE- Pedagogic-Group, February 2008. This group with 18 teacher trainees get a special education with the focus of intercultural competence. They will be the first teacher trainees, who have a competent and fundamental training in intercultural issues. This is a huge step forward, which was not intended, when we started the Tickle Project. We are very proud to have this implementation in our teacher seminar and hopefully all the other federal state Teacher seminars will follow, so that all teacher training institutions are enriched by the effects of Tickle”.
(from the Final Report, Germany)
Hungary, Györ:
“Our team worked out three new tools in the mentioned period. Two of our new tools are suitable to collect and survey information about attitudes and prejudices against different social and ethnic groups among teachers and teacher trainees. Our aim was to develop a series of questionnaires that must be useful for questioning prac-ticing teachers, teacher trainees and pupils/students.
Besides we realised that there was a hiatus on the field of “Knowledge” and we worked out a game which is suitable to get a wide range of information about other cultures and learn about our cultures as well. We have started to organize a compe-tition at our university’s training school. We use our new tool, the Funny Intercultural Game for that. We try to develop it at the level of our home town, Györ.
( From the Final report, Hungary, Györ)
To summarize these findings:
It is in John Dewey´s sense: Learning by doing – a Self experiment – which can lead to intercultural formats, that can be helpful for intercultural teaching and learning in classrooms. We do not believe in standardisation of intercultural competences: Without an adjustment to the historical, political, social and cultural background of the given school system and the teacher education system in the partner countries – our training units are useless and will not be used by practitioners. We are aware, that cultural diversities differ, but we believe, that TICKLE is a first attempt for an widespread scenery of possible approaches to Intercultural Competences as Keystone to Learning in Europe, which can open new perspectives on future teach-er training as a long term benefit. A short term benefit could be changes in the initial teacher training systems in the partner countries or the implementation of extra courses or curriculum changes for future teachers.
3. PROJECT OUTCOMES & RESULTS
All results and product outcomes are documentated on the Tickle homepage (www.tickle-project.eu). The overview shows how the the project outcomes and results developed from meeting to meeting and were finalized on the sunset meeting in Offenburg September 2009. The national Tickle teams and the Executive Committe of Tickle had agreed on their meeting in Györ, December 2008, to follow the path, already taken in the meetings and one day conferences in Arnhem, Tallinn and Eger. We had identified 6 different Keystones 1-6 so far:
The Györ agreement between the partners was, that the toolbox will present 4 major areas of concern towards building up intercultural competences unter the umbrella of Milton Bennetts developmental model of intercultural sensitivity.
Abb. 3: Areas of Concern Intercultural Competences
We have identified these areas as: Awareness – Attitudes – adding knowledge by action – skills, methodological proficiency. Each area is now covered by several tools, dealing with one or two of the following areas of concern:
The file cards:
One of the main tasks in the second half oft he project life span was the homo-genization of the file card and the structure and shape of the tool box. Having identi-fied the 6 keystones and the 4 areas of concern we had to find a common structure for the toolbox. The most ideal approach for the toolbox would have been, that each partner is obliged to develop at least one tool for each keystone area and each area of concern, so forming a common shape of 42 tools from the seven partners. But this approach was too idealistic: Partners cannot develop tools which do not fit into their national and cultural setting. We could not force partners to develop tools, which we-re of no use for them. Let us simplify that problem in looking tot wo different countries: Sweden and France. In Sweden, the Lulea partners developed a whole range of tools dealing with changes of the curriculum (Keystone areas 5+6) ; in France not one of these tools was developed; the Partner from Guebwiller concentrated on entrance Interviews and intercultural ideas for lecturers (Keystone areas 1+2 ). Similiar differences can be found between tools developed in Germany and Netherlands (a broad range including most of all keystone areas) compared to the concentration of the hungarian partners from Györ and Eger on Keystone areas 1+2 but seldom on areas 5+6. The reason is obviously caused by different possibilities to influence the given structures: In Sweden, the curriculum is very much decentralised, given into the hands of the teacher training institutions, in France the curriculum is very strongly centralised and cannot be influenced or even changed very slightly. Concerning differences between the approaches of Netherlands and Germany in relation to Hungary the reason appears to be different: Here the role of a long history dealing with intercultural issues , immigration and migration is important, while the problem in Hungary just exists about 15 years only. Compared to what we could learn about the treatment of the Roma minority in Hungary it would have been impossible, to tackle the same problem in Germany or the Netherlands with racist, even fascist approaches, This may be the reason why the hungarian partners not only concentrated in their tools on mutual understanding of the Roma minority problems, by raising awareness of this background for their students. The question of „integration“ cannot be forced, if their is no awareness of differences at all.
To summarize:
The Tickle partners have developed their fields of concern by now many different approaches, which are listed underneath. The descriptions can be found un-derneath and are ducumented under the topic „Toolbox“ on the homepage. The toolbox itself is divided in two parts: A file card description of the tool and a link with the materials, which are provided for better use. One of the file cards from the Netherlands may serve as an example:
FILE CARD for TICKLE Tool
Name of the tool
The culture game (Discover the rules of the culture)
Links to the keystones
Awareness
Aim of tool/ Brief overall description
By playing the culture game the participants realize the powerful effects that culture plays in every person's life and the impact it can have. It can be a start to motivate participants to rethink their behavior and attitude toward others. They feel the alienation and confusion that comes from being different. This culture game shakes partic-ipants out of thinking in stereotypes of anyone who is different.
Main methods
Group work. Number of participants at least 6 persons.
Description of the process and the possible stepping stones
A) A minority of students is sent out of the room. They discuss their strategy how to discover the rules of the other culture
B) The majority thinks of a new culture with accompanying rules. They just an-swer the questions with yes or no. Suggestions for rules:
1. You respond to the questions asked in a friendly way with a smiling face al-ways with ‘yes’. Questions asked in a unfriendly or serious way with a seri-ous face are always responded with ‘no’.
2. You are only allowed to answer questions from persons of your own gender.
3. If somebody touches you just shout and don’t answer the question.
4. You give the opposite answer to the question, when you mean yes you say no.
5. People can only ask you questions when your arms are crossed.
6. You must blink your eyes three times before answering.
7. …..
C) When the students who are sent out of the room, have entered the room again, they are told that their questions are just answered by a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’.
While discovering the rules of the new culture they discuss loud about their
experiences.
D) Sharing the experiences together.
Material/Equipment
A room with chairs
References
• Abram, I (2001): The ABCD of classroom education; Projectgroep ICO, Den Bosch (link)
Institution: HAN university, Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen, Pabo Arnhem
Author: Henk Boer; Gerbert Sipman; Bernadet Tijnagel
It was one oft he main tasks in between the meeting in Györ (December 2008) and the sunset meeting in Offenburg (September 2009) to agree on this structure.
The Keystone area 1 and 2:
The 4 areas of concern in combination with the 6 keystone areas themselves include different tools, developed from different partners in the project. To give an example: Keystone 1 deals with the teacher trainee as a person. Without any knowledge about one´s own beliefs, values, customs, cultural background etc. it is impossible to raise awareness for another person in another intercultural context. The tools concerning „The intercultural person“ deal with the teacher trainee as a person, combined with the question of his/her cultural setting, which is given. Main aim was to raise awareness for him/herself - and for his sourrounding cultural setting. The Keystone area 1 “The intercultural person” includes several kind of Interviews and questionnaires, which deal with the trainee as a person – e. g. when he starts his studies or traineeship. It is impossible to use the same kind of interviews and questionnaires for all seven partner countries, because cultural settings and stages of development towards interculturality differ very much. That is why, key-stone 1 as a product includes different Questionnaires, outlines and questions of entrance interviews, face to face interviews, play cards etc. from Hungary, Germany, Netherlands, Estonia….
The Keystones area 3
are a close follow up of the awareness raising process. Dealing with attitudes of a person is a much more complicated and painful process, because the self concept must be deconstructed, before you can reconstruct it on a new level. Here it is obvious, that tools are much harder to construct, test and use. We have in the end only a few already tested and usable tools from the Netherlands and Germany. This is not surprisingly: In some other countries it has no longstanding tradition to deal with others attitudes, because they are „private“. But a professional teacher is not a private person! It will be very important, to follow how many of these tools come inton use in countries without these background.
Overview on developed tools after the Guebwiller meeting (February 2009)
Keystone area 4
The keystone area 4 uses the fact, that under certain circumstances attitudes shift faster than in a given surrounding. This is what we understand by the term adding knowledge by action. Someone, who has the opportunity to experience other cul-tures is vice versa more open for his own cultures. These tools are descriptive and use best practice models of trainee exchanges for some period of time in other school systems. Here the French and german partners gave two impressive exam-ples, which are worth noticing. In joint groups german and French trainees from both teacher training institutes went together with their teacher trainers to exchange courses with the University of British Columbia in Vancouver (Canada) and with the Oulu university in Finland. The Netherland partner, using these examples of real interculturality took the same chances with their international classes exploring possibilities of exchanges in Turkey. These tools should be extended, because they have many contributuions to give, if they are organised on a be or three level state agreement between universities or ministries of education. Guebwiller and Offen-burg also made way in a joint approach, how a teacher can get two teaching certifi-cates, one for the german and one for the french school system.
Keystones area 5
Thesee tools deal with the situations in classrooms. Here the partners have already good examples of videos dealing with difficult intercultural questions in classroooms and with intercultural conflicts. These tools are trainings unit for trainees and the toolbox provides the materials to deal with.
Keystone area 6
Is dealing with structural changes in schools. The most work has been done in this field by study units, articles and materials from Sweden, where the Sami schools are going to change curriculum matters, to reimplement their own indigenous culture, who was „colonzied“ by the swedish settlers. A bit of a similiar approach is the alsatian question in France, but there are many political backgrounds to mind. Same efforts are done with approaches in Estonia, the colleagues there have just started to raise questions. The tools under the umbrella of the keystones and the areas of main concern are now completed and present on the homepage of Tickle.
The overview shows, what the Tickle partners were able to develop.
Overview on tools from PABO Netherlands (8 tools and connected links)
Overview on tools from the german Partner, Seminar Offenburg (9 tools and 12 links)
Overview on tools from Tallinn University Estonia (6 tools and 1 Link)
Overview on Esterhazy Caroly College tools – Eger, Hungary (6 tools and 6 links)
Overview on University of West Hungary – Györ tools (4 tools and 4 links)
Overview on Swedish tools from Lulea Technical University (6 tools, 1 link)
Overview on IUFM Guebwiller – France tools (6 Tools and 1 Link)
The developed overall 45 TICKLE tools and its attachments with the links have all been tested beforehand from the national Tickle teams in their local settings with trainee groups and were then presented on the one day conferences in Arnhem, Tallinn and Eger. They were finally evaluated by the overall assembly of national Tickle team members, who attended the project meetings, with the perspective, how they could be used as a platform for the national Teacher Education Institutions and on an overall level of “European” tools for all Teacher Educators and Trainers. By now we are quite sure, that in the end of the project we have a new and promising battery of tools for intercultural competences in teacher education. The variety within the keystone areas is huge. Even if the borders between the areas of concern cannot clearly be cut in matching with the developed tool, an overview on just one area of concern shows, how the seven partners built a rich wall of boxes, that can be used for different offers.
Overview on developed tools by partners concerning keystone areas 1+2 : 25 tools, who can help to raise awareness and examines the teacher (person) in its cultural setting.
4. PARTNERSHIPS
Quite a lot of partnerships on national and international has been developed and installed during the (short) life span of the Tickle project. Final reports of partners give the following overview:
1. Tallinn, Estonia
“Department of Teacher Education, Center of Pedagogical Practice and Department of Primary Education of Tallinn University are working on this project.
Expertise of Ministry of Education and Science and the National Center of Lan-guage Immersion is involved.
Students of Tallinn University involved in TICKLE project are practicing in 25 schools and kindergartens in Tallinn.”
2. Arnhem Netherlands
• “We have used the possibility to become real life European partners
• Our exchange meetings give us the opportunity to introduce and justice our tools and to receive feed back
• Our colleagues have try-outs with our tools and we have try-outs with the tools of our colleagues
• We integrate the tools of our partners in our intercultural program
• We get to know and are able to experience the intercultural reality in our part-ner countries. So we broaden our own intercultural horizon. These experiences also become part of our world and we can bring over these experiences to our students.
• We use the same file cards which help us to construct our tools as a whole, the TICKLE TOOLBOX
• We constructed a theoretical TICKLE base which describes our ‘unity in diversity’ because of the theory of Ecological and the Narrative approach.”
3. Lulea Sweden
Partnerships in a Nordic perspectives has been developed with
- Oulo University, - “ Gender, power and intercultural relations” Professor Vap-pu Sunnari
- Sámi university college in Kautokeino, Norway Professor Vuokko Hirvonen, Assistant professor Asta Balto
- Tromsö University , Dr Jorun Höjer
- Malmö University, Dr Laid Boukaz
- Umeå University, Dr Margaretha Kristoffersson
- Södertörn, Stockholm, Dr Maria.Borgström. and lecturer Ana Gravitz.
4. Offenburg Germany
“We have a very intensive exchange with our students and trainees via the possibil-ity for teacher trainees, to become a teacher in France and in Germany in close col-laboration between Offenburg and IUFM Guebwiller. (See the explanation of this approach in the TICKLE Toolbox). For the future we plan a corporately exchange with finnish teacher trainees from Oulou University Finland – a connection based on strong ties of the French Ticklers in Guebwiller.
Netherlands – PABO Arnhem
We want to install a partnership between our two TICKLE institutions PABO Arnhem and Offenburg. This is an agreement between the heads of departments.
Sweden
The Swedish team has invited us to visit their education system and to give some Inputs about our systems and for working-processes.
Germany
Via the Network “German multilaterial Comenius projects” we have established very good connections to various Universities of Education and teacher Training insti-tutes in other federal states. This network helped us a lot to disseminate our activi-ties nationwide. We also established a close link to the only existing federal office for migration and refugees in Nürnberg. One of the members of the Federal Office was invited as a keynote speaker on the sunset meeting in Offenburg September 2009.
Tickle gave also way for many local and regional partnerships with institutions, deal-ing with intercultural issues.”
5. Guebwiller France
“We have established partnerships mostly with the German colleagues for the fol-lowing projects:
- Integrated training course: the training takes place in France and in Germany for a group of German and French students and teacher trainees.
- International mobility: project to build groups of German and French trainees who are going abroad to study together a European or another educational system.
- Observation of welcoming plans for young children: comparison between the French ‘école maternelle’ (motherly school) and the German Kindergarten.
A partnership has also be established with the Dutch colleagues to be able to use a game this team did develop and presented to all the Tickle members.
This role-play has been adapted in France for using it also with students in primary schools”.
6. Györ – Hungary
“We have built out relations to ethnically mixed primary schools in Györ (Eötvös József Primary School and Szabadhegyi Educational Centre) where we can test the tools with teachers and classes. Our university has other two pedagogical faculties in Sopron and Szombathely. We have involved them in our work and have estab-lished a workshop called Intercultural Education which is becoming very popular.
We were in a lucky situation to have another participating team from Hungary, from Eger. During the project we have established very good professional and personal relationships with that team and we have decided to set up an institutional coopera-tion in the future”.
7. Eger Hungary
“The group is working together with the film studio of the Eszterházy Károly College (EKF), when finding milieus, stories and people to produce teaching material for discussion, reflection and also for transmitting knowledge. The group is also collaborating with colleagues at the college and at secondary schools to develop teaching material, methods and modules in intercultural education in teacher training. We have developed a professional co-operation with Budapest University (ELTE) in the field of multicultural education”.
8. Other partners
The TICKLE project is a member of the Learning Teacher Network - a European network of organisations in the field of Teacher Education, resulting from a former Comenius 2.1 network. The project members attended the yearly conferences, wrote articles in the "Learning Teacher Journal" and disseminated actively the TICKLE results e. g. on the annual LTN Conference in Ljubljana. Other networks we are in contact with is the Learning Migration Network, whose main objective is to establish a www-supported framework for effective collaboration between different types of institutions in the field of Migration and Intercultural Relations. The aim of the network will be to enhance today's education in migration studies and intercultural education. Coordinating institution is the University of Stavanger (Norway).
The Mentor Migration Network Nightingale
The Mentor Migration Network Nightingale deals with the training of students as mentors for migrant children in Europe. The model recruits children 8-12 years with immigrant background. The aim of the Nightingale model is to give the child a positi-ve role model through a personal relationship and thereby strengthen the child's confidence in its own potentials and abilities. For the student this relationship offers a unique understanding of social and ethnic diversity.Nightingale - mutual benefit to both child and mentor, an experience and knowledge for life. The german Tickle team used this connections for the exchange with some estonian (german) teachers who taught in some schools for up to four weeks and also for the ETO project.
A similiar approach is used in our collaboration with the INNOCENT – Project - INtegratioN of socially excluded and migrant workers' Children into Education, through iNTercultural competence" - . We shared varied exchanges in the development of training courses for teachers either in their initial training or in service. The result of cooperation were closer links between teachers, who have to manage intercultural conflicts at school, discussion groups to eliminate prejudices and create a multicultural spirit amongst teachers, and written statements to propose and disseminate pedagogic strategies and methodologies to promote integration and to encourage mobility of teachers.
Another main achievement was the installation of the german multilateral Comenius projects network, which included all german multilateral projects and networks from the submission 2007 onward. In the meantime, the network has been extended to MLP-projects from the submissions 2008 andf 2009. This initiative was very sucess-full, to convince the german national agency (PAD Bonn) to host two major national conferences, who presented the work of the network members. The network is a stronghold of a somehow missing link to other LLP –projects and a dissemination tool which cannot be underestimated.This cooperation allows the members to com-municate on a professional level and to deal with all questions arising from the LLP platform. It is also meant to help disseminate new ideas and to present the participating projects as a network. Among others, it is the PAD (the Educational Exchange Service set up by the German Conference of Ministers of Culture and Education) to promote and to support this initiative.
5. PLANS FOR THE FUTURE
In our progress report we looked forward to have 4 more project meetings and one day conferences : - in Györ in December 2008 ; - in Guebwiller, France in March 2009 ; - in Lulea, Sweden in June 2009 and a sunset meeting combined with an international symposion on the results of Tickle and the presentation of the toolbox in September 2009 in Offenburg. All this happened in 2009 except the symposium on the results in Offenburg. Here we became the clear victims of the cut down of project work from three years to two years. Having had nearly every second or third month a national meeting all over Europe, it was impossible to save a lot of time for the preparation of an international symposium. In this sense we still have plans to go forward with our Tickle project, even outside the eligibility period of the project. The national TICKLE teams are very homogenous groups (from every country were constantly the same three to four persons attached), so that the level of personal understanding and working together was and is very high. There is very little change of people in the project and we think, that this can be kept as it is. A larger group of more than 25 people is not efficient enough to deal with. The figures of three persons per partner we have chosen was a right decision. The role of the external consultant was and is very helpful, because he can deal with critical incidents, who naturally arise in intercultural projects in the gegraphic and intercultural span from the polar circle to the Danube river. The same can be said to the role of the external evaluators, who visited visit all projects for two or three days and had an insight view in the local, regional situation. The partly attendance visits of the finnish evaluators in Tallinn, in Eger and in Lulea were very much hightlighted by the teams and draw especially attention of the own staff, which gave the small TICKLE groups a great internal push for prestige in their institutions too.
6.CONTRIBUTION TO EU POLICIES
TICKLE tried to develop knowledge, understanding and build up of intercultural competences among the educational staff about the diversity of European cultures, languages and its values by enhancing the quality and European dimension of teacher training; this can lead to improvements in pedagogical approaches and in-tercultural methodology, which will create necessary competences for teacher trainers and teacher trainees, to deal with cultural diversity in classrooms and schools. The methodological and didactical keystones, developed in partner countries and tested and feedbacked in training units in another country contribute to the awareness and needs for intercultural competences of the teaching staff, which supports the combat against racism and xenophobia in school education and helps to enlarge a climate in classrooms, which is necessary to start intercultural dialogues and supports intercultural education. We tried to improve teacher education systems through the transfer of innovation and good practice; the training units with the presentation of methodological and didactical keystones for teacher trainers, teacher trainees and teachers included project achievements from our recently finished Comenius 2. 1. project “Appraisal of Potential for Teaching” with six participating countries as a kind of promoting and disseminating educational best practices; but it also includes newly developed keystones by the Tickle Partners. In the end this approach leads to the development of new teacher training courses or course contents for teacher trainers or teacher trainees or both in the participating countries as a val-orisation and dissemination result. A close look on the topic of Dissemination and valorisation on the Tickle homepage shows some of the impact, we had on influencing European teacher education:
Estonia
EECER Conference “From Teaching to Learning” on 10–12 September 2008 in Gothenburg, Sweden by Inge Timoštšuk and Mai Normak (title of the presenta-tion: “Developing Support Systems to Promote Student Teacher Professiona-lism”
»Presentation: Developing support systems
Sweden
World Indigenious Peoples Education Conference 2008. Melbourne, Australia
»Paper of swedish Tickle group presented at Reykjavik Conference
Reykjavik Northern Education Conference 2008
Oulu Conference December 2008
Netherlands
International week on early childhood education - windows to the world-Oslo University
Dissemination in Mugla, Turkey
Minor: ‘Tomorrow’s Education Today’ (TET-course)
ETEN Annual conference 2009 April 23rd - 26th 2009, Ege University, Izmir in Turkey.
Joint dissemination activity
Workshop Presentation of Irene Litterst – Lehmann (TICKLE Offenburg/Germany) and Henk Boer (TICKLE Arnhem/ Netherlands on National Conference of the german LLP)
Agency (PAD, Bonn) „Innovation und Kreativität in Lehrerbildung und Unterricht – Impulse aus Europa“ from May 26./27.2009 in Bonn
Alsace (FRANCE)/Seminar Offenburg (Germany)
Joint Project : « Mobilité courte accompagnée » from february 17th to february 28th 2009 in Vancouver – Canada
France
»Tell me your language - a documentary movie about the TICKLE work in the Alsace
German Federal Office of Migration and Refugees, Nurnberg
Fotodokumentation der Zukunftswerkstatt am 01./02.07.2009 in Nürnberg
Germany
Joint Teacher Exchange Estonia-Offenburg
Federal State Kick off of LLP programme 2008
The benefits of multilateral European projects Valorisation of project results and products in teacher education and teacher training, Stuttgart December 2008
National german LLP Kick off Jena
The benefits of multilateral European projects Valorisation of project results and products in teacher education and teacher training, Stuttgart December 2008
Federal State Conference "Integration through Education December 2009, Schwabenlandhalle Fellbach
E:T:O Project Freiburg
National Conference of German LLP Agency „Interkulturelles Lernen mit COMENIUS“ Fachtagung zur Valorisierung von Projektergebnissen, May 2008 Bensberg
7. Conclusions
In classrooms today, in nearly every country of Europe, multiculturalism is the rule rather than the exception. For teachers, on the other hand, multicultural classrooms are a big challenge, and in a number of countries legislative and special provisions have been installed to meet the pupils’ needs, both with respect to the pupils intercultural background and the teachers capability to handle unknown situations and teaching processes. Without even raising awareness of differences , this job is left undone:
The approaches to difference differ across national borders. In fact it seems that the-re are different ways of dealing with different kinds of socially relevant differences, and there are systematic differences between the countries both in terms of how differences are looked upon and how they are dealt with, in society at large and in school. While we have to enhance celebration of diversity and enhance tolerance and ways of living together in a pluralist society, it does not mean that all differences should be preserved and maintained. We may recognise diversity and treat all kinds of people with respect and dignity, including the poor, those who live in the streets, people who have committed crimes, but simultaneously make efforts to change peoples’ circumstances by fighting poverty, street life and crime. This is a profiled policy in most member states. In fact, many countries feel that society will gain from diversity in terms of exhausting the total range of human talents and creativity in order to bring about development. Diversity in social settings implies the building up of trust, respect and recognition. This requires that teachers get knowledge that may form a basis for understanding diversity and skills that prepare them to deal with and manage socioculturally diverse classrooms. Schools are seen as the ideal public places in which to disseminate democratic ideas and base them in our respective cultures in ways that can enhance or diminish socially created differences. As all children and young people are part of the school system, this makes school an im-portant arena for cultural and social exchange and learning. The school represents a common ground for sharing experiences in dealing with diversity and enhancing the situation of groups that are discriminated against. Furthermore, education is in most countries taken to be the single most important tool to fight inequalities and improve people’s future and standard of living. In a European perspective more emphasis has been placed on how education can be used as a vehicle for change in social practices both inside and outside schools. It will still be a long way to go, until in all 27 member states integrational approaches in education systems will be achieved. Teachers cannot wait until this happens. Especially the young and unexperienced teachers can´t wit. They are faced in their everyday practice with challenges, where help from more experienced teachers and teacher traines is needed. The Tickle project had the opportunity to support this challenge in the last two years and it will be up tot he educational and scientific community, if our work is appreciated or not. We are sure, that a „not“ is rather impossible.