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A European Approach - TICKLE

Bernd Hainmüller

The problem......


The enlargement of the European Union, coupled with increasing mobility linked to the common market, new and old migration flows, the new trade ties with the rest of the world, the education, leisure and globalisation in general and finally the growing stream of war refugees, have led to increased contacts between cultures, religions, ethnic groups and languages. Against this backdrop and in the context of an increasingly multicultural European Union, the development of intercultural competences and the promotion of intercultural dialogue is fundamental. Intercultural dialogue contributes to a number of strategic priorities of the European Union, such as respecting and promoting cultural diversity; favouring the European Union’s commitment to solidarity, social justice and reinforced cohesion; allowing the European Union to make its voice heard and realizing new efficient partnership with neighbouring countries, Over the years, intercultural dialogue has become an important element of community action. Indeed, the European Union has for many years encouraged intercultural dialogue –inside and outside the European Union- through various programmes and initiatives. However, it appears necessary today to respond to the need for a deeper and more structured dialogue of cultures, especially in those areas, were „cultures have to meet“ by national rules and regulations: The classrooms in Europe. Without a response of the education systems to the described changes, intercultural dialogue is not possible and a lasting and visible priority for the development of european citizenship would fail. There is a growing thorn of “strangeness” in European classrooms, which could be named as intercultural diversities: "We" and "They". In most of the European schools there are raising figures of multicultural classes, in which teachers have to teach: Polish children in England, Latvian or Lithuanian children in finnish schools, Czech children in hungarian schools, slovak children in Austrian schools, romanian children in german schools etc. These future european citizens are not strangers: They and their families are citizens of the European Union. They move to other European countries for different reasons: better payed work, better working conditions or the chance of getting a job instead of unemployment in the homeland. This "inner" european scenario in classrooms is accomplished by a large group of children from, whose parents have escaped the civic wars in Syria, the Near East or post soviet countries. The latter were lucky to stay alive in a hostile world and furthermore many school children are traumatised, they have pictures in mind, which most of us would not like to see neither our children. To realise this objective and to reinforce Community action, a first step would be to identify, promote and exchange experiences and best practices that would illustrate the possibility, value and efficiency of intercultural dialogue. 

What is TICKLE? (Teachers Intercultural Competences for Learning in Europe) 

Abb. 1:  TICKLE LOGO

The TICKLE project aimed to develop from 2007 - 2009 tools that can help to raise intercultural competences of teacher trainees, teacher trainers and teachers. Seven European teacher training institutions work together in the field of interculturality in European class-rooms. We believe, that not many teachers in European classrooms are prepared for the challenge of inter-cultural issues in schools, which arise from the expanded European Union partner countries and their diverse histories, cultures, habits, attitudes and values. 

Who is it for?

The TICKLE project was designed by teacher trainers for future teachers, who have to face many intercultural challenges in the classrooms, when they start teaching. They must be prepared – this includes getting a closer view on each pupils own intercultural under-standing as a prerequisite of awareness for other cultures in classrooms. The toolbox with practical materials and training units are geared to the needs of the classroom teachers, but also teacher trainers, support staff and also resource centre staff may find them useful too! It provides both practical support for teachers who want a 'hands on experience' and also help and information for teachers who just want to find out about intercultural competences.

Why TICKLE?

Due to changing labour markets and expanding economy many families with their children move to other European countries. They are no refugees or migrants, but european citizens under the European Union Charter. They look for a better living, but not necessarily for integration in the host countries. The richness of their home cultures and value structures can be used to create a richer learning environments in schools, if teachers know, how to deal with them. The refugees and migrants have other priorities: They try to save their culture, which could not survive in their home countries (e. g. religious minorities, language minorities ) 

Can teachers solve the problems of intercultural diversity?

In all areas of education systems we can identify expanding figures of cultural misunderstandings, disrespect or value related questions between different groups. Blaming the others, „not being like us“ is not a good concept for the European future. The creation of tools, that can deal with diversities in classrooms is a need for the development of high quality content in schools. It is essential, that the potential of intercultural competences must be raised in a way, that stimulates and fosters Life Long Learning. It is important to train future teachers how to become aware of their own inner beliefs and values towards interculturality and to generate learning materials that can support this process. The European Commission has proposed that 2008 be declared the year of Intercultural Dialogue. We see our training units during the project meetings, where the partners present developed keystone tools for intercultural competences of teachers as a part of the overall proposed Intercultural Dialogue, that will complement existing community programs and raise awareness of teacher trainers, teacher trainees and teachers as to the importance of intercultural dialogue. The Tickle project aims to contribute to this process and also tries to initiate this process of valorisation via projects supported by previous and future Comenius programs and Comenius networks.

1. Aims

The project aims to develop, test and disseminate didactical tools for several purposes.

a) First step is the identification of areas and contexts, in which cultural diversity is of manifest relevance for the teaching and learning processes in schools and classrooms. Each partner of TICKLE must collect data and formulate a panorama of cultural diversity issues in his home country, concerning schools and classrooms.

b) Second step is the raising of awareness of cultural diversity by professionals in teacher education and training, who do or did not have to deal with that question yet. We would like to make the professional community aware, that cultural diversity is not threatening, but supporting pathways to European citizenship as one of the main future issues in a wider European horizon.

3. Third step is the building up of intercultural competences and attitudes, that could be implemented into the general profile of the european teach-ing profession. We use examples of best practice in schools and classrooms as a support for the professional community and for the integration of intercultural competences as a generic part of the teaching profession. This will be achieved through the adaptation of already developed teaching methodologies from previous EU and Comenius 2. 1. projects, through newly developed training units, which are based on experiences of everyday teaching in multicultural cultural and cultural divers classrooms. By developing these keystones of intercultural competences we try to expand the range of methodology in this area of teaching and learning by using synergies effects, especially with the Comenius school exchange programme, the Comenius networks and the transversal projects.

2. Activities

The main activities of the project in the seven countries will be to create keystones of training units dealing with the questions, mentioned above. The keystones then will be tested and feedbacked in another cultural and pedagogical environment through one-day training units, which are offered in the host countries of the partners during the project meetings. By doing so, we will create more than 42 “real life laboratories” , to enhance the methodology of intercultural competencies. We’ll carry out afterwards the evaluation of the keystones, analyse and change them, if necessary. This will also contribute to theory building in interculturality. Having seven project meetings in six countries with an average attendance of 100 teacher trainers, teacher trainees and teachers each time will create significant and immediate dissemination and valorisation effects in each host countries.

3. Project Outputs:

- 42 training units, which will form a tool box, which can be used in other European pedagogical environments as an added value for the teaching profession.

- We will reach several hundred practitioners as active multipliers in the teaching profession of the participating countries and exchange best practice models.

- Project website open to the public and with download areas of training units.

Teachers all over in Europe are concerned about the new situation and have little orientation what to do. Deconstruction of orientation is a painful process. It raises fear. Teachers have to learn, that fear is always a companion of “not knowing”. The TICKLE project tries to give them a new orientation - acceptance and the mutual understanding of cultural diversities. We believe that “Getting along with it” is not enough: We need coping mechanisms, which means we must develop actively formed or shaped processes of cultural understanding before we can even think of integration.
The developmental approach of Milton Bennett 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.
One of the main areas, where this process must be developed, monitored and successfully implemented are classrooms and several actors are needed: Pupils and their families, the teachers, which teach cultural diverse young people, the staff, the school management and some more. We shall concentrate on the main actors: Teachers, teacher trainees and teacher trainers. The TICKLE project keystones 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 needed is 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 raises the question of methodology – are you or others allowed to experiment with your 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 intercul-tural 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 European 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 planned the training units. They will differ from partner country to partner country, but this acceptance of a variety of approaches and build ups of intercultur-al competences in the participating countries is our aim. That’s why also the target groups will differ: Due to the problem description in each country target groups will be the teacher trainers, the teacher trainees or the mentors in teacher practice schools (or all of them). TICKLE does not wants to export or import tools. But we can develop tools, based on the situations, problems and educational background of the participating countries, pre-sent them to teacher trainers, teacher trainees and teachers as training units during our project meetings and then discuss, whether they can be implemented in the various teacher education systems in the participating countries or not. 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. Due to the short time for an application of LLP we could not include a wider variety of partner countries like Turkey, Romania or Poland. 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 teacher 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. 

In each European country a normal “teaching career” is up to 35 -40 years. The clearly set up priority for starting the project with young teacher trainees and their trainers is the long term benefit for future generations of pupils in schools. An intercultural competent teacher, who is able to deal with multicultural classrooms and their environment (e. g. parents, peers) is a keystone person to help young people acquire the basic life-skills and competences necessary for their personal development, for future employment and for active European citizenship. 

To get acquainted with very different education systems and initial teacher training systems in the participating countries needs time; the training units must be adjusted, compared and fitted into the needs of the home country and the country, in which the project meeting takes place. We want to test them in all six meetings. All this needs time too, because we do not want to give workshops in the traditional way, - speak and leave - but discuss afterwards, how could the results affect the guest institution and their curriculum of teacher training. This work will then be continued by the national working groups, who form an inherent part of our project

We have found two very experienced external evaluators from a quite advanced education system: Prof. Pertti Kansanen and Prof. Matti Meri from Helsinki University. They have years of expertise in the field of European teacher training and will act completely independent. They will formulate a strategy for the external evaluation and will visit the participating partners separately along their evaluation strategy. A interim and final report of the external evaluation will show, how successful TICKLE has worked. The evaluation of the training units will be separate as a direct response to the presented keystones.

We have decided in our preparation meeting in February 2007 in Frankfurt, that Sweden will be the responsible institution for the TICKLE webpage. The webpage will be constantly updated with the presented keystones of the partners from the training units and will be free for downloading. The materials will cover a wide range of methodological and didactical approaches: Training Units with awareness raising methods, Exercises, Sensitivity training units, body work, narrative learning biography sessions. Some of the units will be videotaped and put on the homepage. A special internet blog will be build up for comments of the pedagogical community about the keystones.

4. Is TICKLE innovative?

We try to raise the awareness of all those working in the field of teacher education in particular teacher trainees as future long term teachers, of the importance of engaging in intercultural dialogue in their daily work at school. We try to raise their awareness and reflection about their individual value belief system and attitudes, which is the first step of accepting those of others, especially that of pupils from different cultures. The attitudes teachers have towards themselves, their fellow teachers and their own abilities of dealing with diversity is a new topic in teacher education. Recent research shows, that this question can have a strong influence on their motivation to start with intercultural dialoguing in classrooms. The future needs no missionaries of own beliefs, values and attitudes towards pupils, but mutual understanding and the courage, to see things with the eyes of someone else. It is important to recognize the distinction between teachers – and especially young teacher trainees - positive motivation encouraged by success in dealing with diversity in classroom and negative motivation caused by a fear, denial or rejection of diversity. It has been recognized in recent years that the degree of motivation of individual learners is also influenced by the role model, a teacher plays in the class room. It’s the context in which the learning takes place, that counts. Enhancing the awareness of intercultural competences of the teacher is strongly connected with the build-up of strong self-esteem and identity of pupils. Studies show that pupils with low self-esteem also have poorly defined self-concepts. Same happens to teachers. Being aware of the social and psychological influences on teachers and pupils should help one to understand the difficulties both face in the class room and how this may affect the learning progression. This applies especially to teachers and pupils coming from different social backgrounds and different cultures. The question, that self esteem and the inclusion of value belief systems and morale and attitudes of teach-ers is important for future teacher education, is quite new. There is only little research results to find. Pertti Kansanen and colleagues identified four main important dilemmas, which occur as problem for nearly every teacher in today’s class-rooms:

- Matters related to teachers´ work (like how to deal with the pupils; how to punish particular pupils; how to deal with confidentiality; how to deal with loyalty to other teachers

- Pupils´ work moral (like how to deal with negative attitudes towards learning and schoolwork; how to deal with physical and verbal harassing) - The rights of minority groups (like how to deal with cultural conflicts in which religion is a key factor; how to deal with participation in some sub-jects like music and sports; how to find the right balance between adapting to the Finnish culture and pupils own ethnic identity;

- Common rules in schools (like how to deal with smoking; how to handle participation of pupils in decisions concerning school rules).

It may be noticed that if you can foster mutual respect between teachers and pupils, both are more likely to maintain good social relationships leading to fruitful collaboration in the classroom. But the methodology to deal with these questions is mostly concentrated on subjects or on the pupils. Many projects for intercultural dialogue in schools focus on the school culture are subject orientated, but there are no findings, that teacher education is involved in any sense. It is to quote, that the engaged teachers, who already work in the field of interculturality are not the problem: We have to reach the frustrated or angry one’s, who are unable to handle intercultural diversities and call for “more discipline” (which does not help too much). Our innovative approach is to “tickle” the hearts of the young novice teachers, who will have to deal with diversities the next decades of their working life. There is no example, as far as we know, where this is seen as future core topic in teacher education. Social and cultural changes have been very rapid during last decade. "Our students will be entering a world that is changing four times faster than the educational institutions that is preparing them for that world" says Willard Daggett. The world is not the same as the time when most parents and teachers attended school. There exist no more steady positions and identities in changing society; instead there exist many lairs and changes. In earlier years the family was the surround-ing where the private identity was build, and the school was the first institution where the social identity was attained. These days school has the role that affects the development of both – teachers and Learners - emotional life and personal identity. To foster the role of education as an important medium for teaching about diversity, the increase of understanding of other cultures and the development of skills and best social practices demands new approaches. TICKLE contributes to explore these new approaches to intercultural dialogues by involving those, who are the core persons. The results can be utilised by other researchers, educational organisations and policy makers.

5. Preparations

A preliminary meeting of the partners of the proposed TICKLE project was held on February 16th to 17th 2007 in Frankfurt, where Milton Bennetts approach was used as a common discussion platform. The discussion showed from the point of view of professional teacher trainers, that the steps from Denial to Integration differ very much in the participating countries and regarding the main target groups in each country will also differ. T

he rationale behind the distribution of the activities and how the contribution to the participants to each of the activities are designed to achieve the goals in the most effective and efficient way was discussed.

- Swedish schools, which have a long tradition with the inclusion of cultural diversities deals with the problem of acceptance of the Sami population in the Arctic, who demands their rights for mother tongue, their culture, their history which was there before Sweden “colonized” it. Understanding Sami culture is a new, not yet developed topic in Swedish teacher education, but a necessary step towards acceptance of the Sami culture, which can hardly be done if you see pupils only from a Swedish viewpoint in the classroom. The necessity of developing seminars for ongoing teachers dealing with cultural understanding of the “Sami nation” in classrooms is an obvious challenge for the future. Logbooks and reflection would be their tools.

- Estonia: Teacher students there need supervision tools for professional identity on a holistic way. Nearly one third of the Estonian population has Russian origins, their language and culture, but the situation is far from acceptance, rather on the level of either denial or defence. Estonia as a small country has the chance, to put teacher’s intercultural competences directly on a national level of teacher education.

- Hungary (Györ and Eger) : The problem with Interculturality is relatively new. We met minorities in the education, but in spite of the fact that the cultural differences came out there too, that was not the same situation as in Western Europe with the immigrant populations. Since the 1990s immigration has risen. Not only Hungarians came from the neighbourhood countries, but more and more western Europeans – mainly Germans and Italians – arrived. We have the same problems here than other countries in the European Union. The groups we try to train are coloured not only from social, but also from cultural view. But at the moment our teachers and trainers are in a bit worse position than their colleagues in the West. They have no experience and practice and they have no tools in their repertoire to handle the problems or solve these situations. In our area where three countries meet the migration is more increased. Sometimes you feel that you are in Austria due to the German signs on the shops and restaurants. Lots of Slovakian citizens have moved to Hungarian villages from Bratislava nevertheless they are Slovakians. Their chil-dren want to learn in the local Hungarian schools. In the meantime Austrian schools try to draw on Hungarian pupils. Besides we have Hungari-ans from both countries, which want to learn at our secondary schools or want to study at our universities. Other side of the problem is that our area is very industrial with several foreign owned plantations. Their employees are Hungarians, Slovakians, Austrians and in some special fields from other nations. Because we have no experiences with Interculturality, we want to focus on the target group of teacher trainees; our col-leagues in Eger will concentrate on Pre Service training teacher trainers, who want to teach minorities.

- The Netherlands have a long tradition of mixed ethnic areas, immigrants and minorities. Main problem in our schools is segmentation, not denial or defence, but the rejection of adaptation. We would like to concentrate on personal development concepts with a group of teacher students, who are attached to schools in ethnical mixed areas. They expressed the need of a wider range of teaching methodology and the build up of trust and respect in classrooms.

- Germany: The national task group will concentrate on three target groups: a) Teacher Trainees, who practice in bilingual classes in schools in France and Germany. A close exchange with the IUFM Alsace will provide the necessary keystones b) Teacher trainees, who practice in multicul-tural schools, especially in deprived areas. We want to offer special training units concerning intercultural competences. c) Teacher trainees, who participate in bilateral exchanges with Canterbury Christ Church College in the UK. We concentrate on keystones, to share experiences in foreign schools

- France: Many French schools are on defence or denial level. The structures are very rigid and subject orientated. We would like to concentrate on teacher trainers, who have to deal with trainees, that work in schools with a high proportion of “pied noirs” (migrants from France former colonies)

6. European added value

The internationalization and globalization of the EU sets specific requirements on professional education including professionally integrated intercultural competences of teachers. In contrary to many prejudices – even under the teaching staff - cultural diversity in schools must be seen as an opportunity, as something that can be learned, managed, and made use of . The development of intercultural competence as part of a teachers social and communication competences is not yet everyday business in European teacher training institutions. The components of intercultural competence contain cognition, i.e. knowledge, affect, i.e. attitudes and emotions, and behaviour and skills. They touch the personality of teachers and this may be the reason, why teacher training institutions are very cautious with the implementation of courses or training units, dealing with the build up of intercultural competences. Developing intercultural competence is a slow, gradual transformative learning process, which is much more than learning foreign languages. Intercultural training is needed as well as hands-on experiences of other cultures and their people. Many teacher education institutions do not even use intercultural competences, which already exist (for example teacher trainees as children from the second or third immigrant generation, who enter the teaching profession now. These people have potentials of understanding cultural diversities, which home grown young teachers don’t have, but painfully experience in multicultural school environments and classrooms. For them, as for most of young teachers and teacher trainees, intercultural competences must become a part of their professional role for Europe’s more and more intercultural pupils. The same problem exists with teacher trainers, who do not have a daily face-to-face tuition with intercultural problems. Even if there is evidence based on scientific research (see for example the PISA studies) that today’s teachers need intercultural competence in their professional role, the term cannot be found in present curricula of teacher training or teacher education. It seems that especially teacher trainers are not familiar with the term. When requiring behaviour and skills important in multicultural classrooms, they usually refer to expressions like “communication skills”, “interpersonal skills”, “presentation skills” and so on. But the development of intercultural competences is more: It must be based on the recognition of one’s own value and belief system, which is the touchstone of understanding other value and belief systems. When developing intercultural competence, early challenges and diversified experiences of oneself are of major importance. But to find methodological approaches for the entanglement of a person with himself and his professional role as teacher is not easy. Our contribution will be in this sense three added value for European teacher education.

1. We try to develop training units, which will contain:

• in parts knowledge of the subjective cultures of pupils in the participating countries;

• improve knowledge and application of concepts relevant to intercultural communication

• develop the ability to analyze and solve intercultural problems

• reduce ethnocentrism

• help to develop more accurate expectations in intercultural interactions

• decrease the use of negative stereotypes

• increase intercultural sensitivity to cultural diversity

• help to understand host nationals as judged by the hosts themselves

• help to interact more effectively with pupils from the foreign cultures

• increase enjoyment in interaction with pupils and parents from different cultures

• enhance intercultural adjustment

• increase tolerance for everyday stress

• improve task performance in classrooms by the build up of intercultural competences

2. Another added value with this approach is the direct response of a large group of the professional community, which can help to support the immediate and direct implementation – or rejection – of methodological tools for the development of intercultural competences. The training units will be assessed by experts from six countries and seven partner institutions shortly after the presentation. We shall use three types of assess-ment:

a) summative assessment-Can the training units contribute to the development of the teacher trainers or teacher trainees or students’ intercultural competence?

b) self- and peer assessment – Would I or you use them in my local, regional environment in teacher education?

secondly, to map out what kind of communicators the students are and would like to be, and whether the students are motivated to develop their intercultural competence, and >

c) formative assessment – what do the participants of the training units think?

3. Developing and testing the effectiveness of the presented intercultural training units through the cooperation of seven teacher training institutes in six countries with different educational and cultural backgrounds itself is an another added value of the TICKLE project.

4. Intercultural competence should, however, be understood as part of knowledge management and tacit knowledge. It should be understood as a tool of strategic thinking and planning, as a source of competitive advantage and added value, the development of which should be started as early as possible. Teachers and trainers should also be provided with further training so that they can become intercultural facilitators to help their pupils to become mediators between cultures and social actors, who are able to engage with other social actors in communication and interaction which is different from those between native speakers. The fourth added value for Europe therefore would be the enhancement of European citizenship.

7. Tickle Facts:

We present tools to create intercultural awareness in one day conferences in the partner institutions. We have already started with a conference in Arnhem (Netherlands) and will continue as follows:

• Tallinn - Estonia, May 30th, 2008

• Eger – Hungary, September, 19th 2008

• Györ – Hungary, December, 12th, 2008

• Guebwiller – France, March, 13th 2009

• Lulea – Sweden, June, 5th, 2009

• Offenburg – Germany, September 18th, 2009

Abb. 2:  The TICKLE group. First row from left to right: Matti Meri (FIN) Bernd Hainmüller (GER) Ute Leoni (GER) Berit Wiklung (SE) Gunilla Johansson (SE)  Second row: Ylva Jannock-Nutti (SE) Pertti Kansanen (FI) Eva Woelki (GER), Bernadette Tihnagel (NL) Third row: Mira Koch (GER) Inge Timostshuk (EST) Daniel Lind (FR) Magdolna Kellner (HUN) Fourth row: Wolfgang Looss (GER) Nicolas Schreck (FR) Edith Weber (FR) Sandor Remsei (HUN) Last row: Balasz Vargas (HUN) György Meszaros (HUN) Bernd Schüssele (GER) Henk Boer (NL) Gerbert Siepman (NL) 

• These conferences with workshops from the seven participating countries present the work of the TICKLE experts. They reflect and enable teacher trainers, teacher trainees and all other responsible persons in the national education system to identify and decide which tools and contents are most useful for common euro-pean purposes. They are meant to encourage the share of tools within the existing frames of national teacher education systems. We also support exchange of trainees bet-ween the participating countries and stimulate new approaches in teacher training related to the concept of lifelong learning, knowledge sharing and peer learning.

• The TICKLE homepage is constantly updated with all materials and results of the workshops and conferences: www.tickle-project.eu

THE COORDINATING UNIT

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 
THE PARTNERS

Luleå tekniska Universitet, Luleå University of Technology, Department of Teacher Education

S 974 51 Luleå, Sweden
National Coordinator: Gunilla Johansson, Senior lecturer 

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

Esterhazy Karoly College, EKF,TKTK

Klapkav 12, 3300 Eger/Hungary

National Coordinator:Maria Nagy,Head of Department of Education

University of West Hungary , Apáczai Csere János Faculty, Liszt Ferenc utca 42

9022 Gyoer/Hungary

National Coordinator: Sandor Remsei, PhD, Associate professor

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 (Centre of teacher formation for bilingual learning)

PABO Arnhem

Ruitenberglaan 27 6802 CB Arnhem, Netherlands

National Coordinator: Henk Boer, Head of section of Pedagogy Pabo-Arnhem / Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen

How is TICKLE funded?

The European Commission funds seventy five percent of the cost of the TICKLE project through its Life Long Learning Programme under the COMENIUS Multilateral projects strand.

Why does the European Union support TICKLE?

By training future teachers to raise their inter-cultural competences, create learning materials and raising their awareness of the enrichment of classrooms by different European cultures in general, TICKLE will help to establish a culture of innovation in the schools in which they work. This will in turn contribute to achieve the aims of the Life Long Learning Programme:

  • to develop knowledge and understanding among young people and educational staff of the diversity of European cultures and languages and its values;

  • to help young people to acquire the basic life skills and competences necessary for their personal development, for future employ-ment and for active European citizenship;

  • to enhance the quality and European dimension of teacher training;

  • to support improvements in pedagogical approaches and school management;

  • to improve school education systems through the transfer of innovation and good practice; this may include developing, promoting and disseminating educational best practices, including new teaching methods or materials.

Abb. 2:  Multilateral Projects within LLP

All materials of Tickle are free for download from www.tickle-project.eu

Abb. 3:  Where the acronym comes from