Golden Links- bringing inclusion into multicultural teaching
Project- 2017-1-PL01-KA204-038325
In a constantly evolving Europe, operators in the field of adult education often find themselves working with heterogeneous and diversified classes, where the composition of the students’ group is usually quite variegated. Groups are made up of both women and men, coming from several countries, with different cultural and traditional contexts, practicing various religions, with different sexual orientation, with diverse levels of education and willing to learn for many different reasons. For all this, teachers and educators feel the need to better understand how to address such (and many other) kinds of learners in order to offer them a personalised and diversified teaching approach to improve the quality of learning, always avoiding any kind of (for sure not intended but still possible) exclusion or discrimination.
The organisations involved in this project will put together all their different, peculiar skills and competences in order for other organisations to be better trained in teaching and addressing these different categories of learners, sharing good practices according to one’s area of specialisation. The first beneficiaries of this project, therefore, will be the educators of the involved organisations and consequently, thanks to what the partnership likes to call «the waterfall effect», the learners will receive a better teaching approach, this way breaking down all the other problems related to adult education such as dropouts, lack of motivation, anxiety, unsuccessful learning, frustration, and so on. Accodring to the European Agenda for Adult Learning it is also crucial to increase the number of adults in the process of learning. Reducing the before mentioned problems will help to achieve this goal. Right now, hardly one in ten European adult takes part in any kind of traning or education and over 1/4 does not have adequate reading, writing, numeracy or digital skills.
In short term perspective, the single organisations will address fundamental, inalienable concepts that are at the base of teaching, such as:
In medium term perspective, thanks to the concrete results and outcomes that the participants will produce by the end of the project, all the national/European organisations dealing with adult education will take great advantage of the knowledge, competences, skills, tools and methods we intend to disseminate thanks to the Inclusive Adult Teacher Profile we want to create and a Tool Box consisting of various useful materials for the educators (videos, guidelines, lessons scenarios).
The project needs to be carried out transnationally because teaching methods, tools and needs are different from Country to Country; therefore, a shared knowledge of what the good practices in each partner organisation are is fundamental and is enriching for everybody.
We hope that in long term perspective, sharing such practices represents a starting point to create a European guideline for teaching, avoiding fragmentation and parochialism, bringing education and learning towards a unified, cohesive Europe.
– Neuroscience and scientific explanations on how attention, memory, motivation and learning work: this way educators will understand and analyse the cognitive processes and therefore have truly consistent competences on what troubles their students face everyday in learning, having some concrete tools and methods to face such struggles, optimising the learning process.
– How to identify one student’s learning style and provide him/her with the proper tools and methods to overcome the struggles he/she will face along the learning process. This will lead to the analysis of the several existing learning styles and the linked cognitive processes, together with the so-called «learning strategies» to be put into practice according to one’s specific needs.
– How to make a good use of the ICT with regards to computers, tablets, smartphones through the use of specific softwares, websites or mobile apps for different kinds of learning. Given the context of the organisations involved, this part will mainly deal with the language teaching field, but it will be applicable to all subjects and fields of education.
On the part of the project that will instead tend to reduce or cancel discrimination and social exclusion, the organisations will share what their good practices are in relation to:
– How to identify and address the so diversified types of students mentioned before, in order to avoid unintended sexist/racist/discriminatory language or examples,
– How to involve and engage families and relatives of the students in the learning processes, cutting down the cultural and language barriers, eliminating social exclusion related to their cultural or religious background and therefore increasing and implementing a true, consistent integration of learners,
– Why intercultural competences are important for educators and how to achieve above mentioned goals thanks to them.
ERASMUS + | KA204
COOPERATION FOR INNOVATION AND THE EXCHANGE OF GOOD PRACTICES
STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS FOR ADULT EDUCATION
The project is funded by EU money