Multicultural Schools – Enhancing Cultural and Linguistic Treasure of Europe through Teachers Erasmus Project

Project Title

Multicultural Schools – Enhancing Cultural and Linguistic Treasure of Europe through Teachers

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

EU is founded on “unity in diversity”: diversity of cultures, religions, custom, beliefs and languages. According to Eurostat, from 2016, over 35 million of people living in EU Member States were born outside EU. Most of these people that moved from one country to another have settled families where more than one cultural background is experienced in daily life. However, the children of such families are treated differently and often emerge some problem areas related with the integration of these children at school, concerning both language and educational aspects.

For this reason, the project MULTICULTURAL SCHOOLS targeted lack of support in adopting new strategies and practices for teachers on capitalisation on cultural diversity in the classroom as, unfortunately, teachers are not prepared on how to adequately integrate these children and how to approach them during their educational path.

Thus, the GENERAL OBJECTIVE of this project was to address lack of appropriate skills and competences of teachers on how to deal with multicultural classes and in the same time strengthen profile of teachers, helping them in solving out difficult situations with children coming from different religious and ethnic groups. The SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES of this project were:
-to develop handbook containing new methodology on how to deal with multiculturalism at schools;
-to prepare an online e-course enabling teachers to acquire new competencies;
-to provide ready-to-use materials for teachers to be used in multicultural classrooms for children among 6-13 years;
-to promote, preserve and enhance cultural richness of European society.

To reach these goals, the project partnership, consisting of organisations from Poland, Italy, Belgium, Greece and Spain (3 universities, each having different focus, 1 SME, 1 European association of teachers, 1 PA in charge for education) have merged their collective experience and specific skills in the field of multicultural education.
The project firstly produced O1 – REPORT ON THE CHALLENGES FACED BY TEACHERS IN THEIR EDUCATIONAL WORK, that worked as the basis for further outputs, to clarify on which areas the project should in particularly focus. In order to reinforce collaboration among teachers and parents, the partners collected GOOD PRACTISES OF COOPERATION AMONG SCHOOLS AND MULTICULTURAL PARENTS (O5) giving real examples to be taken as inspirations.

As the key output, the project provided teachers with O4 – TEACHER’S HANDBOOK ON CULTURALLY INCLUSIVE EDUCATION, based on Q&A model, giving suggestions on different situations the teachers of multicultural classes may face. The handbook was developed in six European languages (EN, PL, ES, IT, FR, GR). This output refers to O3 – REPOSITORY OF ACTIVITIES FOR TEACHERS, containing resources, activities and materials ready-to-use in multicultural classes.
The handbook has an online extension and was transformed into PROBLEM-BASED-LEARNING E-COURSE FOR TEACHERS (O7) that has the possibility to release certificates after successful completion.
In addition, ONLINE NETWORKING & LEARNING PLATFORM (O6) enabling networking and exchanging hands-on experiences through discussion groups of teachers, educators and parents was created.

The main impact of the project:
• number of downloaded materials of repository (O3) – almost 20.000
• number of members of platform (O6) and FB group – 192 members + 226 FB members
• number of e-course (O7) views – 1.681 unique views
• number of downloaded certificates (O7) – more than 402 downloads
• number of attendees to Multiplier Events – over 340 participants
• number of website visitors – over 10.000 visitors
• total number of website pages view – 47.468
• average session duration on the website – 3,5 hours
• number of FB likes – more than 3.050 likes
• the project was shown on Spanish TV programme and Radio programme
• publication of Press Release in Italian online magazine “Europa & Mediterraneo” n.49 that has thousands of subscribers
• publication of article about MCS in newspapers out of partners countries, Romanian Newspapers Replica, Observator de Constanta, Centre for Education Development in Poland, Telegraf and in German Europäische Erziehung
• presentation of MCS project and outputs at 15 International Conferences
• 2 Poster Presentation of MCS project
• 4 Scientific Papers presented

Considering this, MULTICULTURAL SCHOOLS project provides teachers’ with new competences, responds to up-to-dated questions about multiculturalism in schools and contributes to mutual recognition of every form of cultural diversity as “a treasure” for the next EU generations.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 268293,06 Eur

Project Coordinator

SPOLECZNA AKADEMIA NAUK & Country: PL

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI CATANIA
• PMF SRL
• Centro de Profesores y Recursos de Zafra
• Eastern Macedonia – Thrace Regional Directorate for Primary and Secondary Education
• Association Européenne des Enseignants
• UNIVERSIDAD DE VALLADOLID