Border Education – Space, Memory and Reflections on Transculturality Erasmus Project

Project Title

Border Education – Space, Memory and Reflections on Transculturality

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 addressing more than one field

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Pedagogy and didactics; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Within the EU, one main goal has been to reduce the role of political borders in its citizens’ everyday life. The removal of border control in the Schengen area is its most visible expression. Although important steps have been made, the vision of “borderless EU” is far from being accomplished. The deterring economic situation in the EU gave new impulse to nationalistic and Eurosceptic movements in EU member states and candidate countries. Soon after the crisis started, media and politicians, by default, mostly found the culprit over the border or among members of minority groups.
This dramatic shift in attitude towards “others” can’t be explained if borders are perceived as lines on maps separating nation states. Borders are – first and foremost – a complex and dynamic mental phenomenon, (re)produced through creation of binary distinctions between the “I”/“We” and the “Other(s)“/“Them”. People constantly draw (mental) borders between themselves and others in accordance with their individual experience, perception, memory, belief, by taking into account the collective ones they identify with – and thus practice inclusion or exclusion.
BE-SMaRT is on the ball regarding the fact that understanding mental borders needs a transdisciplinary approach of different aspects of borders and thus to comprehend their impact on (young) peoples’ life-experiences and constructions of identities within ever more globalized societies. Therefore a reflective study module for professional development of teachers and teacher students was developed to challenge memories and “traditional” conceptions of “Europe”’s borders. The major innovative issue of BE-SMaRT is to bring together the concept of “borders” with individual/collective memory within teacher education and thus to act in a pedagocical context. The multidisciplinary project approach was anchored in Teacher Education and included target groups such as teachers, teacher students, education providers, and other stakeholders in education, that show this particular educational potential. In this way, BE-SMaRT is complementary to other initiatives dealing with borders, border perceptions and/or memories, which are not targeting „educational multipliers“.
BE-SMaRT was designed in three progressive steps:
a) In a first step, the consortium realised three scientific studies:
– a qualitative analysis of the existing scientific literature in the fields of border and memory studies linked to education;
– a survey to understand the border perceptions of teacher students at the universities of the partners of the consortium;
– several case studies of local or regional relevance that focus the link of borders and memories that might affect educational reflection and that may challenge more traditional, mainly spatial conceptions.
b) Based on these diverse studies, an under- and post-graduate module for initial teacher education degree programmes has been developed based on Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning. The module aims at opening teacher education from its traditionally national orientation to a European dimension. It has successfully been integrated into the existing university programmes of the partners of the consortium and also may be used as a course for Erasmus incoming teacher education students. The approach of the module is based on critical reflection of individuals and groups in relation to their current situation. Within BE-SMaRT, this involves questioning existing assumptions, values, and perspectives which underlie young people’s actions, decisions and judgements referring to border and memory in order to liberate them from their habitual ways of thinking and acting. This transformation of perspectives is only possible through the critical reconsideration of one’s own perspectives and orientations to perceiving, knowing, feeling, and acting – this means: what has been learned before – the frame of reference – has to be unlearned to make room for new knowledge, skills, and attitudes: it has to be re-constructed.
This approach seems most appropriate at a time when young people know the EU’s political borders and perceive borderfree life within Europe as set. BE-SMaRT is about opportunities for young, dynamic EU citizens (= teachers of tomorrow) to experience meaningful dialogue about othering, to encourage them to see mutual understanding as basis from which to shape and build a more socially just, inclusive and successfully functioning European society.
c) These results led the partners to formulate a European Border Education Statement, the so-called “BE-SMaRT Memorandum”, a political paper aiming to motivate to change initial teacher education in Europe. This Statement has been sent to stakeholders in order to inform them about useful modifications that might lead to more openness in the view of otherness within future teachers.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 208679,34 Eur

Project Coordinator

Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg & Country: DE

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITE LYON 1 CLAUDE BERNARD
• UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI
• Europäische Akademie Otzenhausen gGmbH
• TARTU ULIKOOL
• St Mary’s University College
• MAELARDALENS HOEGSKOLA