Decoding the Disciplines in European Institutions of Higher Education: Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Approach to Teaching and Learning Erasmus Project

Project Title

Decoding the Disciplines in European Institutions of Higher Education: Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Approach to Teaching and Learning

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 2016

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

In the course of the Project, it has been established that the Decoding the Disciplines methodology can be used as a practical pedagogical strategy for helping students with difficult material or a basis for research in the scholarship of teaching and learning (or both).
For instance, in the study of immigration history students usually bring an assumption that immigration is a one-directional process similar to an invasion. This assumption can be deconstructed with an example of migration patterns of Monarch butterflies. As soon as students learn that in nature migration is often cyclical, not linear, they become less resistant to learning the history of immigration from a different viewpoint, or that of immigrants. Similarly, students’ critical reading, which is essential to any academic study, can be improved by helping them understand the difference between description and synthesis of information, or helping them understand how a reasoned argument is structured. Such approaches can model ways of thinking about a topic or skill that brings new insight and understanding.
The Decoding method avoids the old-fashioned rote learning and does not turn the professor into “a sage on the stage” who is supposed to know everything about her or his subject matter and is there to impart students with the right answers. Rather, the method takes both the professor and the student on a journey of exploration as it engages more creative inquiry approaches to teaching and learning.
Both students and professors learned—and often relearned or remembered—the steps that lead to diverse types of solutions and answers. Our Google-driven era of study has given us easy access to mounds of information and data. It has not taught us, however, how to sort through them in order to find the most reliable and relevant pieces necessary for an informed opinion or an innovative solution.
Here Decoding comes in handy. It teaches us to analyze and synthesize, or learn in ways that are more diverse, reflective, and critical. And from a broader perspective, those who can think analytically can participate in a democracy more actively, responsibly, and meaningfully.
The Decoding model leads to “intellectual diversity” in thinking in the classroom: to finding different solutions to problems in the field of science, to seeing positions different from those of the author in literature, or, in history, to understanding the values of historical persons without judging them. In short, it teaches the art of critical thinking that is at the root of every European democracy and inter-cultural dialogue at national, regional, and local levels.
The Decoding method responds to a dire need, in the EU educational system, for integrative (inter-disciplinary), formal (lecture-based), and alternative (project-based and experiential) means of education, critical thinking, media and digital literacy, as well as professional and intercultural competences. All of this fosters the values of democracy (fundamental rights, respect, and responsible citizenship), alongside the need for a higher degree of social inclusion in European societies.
The following 5 European institutions of higher education participated in the project: Lithuanian non-for-profit organisation The Ethnic Kitchen, Vytautas Magnus University from Lithuania, Roma Tre University from Italy, National University of Ireland, Galway from Ireland, and VIVES University of Applied Sciences from Belgium.
53 members of academic staff from the participating organisations in Italy, Ireland, Belgium and Lithuania tested the Decoding the Disciplines methodology in their classes. 153 participants from outside the partnering institutions took part in the project’s multiplier events in Italy, Ireland, Belgium and Lithuania.
Two important intellectual outputs have been produced as a result of the Project: an Open Educational Resource and an electronic Scholarly Journal that accumulate the participating instructors’ experience with the Decoding the Disciplines methodology in a way that can help instructors from other countries and institutions apply this methodology to their own teaching in an efficient and meaningful manner. Both of these intellectual outputs can be accessed at http://www.decoding.education/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 255369 Eur

Project Coordinator

KATHOLIEKE HOGESCHOOL VIVES ZUID & Country: BE

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI ROMA TRE
• VYTAUTO DIDZIOJO UNIVERSITETAS
• VsI “Pasaulio virtuve”
• NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND GALWAY