EDINA: teacher professionalization for migrant pupil education Erasmus Project

Project Title

EDINA: teacher professionalization for migrant pupil education

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Reaching the policy level/dialogue with decision makers; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

The project EDINA GoPro (EDucation of International Newly Arrived migrant pupils – Professionalization of teachers for higher proficiency of pupils) aims at the expansion of the results obtained by EDINA (2015-2018), by putting a deeper focus on the development of the professional skills of teachers, no matter what they teach, in order to support them in the integration of Newly Arrived Migrant pupilS (NAMS).

As results, EDINA led to the development to a webtool (www.edinaplatform.eu/en) about the reception and transition of NAMs, differentiation and intercultural competences for teachers. Through this development, EDINA helped to change mentalities of teachers and other stakeholders on, for instance, the use of the home language in education and was also influential in decisions made by local and national authorities on the funding of newcomer education.

Based on this results, EDINA GoPro (2019-2022), by expanding the existing network through a consortium that consists of local/provincial authorities, schools and researchers from The Netherlands (Utrecht and Rotterdam), Belgium (Ghent and Liège), The United Kingdom (Leeds) and Spain (Oviedo), aims 1) to promote the exchange of good practices by developing an innovative methodology, 2) to draw a more precise picture of the reception of NAMS in Europe, by writing and updating country reports, 3) to fully exploit the toolset already available on the EDINA website, by designing a training module to develop specific teachers’ competencies useful to optimize the reception, observation, transition and differentiation processes for NAMS and 4) to provide new online tools for teachers. In this perspective, the project will develop supporting material useful for all teachers involved in NAMS education, available online via the EDINA website.

The EDINA GoPro project is an example of interdisciplinary collaboration. It involves teachers, school boards, local authorities and researchers, with backgrounds as diverse as linguistics, language acquisition, psychology, pedagogy and intercultural communication. We have in common to believe that valuing the cultural identity and the home language of NAMS is extremely important not only as a way to acquire the school language, but also to avoid delays in non-linguistic subjects. By helping not only language teachers but also teachers from other fields to understand and rely on the intercultural and interlinguistic processes at work in diverse classrooms, the modular program of EDINA GoPro will develop tools for the education of newcomer pupils in a way that is in line with their cognitive abilities, so that they will be able to exploit their full potential.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 444837 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT & Country: NL

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITEIT GENT
• LEEDS BECKETT UNIVERSITY
• Leeds City Council
• STAD GENT
• Stichting BOOR
• Ecole Polytechnique de Verviers
• UNIVERSITE DE LIEGE