Intercultural Citizenship Education through Picturebooks in early English Language Learning Erasmus Project

Project Title

Intercultural Citizenship Education through Picturebooks in early English Language 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 higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

Citizenship and intercultural education are major priorities in supranational EU guidelines, and great importance is placed on educating the global citizen of tomorrow, yet national curricula for citizenship education focus mainly on local, regional or national civic action in the language of schooling. Culture and language are inextricably linked and together provide a pathway for intercultural understanding, yet, the linguistic component in intercultural and citizenship education is also ignored in most language curricula. Foreign language teachers tend to focus on language, yet, despite having knowledge of the target culture, are hesitant to include the civic/intercultural dimensions in their planning. With English as a foreign language (EFL) being introduced at ever earlier ages, this provides challenges for teacher education, resources and classroom practices.

The main aim of this three-year ERASMUS + KA203 project, which focuses on innovation in the Higher Education and School Education Sectors, is to strengthen the profile of the teaching profession through the development of practitioner competencies to confidently integrate intercultural citizenship education (ICE) into early EFL education. The target group is the school community – practitioners (teachers of English, teacher librarians, student teachers), children aged 5 to 12 years, and teacher educators.

Consisting of a network of partners from five European countries – Portugal, Germany, Italy, Norway and the Netherlands – with expertise in early language learning, teacher education, picturebooks in language learning and materials design, ICEPELL aims to:
* Survey practitioners’ attitudes and reasons for reticence towards ICE
* Compile a data-base of picturebooks in English to develop ICE in early EFL
* Provide training and professional development to pre- and in-service practitioners, equipping them with the necessary knowledge, attitudes and competences to successfully plan for, manage and assess ICE through picturebooks in early EFL
* Develop, pilot and evaluate teaching packs around picturebooks that will integrate ICE in early EFL
* Publish and disseminate a handbook that supports practitioners and teacher educators in integrating ICE through picturebooks into the early EFL curriculum
* Facilitate an Open Educational Resources platform on e-Twinning that enables practitioners to develop communities of practice
* Support teachers in setting up a virtual space to bring children together across borders to interact and develop ICE in real time
* Set up an ICEPELL Project platform to disseminate the project activities and outputs

The project will follow a four-phase methodology with constant monitoring and evaluation of the different phases, to ensure that the project objectives are achieved:
Phase 1: a) Needs assessment, to better understand practitioners’ attitude towards and reticence about the intercultural and citizenship domains of early EFL; b) Collaborative investigation and exchange of considered good practices to decide upon principled criteria for the development of curricula and teaching resources.
Phase 2: Development of the project outputs e.g. ICEBooks database, ICEKits teaching packs, the ICEPro Professional Development Course, and the ICECommuity and ICEPals virtual spaces.
Phase 3: Implementation, which is cyclical in each year of the project, as evaluation and feedback is used to revise the activities and outputs for constant improvement.
Phase 4: Dissemination, which begins early in the ICEPELL project through its open-access platform and the multiple dissemination activities it has planned.

The ICEPELL project will directly contribute to the professional development of 75 practitioners across the five countries, who will be responsible for over 3500 children.
*For practitioners, the expected results include increased competencies as effective and autonomous professionals, capable of exploiting the benefits of picturebooks to integrate the moral, civic and intercultural dimensions of language learning in an age-appropriate way in the early EFL classroom, as well as supporting content-oriented interactions in English.
*For the children, the expected results include an increase in curiosity, tolerance of, respect for and acceptance of that which is different, as well as a willingness to take civic action. There will also be an increase in their linguistic competencies and an ability to reflect on and review learning and personal changes in attitude.
*For stakeholders in the wider EFL community – ie practitioners, teacher educators, researchers, policy-makers, publishers and even bookshops – it is expected that there will be an increased awareness of the need to integrate ICE into early EFL activities, the relevance of picturebooks to do this and the recognition that a set of teacher competences is required to successfully integrate ICE into early EFL contexts.

Project Website

http://icepell.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 300667 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA & Country: PT

Project Partners

• STICHTING AVANS
• Associação Portuguesa de Professores de Inglês
• NORD UNIVERSITET
• USR Piemonte – Rete Sostenibilità
• TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET BRAUNSCHWEIG