Translating Socio-Cultural Anthropology into Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Translating Socio-Cultural Anthropology into 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 higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

TRANSCA – Translating Socio-Cultural Anthropology into Education, was an EU project coordinated by the University of Vienna and carried out from September 2018 until August 2020. TRANSCA tried to demonstrate the importance and usefulness of social anthropology for the practice of education. In particular the project sought to address the European educational sphere and current endeavours to frame education in terms of a response to on-going and new societal challenges such as diversity, immigration, socio-economic disparities and exclusionary politics. The project’s general focus is on providing teachers (and pupils as the indirect target group) with novel ways of how to address contested hierarchical structures, which often mark the diversity dynamics in the classroom. The general aim was to share current practices and new ideas to help anthropology become more applicable and widespread in teacher education and consequently, in schools.

The coordinators represented relevant academic institutions from four countries (Croatia, Greece and Denmark with Austria taking the lead) focusing on socio-cultural anthropology (with expertise in teaching anthropology). In addition, the coordinator established cooperation with Teacher Colleges (Vienna & Zadar) and other relevant institutions as well as multipliers (future teachers and lecturers at teacher colleges) who provided feedback to the project’s core Intellectual Outputs. Several transnational project meetings took place during the course of the project in order to intensively discuss both the content, method and other relevant aspects of the approach. In addition, we had the opportunity of discussing the practicability and feasibility of the planned IOs with selected experts during LTTA meetings in Zadar and Vienna.

The Intellectual Outputs published on the project’s web-platform www.transca.net comprise:
• A collection of best practice projects focusing on educational anthropology from the following countries: Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina;
• A concept manual, which provides teachers with key anthropological concepts and methods relevant for the educational context. These have been selected primarily from the field of anthropology of education while considering their usefulness for reflecting on particular educational questions and issues;
• New teaching modules for teacher education, aiming at introducing teachers to anthropological approaches and methods in the study of educational lifeworlds and practices. The primary goal is to encourage teachers to explore and reflect upon their professional lives, endeavours and practices in new ways. Ethnography-based didactic approaches are used in these modules as they are apt tools for conveying an understanding of the embeddedness of educational practices in particular and changing cultural, socio-economic and political configurations. Working comparatively with ethnographic cases from different cultural contexts, teachers can explore ways of thinking which make the strange familiar and the familiar strange.
• A whiteboard animation on the topic “worldmaking” (including didactic implementation), accessible via an internet platform functioning as a knowledge database. The platform is available in five languages and offers users access to methods and networking resources available beyond the end of the funded period of the TRANSCA partnership.
• Interviews with well-known experts who reflect on the project and its content as a sustainable and unique resource.

All intellectual outputs are online since the End of August 2020: www.transca.net and will be updated the team based at the University of Vienna.

The project was a strategic partnership (Erasmus+) aiming to further develop the cooperation between teacher education and socio-cultural anthropology in order to address the crucial issue of social inclusion in schools by implementing e.g. tools for self-reflexivity and hierarchical positionality. It aims to promote, and in some countries initiate, the attempt of jointly transferring concepts and ideas of socio-cultural anthropological knowledge into teacher education in Europe. To achieve these aims, the project builds on existing approaches and experiences and advances these with new and innovative didactic assessments and practices with regard to core societal issues and social science concepts (such as interculturality, diversity, migration, integration, gender, intersectionality etc.). In this context, the translation of reflexive anthropological projects, methods and approaches into the field of teacher education is a core endeavour. These innovative pedagogical practices are meant to potentially generate ethnographic knowledge and insights of societal challenges that allow teachers to take on the role of a learner, to know their pupils’ lived realities in new and substantial ways.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 197562 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITAT WIEN & Country: AT

Project Partners

• SVEUCILISTE U ZADRU
• UNIVERSITY OF MACEDONIA
• AARHUS UNIVERSITET
• PADAGOGISCHE HOCHSCHULE WIEN