DIVERSITY – A WAY OF LIFE!

GROUP MEMBERS Lilian: Language and culture, gender and jobs Tanja: Linguistic and biodiversity Sofie: Comparing proverbs in different languages and cultures Christine: Awareness of woman´s roles in the professional field around a pluricultural context Liisa: Intercultural encounters – Variations on the theme

Sofie: Comparing proverbs in different languages and cultures Rationale: Trainees experience: * proverbs can be different in other languages * clear link between language and culture Method: Bruegel painting and cardgame: groupwork Piloting: By Belgian teacher, Christine and Tanja

CHANGES TO BE MADE ADD INFORMATION ON THE PAINTER BREUGEL PAINTING: ASK STUDENTS TO FIND PROVERBS THEMSELVES CARDGAME: ADD OTHER WAYS TO PLAY IT CARDGAME: FIND SIMILAR WORDS

Christine – AWARENESS OF WOMEN‘S ROLES IN THE PROFESSIONAL FIELD AROUND A PLURICULTURAL CONTEXT RATIONALE – Living in an island, the inhabitants of Malta are quite traditional in their attitude. The project was aimed to prove how sexually prejudiced we are with regard to jobs and what we, as educators, can do to change such an attitude in the classroom environment. METHOD – Although most of my activities were done in groups, there was time for both individual and pairwork.

PILOTING THE ACTIVITIES Parts of the activities were done by myself during a two- day seminar to teachers and university students training to become teachers. Merce also piloted one of my activities with her univeristy students. CHANGES REQUIRED – to rewrite all the articles taken from books in my own words to avoid copyright problems when publishing the kit to copy and paste the question icon and the owls in one worksheet, instead of giving them the employment ads myself, make the participants look for their own ads on the internet and the newspapers.

Tanja – LINGUISTIC AND BIODIVERSITY RATIONALE – a) The connections between biodiversity and linguistic diversity. b) The risk of languages being lost. METHOD – Although most of my activities were done in groups, there was time for both individual and pairwork.

PILOTING THE ACTIVITIES Piloting was done by Lilian and myself. CHANGES REQUIRED – to copy and paste the question icon and the owls to add the rationale

Lilian – LANGUAGE AND CULTURE – GENDER AND JOBS RATIONALE – To increase the personal/social awareness of diverse cultural expectations resulting in gender based career option differences. METHOD – mostly groups of 4 to 6 students plus some individual work.

PILOTING THE ACTIVITIES Activities 1 and 2 were done by myself in three different classes (= 85 student teachers) and Activity 6 in one class. CHANGES REQUIRED – to add to activity 6 the option that student teachers can interview an immigrant pupil‘s parents about their work situation in their new country compared to the old one to copy and paste the question icon and the owls

ACTUAL IMPACT Presentations (Belgium, Sweden, Canada) Workshops (Malta, Belgium, Slovenia, Sweden) Seminars (Malta, Sweden, Slovenia, Belgium, Canada) Unpublished articles and articles in progress (Sweden, Belgium) Involving other colleges of education (Belgium) Collaboration projects with schools (Sweden, Slovenia)

OBSTACLES IN IMPLEMENTATION AND DIFFUSION Time constraints Inflexible curriculum Fossilized school culture Misunderstanding certain terminology Over-emphasis on learning a specific language ALL teachers need LEA

FUTURE IMPACT Continuing the good work Approaching power brokers in Education Using the media Approaching and involving policy makers in Education