The role of school leaders has evolved and so we find that they must be able to lead diverse classrooms. In a globalized world, we need to empower educational leaders to promote intercultural understanding and to keep developing students in the classrooms.
Intercultural education is geared towards long-term changes in schools and curriculum development, and it serves as a framework for the development of new methods and practices of teaching and learning in the classroom.
As highlighted by the European Commission, the demands made of teachers, school leaders and teacher educators are high. They play a critical role in achieving high-quality education for all learners and, therefore, need to continuously develop their competences.
Considering the dramatic changes we are facing, intercultural education can no longer be regarded as a mere add-on to the curriculum in occasional projects.
For this to take place, intercultural education must make significant advances in the ability of education professionals to work creatively and co-operatively towards change by focusing on school practice, whether in the classroom or within the school as a whole.
Leadership for Diversity is a project addressing the need for multicultural understanding in a classroom setting. We are empowering education leaders to work in diverse classrooms. In such a setting, we must address intercultural differences so that everyone can learn better together and work successfully in classrooms. By providing the necessary training, we grow the professional skills of our target group and increase inclusion in the classroom. Our partnership is developing tools to assist in the promotion of intercultural communication as we see more students arriving from other parts of the world into Europe.
Increased school autonomy and a greater focus on schooling and school results have made it essential to reconsider the role of school leaders. The idea of educational leadership for diversity in an increasingly globalised and diversified world, assumes the pressing need for educational leaders to participate in, and to promote, intercultural communication competence as professional development.
With the ongoing increase of international students arriving in urban centers, school leaders may notice an increase in academic and sociocultural challenges for teachers and institutions particularly in contexts where intercultural differences can be treated as sources of dissension (Egbo, 2009). As such, providing professional development for school leaders in terms of improving their own intercultural competence is an important first step in establishing positive models of leadership for diversity in and across schools and so to support continuous
professional development of teachers.
The project is intended to build a leadership for diversity training programme and online learning environment in order to improve the professional profiles of the target group and thus, enhance and promote more inclusive schools.
Leadership for Diversity will address these needs by:
The Leadership for Diversity project intends to improve the professional profiles of the target group and thus, enhance and promote more inclusive schools.
Leadership for Diversity will address these needs
Enabling participants to reinforce their intercultural competences
Expanding networking opportunities within project partners
Assessing IC competencies across Europe
Creating a sense of intercultural awareness in their every day life
Addressing new ways of approaching IC by implementing DBE methodology
VET and HEI colleges whose teaching staff, students & researchers that wish to apply their pedagogical research innovation capacities to real world problems & new groups of learners.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Servicio Español para la Internacionalización de la Educación (SEPIE). Neither the European Union nor Agencia Nacional SEPIE can be held responsible for them.
