Newsletter - February 2022
Welcome to ITTS News in 2022! We are looking forward to a creative and productive project year, the common exchange and innovative work processes with our partners from 7 project countries.
Planned activities for 2022 include a book publication presenting the situation of international teachers in all project countries, the creation of various materials to support professional re-entry as well as first project events where we would like to present and discuss these results.
7 country studies and a survey
Our quantitative survey has been running since last autumn and is in its final stages. So far, more than 140 international teachers in 8 countries participated in the survey. The survey is part of a stocktaking project on the challenges and opportunities of the professional re-entry of international teachers in the partner countries. The aim is to systematise the current situation in the different countries and to process it on a cross-national basis. With the help of this survey we want to find out where specific challenges exist, how they are being dealt with, as well as how specific strengths of international teachers can be supported.
Once again, the dissemination of the survey has made it clear to us how challenging and at the same time varied the opportunities for international teachers in our seven partner countries are. Yet, we are very excited to learn about the experiences of international teachers through this survey.
Results of this study are summarised in a contribution to our edited volume. Further contributions are the country reports of the individual project partners, which present framework conditions for the professional re-entry of international teachers in the individual countries. The reports have been completed and are currently being processed for publication in the book.
How to support the professional re-entry in school?
While we were still planning and collecting ideas last year, we are now a more productive in the preparation and development of materials. We are currently working in small working groups on the various topics addressing our three target groups: international teachers, mentors and principals.
Against the background of intercultural school development, these materials aim to support the professional reintegration of international teachers into the school. In the coming months, different worksheets, recommendations, counselling and reflection materials as well as workshop concepts will be created here.
Project meeting and training on intercultural issues in September 2021
In September 2021 we held our first transnational partner meeting in presence in Leuven, Belgium. The meeting included a training on intercultural sensitivity provided by our colleagues from InterCultural Iceland. This training “Sensitisation training regarding migration, racism, discrimination, culture and diversity" was not only addressed to our internal project team, but also to other colleagues from the partner institutions. It aimed to sensitize coaches and teachers to be able to actively implement structures and discussions on sensitive topics in a collaborative and non-threatening way. As a group of 28 participants, we engaged with this thematic focus through cooperative work in various activities, discussions and practical training exercises. We thereby gained many inspiring new ideas and thoughts, which we want to transfer and incorporate into the development of our materials.
As a project team, we saw each other face to face for the first time after the project had already been running for a whole year and we only knew each other from the screen. We therefore really enjoyed getting to know each other and spending two days together, including coffee breaks, informal chats in between and fun in the breaks.
For more information on the meeting, please read our blog entry from the Slovenian partners.
Our next meeting will be in May in Reykjavik and we are very much looking forward to this special experience and the mutual exchange during the meeting.
IPIE Conference in April
On 8-9 April 2022 the International Perspectives in Education (IPiE) conference will be held in Leuven, Belgium. The conference is open to researchers and professionals in varying fields of research, from early years education to pedagogy and practice in Higher Education, including all disciplines of education and educational technologies. It is organized by the KU Leuven (Belgium), the University of the Aegean (Greece), the İzmir University of Economics (Turkey), the University of Lodz (Poland), and Leeds Trinity University (United Kingdom). More information about the conference and registration deadlines can be found in the website https://ipieconference.org/
ITTS in Social Media
On our ITTS blog on the project homepage new articles about our project partners and events appear every one to two months. In September the presentations of all project partners ended with the post about our Team at the University of the Aegean, based in Lesvos.
In another post you find a review of the intercultural training in Leuven written by the Slovenian project partners.