Knowledge, values and Knowledge, values and skills in Intercultural skills in Intercultural

Education Education

Yorgos NikolaouAssistant Professor Educational Department of Primary Education of the University of Ioannina

Comenius-Project 134018-LLP-1-2007-1-CY-COMENIUS-CMP

Teacher In-Service Training for Roma Inclusion (INSETRom)

Structure of the lecture• The end of an era• Globalization, its characteristics

and consequences • The social transformation • The role of education• The risks in education• Multiculturalism • Managing multiculturalism • Interculturalism: principles,

postulates, course • Knowledge, values, skills • Political answers to contemporary

problems

The end of an era• After five centuries of Modernism,

we move into a new era • Confusion prevails regarding the

determination of its character • There are disputes over its name

(Post-Modernism, Late Modernism, Second Modernism)

Globalization and its characteristics

• Introduction of a technologically new way of production

• Changes in the relation of time and space

• Changes in transportations & communications – The environment

• Change of the role of the national state• Culture • Impacts on the individual• Market globalization – The financial

subjects

The consequences• Denationalization of the Nations –

States • Asymmetries between Finance and

Politics• Change in the labour organization• Social Bias and Development of

“two speeds”• Exclusion• Social changes

N. Kotzias

The social transformationProductive relations

Production

Labour Funds

Productivity law: innovations

Competition law: flexibility

Organization & management law: adaptability & strict coordination

The producer:

-”self-programmed” (flexible)

-unspecialized worker “employable”

Who own the funds?-The shareholders & businessmen, individually or collectively -Administrators -Global financial markets

Business network

Transformation of class relations

1. Social bias2. Excluded versus those who make the exclusion 3. Productive knowledge versus humanistic

principles

Consequences: -Cease of solidarity among the employees-Obliteration of the structure of classes

m. castells

Population changes• Population ageing• Reduction of births• Population movements (immigration,

refugees) • Expansion of international businesses

+• Ethnic awakening of the minorities

Multicolour – Multiculturalism

New challenges for EDUCATION

• I learn how to LEARN• I learn to DO• I learn to BE• I learn to LIVE TOGETHER

(jacques delors)

Knowledge and education

When nowadays work is replaced by knowledge and funds, work shall be assessed and transformed through knowledge. This means: investment on education and research! (u. beck)

Politicians have not understood that the actual technological possibilities of a country are found in its citizen’s ability to find solutions for the complex problems of the future (r. reich)

It results that under globalization conditions, a more extensive and worldwide homogenization will be attempted regarding education – both public and private – and will be mostly combined with the kind of economy prevailing, thus boosting its professional and applied character…

Education will offer the opportunity for more depth, though to a smaller number of people…

Rapid technological progress will impede the structuring of humanistic and traditionally moral personalities…

Grigoris Karafyllis

Political answers to the globalization procedure

• Building and optimization of the Society of knowledge & education

• Increase and not restriction of the time devoted to occupational training

• Relaxation of the strict orientation of education towards specific jobs & categories of professions

• Reorientation of education towards the acquisition of skills – keys to the expansions of the professional horizon

u. beck

Political answers to the globalization procedure

… it takes the instilment of a belief of solidarity among people together with the ongoing acquisition of knowledge, the development of science and technology.

Restriction to the indispensable and technological education is the largest risk that will lead to prejudice and to the cognitive and moral insufficiency of the man.

Gr. Karafyllis

The role of the school• We wonder where else, apart from

school, we could efficiently learn how to live together.

• School is a non-negotiable place of transfer of knowledge as well as of the moral and spiritual culture, thus this is where we shall learn how to live together.

• School is today “multicolour” and we shall locate the negotiation limits among the different identities co-existing therein.

Intercultural education• It is important to realise that, in the

framework of respecting diversity, we do not ask anyone to change by denying his special identity.

• The aim is the creation of a single comprehension and dialogue framework, by opening a communication channel, that will ultimately help in the collaboration among citizens, irrespectively to their origin.

Dedication to the Charter of Human Rights can give us the measure of the appropriate and balanced Interculturalism.

A. Papas

Knowledge in Intercultural Education

Intercultural education is not a cognitive field, such as Language or Mathematics. Its principles are extended throughout the Curriculum. However, the following are especially appraised:

The Knowledge of the world and its diversity• Knowing the “Others” and their cultures • Knowledge related to the biology and the

environment• The social and political Behaviour

Methods in Intercultural Education

Depending on the case, indicatively, • Critic – communicative teaching: I

learn how to learn • Group collaborative models• Experiential learning (project)• Inter-teaching methods • Constructive method, by exploiting

the students’ representations

Principles in Intercultural Education

• Justice• Equality• Freedom• Democratic ethos• Peace• Dignity• Education• Tolerance

Skills in Intercultural Education

• Empathy• Communication• Group collaboration• Flexibility• Understanding cultural

particularities• Networked thinking• Ability to solve conflicts• Reconciliation with the paradoxes

of the period of Second Modernism

New political attitudes

• Education is legalized the more it is harmonized with a social plan and program

• The new conditions, in an environment under globalization, introduce new scales of values and new political attitudes

• Integration into a system is now volatile and depends on staying at a place and not the national identity

New political attitudes

• School is called to play, in collaboration with the community, a fundamental role in adopting the new political attitudes, so as to learn to live together

• Educators and their education shall be at the center of our interest. They shall not be deprived of their Humanistic and Idealistic background

Education, under the conditions of the worldwide framework shall remain the powerful target that satisfies the multiple aspects of the existence of the historic man.

Gr. Karafyllis