Intellectual Output 3: Guide for Educators

The guide for adult educators will correspond with the training program for intercultural workers and refer to the repository and map of approaches. It will contain the goals of the whole idea of the project as well as the explanation of differences between the migrant generations of 1.5 and 2. It will explain the key issues of the social roles of different generations in culturally heterogeneous social environment. But it will not be focused on typical methods of intercultural dialogue or refers to popular ideas of diversity. It will be focused on

multidimensional nature of cultural phenomena, i.e. it will highlight the importance of contexts in which specific behaviors can have different meanings. The everyday life of families and people living in multicultural environments is full of specific situations in which ready-to-use tools can be insufficient or inadequate. 

Therefore, these tools and solutions should rather be of supportive and possible to be self-adjusted kind. Such an approach requires intercultural workers to be more leaders of learning than trainers or social workers. So, the leaders of learning approach will be the core of the methodology proposed in the guide: to show adult educators how to teach to create a learning environment of different kinds (according to the

needs) rather than to teach how to teach. Thus, the intercultural workers can empower their social environment to change rather than try to change it by themselves as it may easily lead to failure and to get discouraged.

The course will be divided into three parts, from which two of them will be on two levels (theoretical and practical).

1. Project description with goals and explanations about its key issues and approaches. This will also present all the tools elaborated in IO1-IO5. This part is mostly theoretical, however it will be short, focused on basic aspects and refers to all other deliverables. Its main goal is to create in educators awareness on the meaning and the opportunities of being joined in their work by second generations.

2. Theoretical background of the methodology – the knowledge about multidimensional nature of cultural phenomena, about skills that are required to work in a multicultural social environment and the most important issues regarding delicacy of influencing life of multicultural families or people living in multicultural environments. This part will be followed by examples of good practices, references to repository (IO1) and the map of approaches (IO2), as well as self-reflective exercises for educators.

3. Methodology of training based on the creation of a learning environment. This part will be especially correlated with the IO4, as it will be the explanation of the approach used in training. This part will be also followed by examples and self-reflective exercises. Both parts – 2 and 3 will also be a practical guide on how to create exercises for the training of intercultural workers.

The main target group of this output are adult educators and trainers that can work with people of 2nd generation migrants. These educators are not only professional trainers but also social workers, job counsellors, teachers and volunteers working with migrants.

Expected impact

The guide will present a new kind of methodology for the trainers, who often use ready methods that can be insufficient and/or inadequate. But it will also include the knowledge and information about skills that are needed to educate adults so it can be used also by people not dealing with training in their everyday job. The main advantage of this guide is that it can be used without any prior or parallel training. It would be easily used and adapted by every person working with migrants or willing to work in multicultural society.

Elements of innovation

The guide will be based on an innovative approach to education based on the creation of a learning environment rather than teaching. This model assumes three main goals: to discover and strengthen the potential of future intercultural workers, to enable them to create proper education environment that encourage people to learn how to deal with problems on the border of two (or more cultures) and finally to preserve and develop this environment so as to ensure sustainability of the efforts. This unique methodology will be an axis of curriculum of the training.

Transferability potential
The completeness and possibility of using the guide by everyone dealing with migrants will enable it to be used by people in other than partner countries. Along with complementary deliverables of the project, it will be a powerful tool to be implemented in many areas and social environments. And its methodology can be also transferred to work with other than culturally heterogeneous social environments, like for example social environments being at risk of social exclusion (because of poverty or crime).