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Diversity and Intercultural Competences in Early Childhood Education
Start date: Sep 1, 2014, End date: Aug 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

During two previous project periods from 2010-2014, IMPAECT (DE/10/LLP-LdV/TOI/147303/ 2010-1-DE2-LEO05-05422) and ILECE (DE/12/LLP-LdV/IVT/284546), an intensive cooperation with European partner insitutions on the topic "Intercultural learning" was born. During the first project, a teaching unit on intercultural education and mobility tools were elaborated together. In the following project ILECE (DE/12/LLP-LdV/IVT/284546), they were put into practice and tested. This just completed project aimed to further develop and strengthen the strong working partnership. All of these mentioned projects were based on ECVET principles and tools (Memorandum of Understanding, Work placement Profile, Institutional Agreement, Gothenburg Quality Agreement, Assessment Sheet for Students) and on the Europass documents (Europass Mobility Certificate, Europass CV with integrated Language Passport) Within this project, 24 students of Fachakademie did a 4-week placement in a child care institution in one of our 4 partner countries, whcih are Spain, Great Britain, Finland and the Netherlands. The students are doing a vocational training as a state-registered child care worker/ early childhood teacher which combines theory and practice. At the moment of the internship abroad, they had already completed a first vocational training, usually as a state-certified child care / nursery school assistant. Thus they left with 2 years' experience in the field of child care/ early childhood education. During their stay abroad the students of Fachakademie für Sozialpädagogik Kempten got to know and had to deal with different approaches of intercultural education in their host countries. They experienced themselves in another cultural environment and finally had to reflect on theory, practice and their own experience in the host country. It promoted their understanding for intercultural education and improved their professional skills and competences in this field. Furthermore this experience increased their awareness and open-mindedness about linguistic diversity in Europe and it trained their language and communication skills. The students' learning outcomes were assessed by the hosting partner institutions with the help of the ECVET-Tool "Assessment of Learning Outcomes". This way, the students’ learning experience abroad could be fully recognized by the sending institution as practical work experience required by the study programme. The students were awarded a "Europass Mobility". Furthermore, 8 staff members of Fachakademie training early childhood teachers took part in 4 different continuing education measures abroad. The participants teach theory and practice, are head teachers or Erasmus coordinators. The objective of staff mobility was on the one hand to make the Erasmus coordinators more proficient in foreign languages; on the other hand to allow the teaching staff to get to know new pedagogical appraoches and methods in early childhood education used across Europe, in order to share and implement this acquired knowledge during training and tutoring of future childcare workers; and last but not least to find new contacts within the teaching sector across Europe. All this following the principle of “learning together and from each other”. During a visit at a partner institution where our students have been getting practical experience for years, we succeeded in strengthening the existing cooperation and personal contact with the partner institution. Among the teaching staff, the effect was a clear positive attitude towards the idea of lifelong learning within Europe and towards the increasing international orientation of our learning institution.
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