Tools to prevent racism and enhance multiculturalism in VET colleges

Main objective of the project: Exchange of Good Practices

According to Eurydice (2019) “Integrating Students from Migrant Backgrounds into Schools in Europe: National Policies and Measures” -report: “migrant students underperform and express a lower sense of well-being in school compared to native-born students in most European countries.” There are different factors at play, but among them, is the questions of teachers’ ability to consider the diversity and to adapt to needs and to provide adequate support. It seems, that there is a lot of material about racism and multiculturalism in the field of basic education, but in general, very little in the field of the vocational sector. Therefore, there is a great need to gather more information from different countries and exchange as well as to adapt the good practices to the vocational sector, too. The project objectives are twofold: we want to improve the vocational schoolteachers’ (subject and practical) skills and competences to detect and understand racism in the vocational school setting and to better equip them with needed competencies and practical tools for them to adjust and support students with diverse backgrounds.

The chosen concept is four-day workshops that are to be carried out in each project participant’s country. The structure of a workshop will be as follows:  Day 1: Introduction to the local context

Day 2: Presenting the findings and discussion + exercises

Day 3: Developing and preparing a small pilot activity

Day 4: Pilot day + evaluation

The focus of the workshop, however, changes according to the host school as every country has its context that should be considered when talking about multiculturalism and racism. Countries’ different migrant histories and stages provide a massive amount of valuable information as well as do the teachers’ multifaceted backgrounds and experiences as teachers. However, to ensure that the workshops are focused, contextualized and time-efficient we have been contemplating inviting experts to facilitate the first two days of the workshop.