Teacher's Competences

Teachers' Competences in Multicultural School Settings

DESCRIPTION OF THE UNIT:

This unit helps student teachers to reflect on the various competences a teacher needs in a multicultural school setting. The students are introduced to the case study of a Hungarian multicultural school and community as well as to the notion of teacher competences. The student teachers participate in group work in order to negotiate their teacher competences and to discuss the possibilities of effective ways for professional development.

This unit is linked to the unit “Cartima Lower Secondary School”.

OBJECTIVES:

to support students to reflect on the development of their teacher competences, especially in multicultural settings
to introduce a Hungarian initiative of inclusive education for Roma pupils
to raise student teachers' awareness of the importance of the local community for the school system

EXPECTED LEARNING OUTCOMES:

At the end of this unit the learners will be able to...

… understand the concept of teacher’s competences
… analyse and reflect on their teacher’s competences and beliefs in multicultural settings
… identify ways of improving their own teacher’s competences
… understand the different challenges of multicultural school contexts
… analyse the challenges and innovations for the inclusion of Roma pupils

APPLIED METHODOLOGIES:

This unit will be conducted in an interactive manner and will require a great deal of student participation. Most of the activities will be conducted in mixed groups which help students to critically reflect on the challenges of multicultural school settings in different countries.

Section 1. Round question: What do you think about the expectations of teachers in multicultural school setting?

Section 2. Lecture and videos: Introducing an initiative for inclusion of Roma pupils in a high poverty area in Hungary.

Section 3. Discussion about the questions raised by the videos and lecture.

Section 4. Explanation of competence and teacher’s competences.

Section 5. Group work about student teachers’ competences: In groups student teachers are asked to identify their strong competences and those that should be developed in order to teach in multicultural school setting. Furthermore, they are asked to brainstorm about how they can further develop these competence areas.

Section 6. Group work presentation: The small groups present the results of their collaborative work to the whole group. Student teachers give feedback on the work of each group.

REFERENCES:

European Commission (2013): Supporting teacher competence development for better learning outcomes. Education and Training. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/education_culture/repository/education/policy/school/doc/teachercomp_en.pdf
Ritók, N. L. and Bodoczky, I. (2012), ‘The positive influence of art activities on poor communities’, International Journal of Education through Art 8: 3, pp. 329–336, doi: 10.1386/eta.8.3.329_7