Developing and Assessing Intercultural Competence during a Mobility Programme for Pupils in Upper Secondary School: The Intercultura Assessment Protocol (original) (raw)
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Fast shifts in the Bologna process leading towards the establishment of a coherent and cohesive European higher education area (EHEA) have initiated many European tertiary institutions to pool their academic resources and cultural traditions together in order to promote the development of integrated study programmes and joint degrees. To meet the challenges of EHEA, eight European teacher training institutions have reshaped the already existing MA teacher training study programmes into a joint one, entitled "European Master for European Teacher Training" (EMETT), and integrated two extra core areas related to Intercultural Studies and Multilingualism to be implemented via a mobility term. The authors of the paper, members of EMETT designers' group, focus on the teachers' intercultural communicative competence, necessary for studying and practicing abroad. The target competence enables the mobility participants to cope with their own cultural backgrounds in interaction with the others. This paper juxtaposes the theoretical perspective on an interculturally competent European teacher to be trained via a mobility term with the current student teachers' attitudes towards the importance of the development of mobile European teachers to be trained and educated for practicing in the international context. The theoretical assumptions are followed by the data analysis of the diagnostic survey carried out by the EMETT design team at eight European universities to learn student teachers' attitudes towards a study period abroad, highlighting the attitude differences between such sample groups as student teachers of languages vs student teachers of other subjects, East Europeans vs West Europeans, Lithuanians vs representatives of other EU nationalities.
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The aim of this paper is to explore how the Italian secondary schools deals with the issue of assessing intercultural competence and, in general, transversal competences gained by returnees (16/17 years old) who participated in an annual individual exchange program. The considerations proposed in the present paper are the first results of ongoing doctoral research developed through a qualitative approach. The outcomes indicate a lack in the assessment of intercultural competence as well as a difficulty in assessing transversal competences by the Italian secondary schools. However, first attempts that seek to identify shared answers to the challenges posed by the student mobility to educational policies are developing. L'obiettivo del presente articolo è di esplorare in che modo le scuole secondarie di secondo grado in Italia affrontano la questione connessa alla valutazione della competenza interculturale e, più in generale, delle competenze trasversali acquisite dalle studentesse e dagli studenti (16/17 anni) che hanno partecipato a un programma annuale di mobilità studentesca individuale. Le considerazioni proposte in questo contributo rappresentano i primi risultati di una ricerca di dottorato in corso, sviluppata mediante un approccio qualitativo. I risultati indicano che nelle scuole secondarie di secondo grado in Italia vi è un'assenza di valutazione della competenza interculturale e vi è difficoltà nella valutazione delle competenze trasversali. Tuttavia, si stanno sviluppando dei tentativi di risposte comuni alle sfide poste dalla mobilità studentesca alle politiche educativa. Parole chiave: competenze interculturali, competenze trasversali, internazionalizzazione della scuola, mobilità studentesca, programmi scolastici interculturali, valutazione degli studenti, legislazione italiana.
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