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Bildungskonzepte im Vergleich - Lehren, Lernen und Anwenden
Start date: Sep 15, 2014, End date: Jul 28, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Currently child care workers are continuously challenged with increasing requirements. They are confronted to precociously encourage and optimize educational processes of children, especially from educationally deprived families. Thereby they have to react adequately towards the specific circumstances of families with a migratory background. In doing so they are required to provide information on their reflected actions so their work becomes transparent and can continuously be improved. Besides the acquirement of pedagogical expertise in this increasingly complex work field personal, intercultural, and organizational skills are essential. These skills have to be effectively initiated during the vocational education of child care workers. An internship in a European elementary organization is exceedingly suitable to abet this goal. On the one hand this project was intended for students in their first year of vocational education, they are to complete a 5-week internship in a child care facility in Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, France, and Czech Republic. On the other hand the teaching staff was to visit a child care facility in the countries of destination and observe processes as well as to participate in work/staff meetings and stimulate a professional and critical discourse on intercultural and pedagogical approaches towards early childhood education with the team of the facility. Goals for the students were established in three sections: Professional-occupational competences: The interns grappled with the European systems of institutionalized early childhood education and compared it with the German system. By doing so they dealt with the pedagogical approaches of the facility, the cultural shaped image of a child, and the cooperation with other educational instances. Intercultural skills: Life in a new cultural environment allowed the relation of one’s norms and values – a necessary premise for intercultural tolerance. Experiences as a foreigner allowed them insight in the viewpoint the emotions of migrants. They experienced the boundaries of understanding with their lacking language skills. Simultaneously with the expansion of their foreign language skills they experienced the importance of language as the key to understanding and integration as well as the key to express the state they are in. Organisational skills: The students independently prepared and carried out their stay and concluded it with a personal presentation and reflection of results. After the project we expected all interns to be capable to progress their own mobility by realizing abroad stays with an educational value. Each intern became acquainted with the country-specific knowledge of the early education system, knows particular pedagogical approaches of this country, and is able to publicly present this. The acquirement of intercultural skills weren’t able to be measured with enhanced knowledge. This will be expressed in modified views and reasoning. In regard to the enthusiasm of the abroad experiences it is possible to deduce a certain change in the judgements and assessments. The objectives for the teaching staff were established as: The possibly first professional abroad experience enclosed an informal learning effect and growth which can lead to an intercultural skill. Through the reflected theoretical country-specific knowledge in early childhood education a partial modification of the vocational training curriculum became apparent. By personal encounters and discussions enhanced perspectives to intercultural pedagogical competences and concepts were transported in class. Furthermore the abroad experiences created more impulses and discussions of the staff on topics such as comparative pedagogy as well as other political and professional approaches in the vocational training of child care workers.
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