Prague
Riga
Bratislava, Žilina
Budapest
Nottoden
Kaunas
Sulejówek
Ljubljana
Stuttgart
Graz
Zagreb
Malmö

5.2.9 National Training Event / Stuttgart

ECML Project B.1:
Intercultural Communication in Teacher Education

Stuttgart, Oct.19th / 20th, 2005
Workshop Report by Martina Huber-Kriegler, Gerlind Vief-Schmidt

CONTEXT

The National Training Event in Germany was organised by Gerlind Vief-Schmidt, Johannes-Kepler Gymnasium, Bad Cannstadt, in cooperation with the "Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart" as a further education event for "Fachberater and Fachberaterinnen" (teacher consultants / inspectors) and  teacher trainees ("Referendarinnen und Referendare"). Martina Huber-Kriegler, Pedagogical Academy Graz, functioned as ECML travelling expert.

The event had two parts: on Oct.19th the 45 "FachberaterInnen" for English as a Foreign Language of the Stuttgart region held a one-day in-service conference under the title "Intercultural Learning. Acquisition of Intercultural Competence". "FachberaterInnen" are specially trained, selected and appointed language teachers who act as specialist consultants to their colleagues at higher secondary schools ("Gymnasien") in all questions of teaching contents and teaching methodology. They also organise and hold in-service trainings for their respective colleagues, work in curriculum development and also evaluate teachers who apply for permanent tenure.

The following day, Oct. 20th, had a different organisational background, venue and target group. Martina Huber-Kriegler gave an introduction to Intercultural Communication in Foreign Language teaching to an audience of about 100 teacher trainees from all modern language departments (English, French, Italian, Spanish) who are currently in their year of student teaching and their respective teachers from the Departments of Language Didactics. This event was also initiated by Gerlind Vief-Schmidt and organisationally prepared by Ms Judith Späth-Goes from the "Seminar Stuttgart I for Language Didactics and Teacher Training".

CONTENTS   

The in-service event for the teacher consultants was divided into two parts as well / plenary presentations of theoretical foundations of ICC in the morning and a series of workshops held by Ms Vief-Schmidt, Christiane Peck, also a team member of project B1, Barbara Scheu and Manfred Jarosch together with Martina Huber-Kriegler in the afternoon.

Martina Huber-Kriegler started her introduction off with a quick overview of the morning's programme and a more detailed explanation of the context in which the event was taking place, the ECML as an institution with its agenda, resources and tasks. She then moved over to working at key terms with the participants. The terms were passed out on little cards and two partners were asked to come up with a preliminary definition of their own. These definitions were collected and then supplemented, expanded or corrected using the collection of definitions the team had created for the central workshop on overhead transparencies. This work of defining corner stones of the field in a cooperative manner at the same time functioned as a kind of ice-breaker (in a very formal setting) and as an activation of the participants' preliminary knowledge.

fter a short coffee break which many participants also used to browse the vast collection of books and teaching materials Ms Vief-Schmidt had brought to show them, Ms Vief-Schmidt gave a presentation on "Reflecting Language and Intercultural Learning", including such topics as politeness, sayings and cultural images which she has explored in much detail in her Comenius projects. She added a great variety of examples of discussion starters and topics for the classroom referring to the specific goals and skills of developing ICC in foreign language classes.

Ms Vief-Schmidt focused on incorporating ICC in the teaching of literature at secondary I, II and post-secondary level and introduced methods of teaching ICC in terms of categories (respecting identities, diversity). She also pointed out possibilities of coping with otherness through texts, projects, encounters). Furthermore she outlined ways of preparing pupils at an early language learning level for cultural issues and intercultural approaches.
To round off the morning programme, Martina Huber-Kriegler gave a PowerPoint presentation on "Mirrors & Windows" and then conducted a selection of activities from the book with the participants to illustrate the nature and structure of the book.

After the lunch break, participants split up into 4 small groups to attend the workshops ("Literature and Intercultural Learning on Lower Secondary Level", facilitated by Barbara Scheu, "Literature and Intercultural Learning on Higher Secondary Level", facilitated by Gerlind Vief-Schmidt, "Film and Intercultural Learning", facilitated by Christiane Peck, "Student exchanges and how to make them a success", facilitated by Manfred Jarosch and Martina Huber-Kriegler. Participants rotated through all four workshops and thus got to know a very wide selection of topics, teaching strategies and teaching materials for Intercultural Learning.

Gerlind Vief-Schmidt's workshop concentrated on ways of teaching stories taken from "One Language Many Voices" in an ICC way. She presented her approach towards including ICC methods and perspectives in dealing with literature, in particular short stories, by Spark, Sharaz, Kureishi. Ms Vief-Schmidt drew the participants' attention to the need for cultural discussions when these are appropriate, as in the stories mentioned above. The participants in the workshop accepted the necessity of learning to go beyond conventional ways of looking at otherness (as done in the traditional teaching of technical skills and knowledge, data and unilateral views of labelling cultures) and started to see the need for establishing ICC approaches as early as possible in language teaching and learning, also by making use of diversity in multi-ethnic classes.

Even though the event was not formally evaluated, many of the participants afterwards indicated a high degree of satisfaction with the contents of the seminar and workshops. They were also highly impressed with the publications and information material presented to them by the ECML (Mirrors & Windows, How Strange, Incorporating Intercultural Communication in Teacher Education).

On October 20th the organisational framework, target group and venue, were different, as mentioned above. Martina Huber-Kriegler had been invited to again start off half a day of training for student teachers dedicated to the topic of Intercultural Learning. She had 1 ½ hours altogether and was asked to inform them about the ECML, to give an introduction to the field but to also activate and prepare the group for the workshops to follow which were dedicated to ethic questions involved with Intercultural Learning.

This time, after giving all the official information on the mission and the supporting institutions, Martina used a worksheet with sentence starters inquiring about people's feelings during episodes of intercultural encounters. Even though there were about 100 student teachers with 4 different languages of study in the room their readiness to share some of their personal experiences with the whole crowd after discussing them in pairs was surprisingly great. A lot of those episodes and anecdotes gave Martina a chance to connect them with central concepts and terms in the discussion of key terms which was to follow. The approach from the personal to the general seemed to have been just the key to create a very positive, open atmosphere for sharing feelings in spite of the huge number of people in the room. Some very moving experiences were related which also revealed the tremendous historical burden which young Germans have to carry still in many parts of Europe and the world today. Another factor which points to the necessity of raising awareness of intercultural topics everywhere on the globe. !

For this group also some 50 copies of "Mirrors and windows" had been sent and the posters were just as quickly gone as the books. Several people, including the teacher trainers of the student teachers, came up to express their interest and satisfaction with the presentation and the contents of the introduction delivered. Even for most of them the information on the ECML itself seemed to have been new.

Gerlind Vief-Schmidt also held an extra afternoon of training on November 23rd at the Seminar for Didaktik II in Stuttgart for a group of 45 teacher trainees (all French teachers) about "Teaching ICC through Activities and Texts".

From all the feedback we got we think that the goals of this dissemination event have been reached and a large number of multipliers were met and informed, who had for the most part not been aware of the ECML and its agenda or very experienced in dealing with the topics of the trainings.

Workshop Information