MULTICULTURAL TEACHING COURSE

Due to the recent rapidly expanding cultural diversity caused by the growing increase in the number of immigrants and refugees into Europe’s education systems, school systems are facing strong challenges because of multicultural students entering or already present in their school system.

Also, the cultural background of the students is having a profound impact on their education and lives, and understanding it stands as a part of the teachers’ current mission. Since multi-lingual and multi-cultural classrooms are a clear reality, then it is vital that teachers are prepared to face it and take benefit from it by promoting empathy and the sense of belonging to a same class / same school and to have common stories and especially common futures, analyzing how the barriers to a positive classroom environment work, identifying their own biases and realizing the power of multicultural education in the classroom/school.

The objective of this course is to resolve those challenges by increasing the teachers’ awareness of cultural diversity, detecting the needs of the present educational systems when dealing with cultural diversity in schools, developing methods and teaching material for multicultural education programs, concerning the students’ cultural background and adapting the lessons to these students’ specific needs, gaining practical ideas on how to apply different communication strategies in different cross-cultural contexts, exploring solutions to the challenges of working with migrants and refugees, and developing a plan for integrating intercultural training into your institutions and classrooms.