What is the project about?

Respect for and tolerance to diversity are fundamental European values. Nevertheless. the recent economic and financial crisis reinforced significantly the negative attitudes towards the "other" that the increased mobility evoked after the EU Enlargement.

Nowadays, the flow of refugees has fuelled into the existing hostility towards people with different cultural background. Diversity has become a challenge that people face and deal with on a daily basis. Acknowledging that the educational institutions are a place where diversities meet and interact on a daily basis and that they are the first pillar of the societal integration and acculturation, the project will address the topic of Diversity Management at school, focusing on the teachers as key actors in the process of transfer of knowledge, values, skills and competences. In contrast to the numerous initiatives providing the teachers will skills and competences of 'how to teach diversity', the current project will focus on one significant gap, identified in the teachers' training: How to teach diversity, how to teach in diversity and how to manage diversity.

How do we do this?

The project envisions five types of activities to reach the set goals:

Development of solid knowledge and understanding of diversity management (training packages, handbooks, methodology). Enabling the knowledge-based transfer and development of civic competences from teachers to their students (testing and monitoring). Raising awareness about diversity management mechanisms and development of new skills and approaches to diversity (dissemination activities). Supporting the early societal integration at school level through recruiting educational staff aware of and knowledgeable about culture-sensitive learning, mechanisms for mitigating intercultural conflicts, facilitating intercultural communication. • Establishment of an international educators' network for real time self-support in addressing diversity challenges and of a mobile application for facilitating the network's interaction. • Development of a training module and open educational resources in diversity management for teachers and adapting the developed training package for online training in diversity management for teachers.

See below our development plan