Certification of the university curriculum developers in the field of intercultural education

On 4-5 April 2019, the third workshop with the topic “Evaluation-development-training strategies of intercultural competence” has been carried out for university professors from the State University of Moldova, the Comrat State University and the “Alecu Russo” State University of Balti, potential authors of the curriculum on intercultural education.

The workshop is part of the activities of the project Promoting and developing intercultural education for pre-service teacher training, implemented by EC PRO DIDACTICA,  with the financial support of the Pestalozzi Children Foundation (Switzerland). At this stage, the work was also done in a constructivist key, the main focus being on “Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking Development” strategy, but this was not the only one, as well as with the main goal of widening the arsenal of strategies, methods and functional techniques applicable to the future course or module.

University didactic, with its double impact on the professional training of future teachers was the object of the express interest of the trainees. At this sequence of the professional development program, the participants were particularly active, and because the subject was so alive – they wanted to share their experience and obviously they did it generously.

In the final evaluation questionnaires, the beneficiaries concluded: the workshop responded to the expectations to one hundred percent; working methods were appropriate, even fascinating; “I was impressed by the new techniques we have acquired, but also the updated ones, to which we have discovered new valences”; the proposed pedagogical supports were useful.

The participants also expressed their admiration for the professional skills of the trainer, the conditions created to learn, including the experience of colleagues and for the beneficial general atmosphere that contributed to the success of the workshop.

Finally, the participants were offered certificates, and the homework was provided: developing intercultural education curricula, according to the study plans of each institution and relevant to the multicultural context in which the students live and learn, but also to the one in which they will work as pedagogues of socio-humanistic disciplines.

Viorica GORAŞ-POSTICĂ,
project expert