Internationalization in Teacher Education. Thoughts on learning, mobility and staying at home.

Dr. Ursula Hans

What have we said about I-zation of Teacher Ed so far?

An International Office perspective: we have castigated ourselves for not recognizing the potential of this group of multipliers earlier; in mobility special challenges

As second step, we have realized that this is a unique opportunity to think about internationalizing a group at home rather than focusing exclusively on mobility. Realization also that this means a new stage in teaching students to be international beyond „instinctive absorption“ during outbound mobility and toward managed learning and conscious acquisition of international qualities

As third step, focus on learning outcomes at home demands different structures and a whole set of new proponents to carry it in the university than outbound mobility: beyond the International Office.

At Home Versus Abroad

• Is complexity what made International Offices ignore this group for so long?

• How does one teach „otherness“• A different kind of Internationalization: Stay at home

learning lacks vulnerability of being out of own culture abroad. Another kind of negotiation with self needed

• Question of Assessment of „international“ qualities. Cultural awareness must be measured and assessed in a way that so far we have mostly avoided

• A lot more „apparatus“ needed for this than before.

• The environment: Ernst-Abbé School in Neukölln, Prof. Stefan Kipf

• Latin can build bridges between language learners of German and migrant backgrounds

• Power relations in language: learning and talking about culture and self in a language that is no students first language

• Developing new teaching materials: teacher students and professors cooperate

• So far learning outcome measured is in terms of Latin, not the intercultural effectiveness of using Latin as a medium

• What can we do outside the languages?

Learning Outcomes: an international project that does not teach internationality?

The complexity of learning to be international

• What is it that we want students to learn when we want them to become internationalized?

- able to assume multiple cultural perspectives on their own and other cultures- open to perceiving difference in themselves and others and adjust accordingly (e.g. in teamwork)- able to accept that stereotyping is a normal impulse and put the stereotypes back into perspective- teacher students: able to design units of classwork in their field that will transport and train these skills to students

Outlook: what we can do

A recent conference provided a list of all the measures we need to take:Information and advisingSetting up a set of opportunties for study/student teaching abroad Learning to teach:Providing support for internships abroadIntegrate windows for study abroad and intercultural learning

Explaining and experiencing other school systems

Humboldt´s Incoming Teachers

There is another group that is interesting for us and that we have paid little attention to so far: incoming student teachers

Potential for replicating study abroad experience for stay at home student teachers

Interesting for comparisonSetting up special joint classes and projects

Finally: Life-long learning

Thank you!