Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CLAIM-Tool (An Educational Tool for the Assessment of Cross-linguistic and Intercultural Mediation Competences.)
Période du rapport: 2021-09-01 au 2023-08-31
In our interconnected world, it is imperative to foster an inclusive and embracing society that welcomes and celebrates diversity. This can be achieved through intercultural education which strives to cultivate learners' Intercultural Competence (IC). Intercultural Competence encompasses understanding one's own and other cultures, maintaining attitudes of openness and respect towards individuals from diverse backgrounds, appreciating the richness of diversity, and possessing the requisite skills to communicate and engage effectively with those from varying cultural backgrounds.
The problem this project aimed to address is the lack of educational tools to help with developing and assessing intercultural competence and the process of intercultural learning. Scholars have created several frameworks and models for the development and assessment of IC; nonetheless, teachers and educational institutions were left with the challenging task of implementing intercultural learning. Despite the availability of some guidelines, there is still a huge debate and many gaps to be filled, particularly, in regard to the assessment of IC. Several projects have been sponsored by the Council of Europe to provide guidelines on intercultural education, yet they do not provide an actual assessment tool. Other attempts have been made to develop qualitative and quantitative assessment tools and frameworks for measuring IC. These, however, have come under scrutiny from experts in the field and have been criticized for their conformity and ethical concerns involved in evaluating learners’ intercultural attitudes and values from a predefined yet often implicit cultural perspective and with predefined categories of desired behavior.
The project's objective was to find a solution for this issue by designing a novel assessment tool that takes into account feedback from critics and aligns with European Union policies regarding intercultural education. This resulted in the creation of CLAIM-Tool. An educational tool for the development and assessment of intercultural competence and the process of intercultural learning. The tool provides data from actual intercultural experiences not only to assess learners’ IC progress, but also to evaluate the intercultural learning process itself, thus giving feedback to learners and teachers on how to adjust and adapt their intercultural learning activities to best suit the learning context of their students. Through statistics generated by the tool, we are helping teachers conduct easy and effective IC assessment and improve their intercultural teaching.
The problem this project aimed to address is the lack of educational tools to help with developing and assessing intercultural competence and the process of intercultural learning. Scholars have created several frameworks and models for the development and assessment of IC; nonetheless, teachers and educational institutions were left with the challenging task of implementing intercultural learning. Despite the availability of some guidelines, there is still a huge debate and many gaps to be filled, particularly, in regard to the assessment of IC. Several projects have been sponsored by the Council of Europe to provide guidelines on intercultural education, yet they do not provide an actual assessment tool. Other attempts have been made to develop qualitative and quantitative assessment tools and frameworks for measuring IC. These, however, have come under scrutiny from experts in the field and have been criticized for their conformity and ethical concerns involved in evaluating learners’ intercultural attitudes and values from a predefined yet often implicit cultural perspective and with predefined categories of desired behavior.
The project's objective was to find a solution for this issue by designing a novel assessment tool that takes into account feedback from critics and aligns with European Union policies regarding intercultural education. This resulted in the creation of CLAIM-Tool. An educational tool for the development and assessment of intercultural competence and the process of intercultural learning. The tool provides data from actual intercultural experiences not only to assess learners’ IC progress, but also to evaluate the intercultural learning process itself, thus giving feedback to learners and teachers on how to adjust and adapt their intercultural learning activities to best suit the learning context of their students. Through statistics generated by the tool, we are helping teachers conduct easy and effective IC assessment and improve their intercultural teaching.
The main scientific achievement of the project was the research, design, and development of the CLAIM-Tool, a digital tool for the development and assessment of intercultural competence and the process of intercultural learning. The Tool was created and developed after extensive desk research taking into account the latest scientific advancements and educational policies in the field and considering criticism to which the existing frameworks fell victim. In addition, the work conducted was presented in conferences and workshops, and published in one of the leading scientific journals in the field and will provide the research team with valuable scientific and didactic data.
The IC tool developed during the fellowship is the first of its kind in terms of design, content, and purpose. No other tool uses the inductive learning method adopted, instead of predefined, deductive methods. The Tool presents a solution to an imperative and critical matter in intercultural assessment and the designing and implementation of intercultural education, which is at the very heart of the European Union’s educational policies. Unlike other intercultural assessment tools, the app will (1) allow learners to dynamically and systematically highlight and self-reflect on the different sets of intercultural competences elicited as a reaction to each intercultural experience, and not be confined with one format of interculturality, (2) take context into account during assessment and also planning of intercultural activities, (3) be a personalized account of IC progress adaptable to age-diverse audiences instead of answers to hypothetical questions that are out of students’ experiences, (4) be a developmental/diagnostic tool rather than a placement or summative one, which will minimize unethical judgments of students intercultural competences. The Tool, especially when developed into a social media-like App, could greatly help learners, teachers and educational institutions better develop and assess intercultural competences, thus contributing to the creation of future generations that are more open and accepting to diversity, who can effectively and efficiently deal with differences, misunderstandings, or conflicts.