DIalogue and Argumentation for cultural Literacy Learning in Schools

Project Information

DIALLS

Grant agreement ID: 770045

DOI

10.3030/770045

Project closed

EC signature date 19 June 2018

Start date 1 May 2018

End date 31 May 2021

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Europe In A Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative And Reflective Societies

Total cost

€ 4 373 308,75

EU contribution

€ 4 373 308,75

Coordinated by

THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DIALLS (DIalogue and Argumentation for cultural Literacy Learning in Schools)

Reporting period: 2019-05-01 to 2021-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The current European landscape reflects a plurality of voices, cultures, and identities. Educational research, policy-making and practice can celebrate this by supporting young people to develop a deep awareness of European diversity of heritages and pluralistic European identity, and help them enact this awareness in their own dispositions and behaviours.

DIALLS is a 3 year project which aims to promote tolerance, inclusion and empathy through teaching children and young people the skills of dialogue and argumentation. It moves beyond a concept of cultural literacy as being about knowledge of culture (through exploration of literature and art for example) into a consideration of it as a dialogic social practice. Teaching children in schools from a young age to engage together in discussions where they may have differing viewpoints or perspectives, to enable a growing awareness of their own cultural identities, and those of others, was the central action of the project.

The project has three main objectives. First, it aimed to develop an understanding of young people’s cultural literacy in formal education through the teaching of dialogue and argumentation. This was achieved by the creation and implementation of a Cultural Literacy Learning Programme where students responded to and produced multimodal texts reflecting European heritages with the promotion of tolerance, inclusion and empathy as core cultural literacy dispositions. Second, the project provided comprehensive guidance for the development of cultural literacy in schools through the creation and evaluation of Scales of Progression for Cultural Literacy Learning as manifested in students’ interactions and produced artefacts. Our innovative teaching and assessment tools are designed to guide teachers in their development of a dialogic pedagogy for cultural literacy as a dialogic social practice. Third, we have promoted and celebrated young people’s sense of their cultural identities through a student-authored Manifesto for cultural literacy and a Virtual Gallery of students’ cultural artefacts.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

DIALLS started with a review of a wide range of European and national education policies dealing with intercultural dialogue to develop a Cultural Analysis Framework. This highlighted three core cultural themes Social Responsibility, Living Together and Belonging surrounded by the core DIALLS dispositions of Tolerance Empathy and Inclusion (see attached DIALLS wheel).
Next, 145 cultural texts from across Europe (short films and picturebooks) were selected to be included in the Bibliography of Cultural Texts. With a core set of 45 then chosen to support the development of a Cultural Literacy Learning Programme (CLLP). Teachers and researchers worked together create a programme of lessons for three age groups (5-6, 8-9,14-15). In seven countries, 247 teachers were recruited to implement the project starting in September 2019. Drawing on a functional analysis, and review of existing tools an innovative educational platform was built to afford the various online pedagogical scenarios envisaged during the CLLP and to provide an age-adapted interface to meet the various pedagogical requirements of the different age groups that were to use the system.

The implementation of the project proceeded as planned in Autumn of 2019, with teachers engaged in their own professional learning, and the CLLP underway in schools and data collected. COVID 19 struck as teachers were midway through the CLLP, causing implementation activities to cease. Even so, in the third year we were still able to create a rich multilingual corpus with over 200 individual lessons transcribed, https://zenodo.org/record/4742176#.YPrfNZNKhTY and conduct in-depth qualitative analysis about the dialogic quality of the children’s interactions.

In September 2021 we adapted the materials for the third phase of the project and recruited new teachers for this widening impact phase. Though their engagement continued to be blighted by COVID, they completed their engagement with the resources in February 2021, including the newly created Scales of Progression for Cultural Literacy Learning https://dialls2020.eu/spcll/ . A further key activity of this third year was the analysis of children’s cultural artefacts, a rich bank of children’s creative responses to the cultural themes.

COVID-19 notwithstanding we have been able to disseminate and exploit the results of the DIALLS project to a wide audience. DIALLS staff have participated and presented at over 50 events. Of particular note is a double page spread in Publico, one of Portugal’s most widely read newspapers and articles in two Lithuanian newspapers Further dissemination saw us publish 2 books (both fully open access) including our consortium edited book Dialogue for Intercultural Understanding which has been downloaded 12K times. We have published 10 peer-reviewed articles, all fully open access, including the books.
Key to the project were the voices of the children themselves, as epitomised by Alfonso, a young student from Portugal who introduces the whole project in our promotional video https://vimeo.com/534525185

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The timing of DIALLS has been apt. At a time when more than ever has society needed its citizens to act with tolerance, empathy and inclusion we created innovative and engaging resources for teachers and young people to learn to live together, be socially responsible and consider what it means to ‘belong’. Our progress beyond the state of the art includes:
• The platform that we created to be part of the implementation phase of the project has far-reaching potential and this is being explored by the DIALLS partner who developed it (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
• The multilingual corpus is unique. A total of 202 transcripts are included, of which 123 are presented in original language and English. At one point in the project children and young people all engaged with the same short film and lesson. As a result, 89 of the lesson transcripts document children and young people’s reflections on what it means to ‘belong’. This is a powerful snapshot of what it means to be European at this time in history – capturing the voices of approx. 2500 students.
• Student voice is further celebrated in a beyond the state-of-the-art Student Manifesto products and the Virtual Gallery – an open dataset of children’s multimodal responses to cultural themes https://dialls2020.eu/cultural-artefacts/
• The Cultural Literacy Learning Programme and associated online materials are a sustainable resource that is ‘stand-alone’, accessible and freely available to all.
• The website itself moves beyond the state of the art as it captures the impact of the project to date, has audience specific resources; and includes a searchable library of cultural texts with discussion prompts for the films which are all licensed as sustainable open access resources

DIALLS is ground-breaking in its synthesis of literacy, cultural heritage, policy, dialogue and argumentation and its productions of resources that enhance the relationships between them. We move beyond current innovative and dialogic pedagogies by focusing on collaborative responses to, and production of, cultural artefacts by younger generations.

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