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(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie) 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/(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie) . 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(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)
