R/EQUAL – Requalification of (recently) immigrated and refugee teachers in Europe

R/EQUAL – Requalification of (Recently) Immigrated and Refugee Teachers in Europe A) Summary In times of increased migration since 2015, Europe has become a central destination for a high number of migrants and refugees worldwide. Sweden, Germany and Austria are the main target countries for many recently immigrated people from conflict and war zones. Within this group also teachers have come to Europe. The possibilities to acknowledge the qualifications of these highly skilled migrants vary according to the respective national migration policy and the regulations of teacher training. Most of these teachers cannot work as teachers in the host country without further qualification. (R)EQUAL focused on international networking and the exchange of expertise in the field of higher education activities concerning (recently) immigrated and refugee teachers in Europe. (R)EQUAL supports existing programmes at the Universities Stockholm, Vienna, Cologne and the University of Education Weingarten by collaborating on a European level. At the same time, the collected expertise for running a programme in the future was provided for other Higher Education Institutions in Europe. On this account open-access modules were developed: 1) a Theoretical Framework with a comparative analysis of the current regulations of teacher training for (recently) immigrated and refugee teachers in Sweden, Germany and Austria as well as the requalification partner programmes (Intellectual Output 1), 2) a Manual for language learning in multilingual contexts considering all language competencies existing in a translingual learning setting in Higher Education (Intellectual Output 2), 3) a Toolbox of teaching- and learning methods in Higher Education for working on the topic of heterogeneity in schools considering the European anti-discrimination policy (Intellectual Output 3),4) a Digital Library on scientific literature regarding teacher professionalisation and internationally trained teachers in international perspective including an own R/EQUAL interview study on programmes for (recently) immigrated and refugee teachers (Intellectual Output 4), 5) a General Guideline including an overview of the results of IO1 to IO5 as well as further recommendations to set up a programme for (recently) immigrated and refugee teachers (Intellectual Output 6).The decision on the participatory approach chosen for R/EQUAL was based on the overall conviction that the project activities need to be carried out together with the participating international teachers. Therefore (recently) immigrated and refugee teachers were involved in the development and application of the project results. The implementation of the chosen participatory approach has been evaluated within the project (Intellectual Output 5). B) Project Partners University of Cologne, Germany (lead, coordinator: Dr. Henrike Terhart) University of Vienna, Austria Stockholm University, Sweden University of Education Weingarten, Germany C) Duration September 2018 – March 2021