The ICETEMP (Intercultural Citizenship Education through Teacher Education for the Mediation of Picturebooks) project, co-funded by the European Union, aims to promote responsible citizenship education and intercultural understanding by training English language teachers working with learners aged between 8 and 14.
Why this project is needed
European schools are facing growing socio-cultural challenges such as political polarisation, armed conflicts, migration, ecological and humanitarian crises linked to climate change. In this context, the development of intercultural competences and active citizenship is identified by UNESCO, the European Union and the Council of Europe as an educational priority. In particular, The White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue (2008) highlights the role of respectful and constructive communication in foreign languages for promoting dialogue between cultures.
Goals
ICETEMP aims to:
- enhance the linguistic and intercultural training of English teachers;
- promote innovative teaching practices focused on dialogue and the active participation of young learners;
- provide tools for addressing complex global issues in the classroom through English as a foreign language.
The approach: picturebooks and dialogic learning
The project focuses on the use of picturebooks as a key resource for promoting:
- intercultural dialogue;
- critical reflection;
- multimodal interaction in English language teaching.
Picturebooks offer powerful stories and images for discussing topics such as migration, refugee life, war, prejudice, discrimination and environmental issues. Through dialogic and multimodal approaches, ICETEMP promotes teaching methods that engage learners and encourage their active involvement.
Universities involved
International Coordinating University:
- Københavns Professionshøjskole, Copenhagen, Denmark: https://www.kp.dk/en/
Partner Universities:
- Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal — https://www.unl.pt/
- Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany — https://www.tu-braunschweig.de/en/
- University of Çukurova, Adana, Turkey — https://www.cu.edu.tr/eng/
- Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain — https://www.ucm.es/
- RPTU Kaiserslautern–Landau, Germany — https://rptu.de/en/
- Università degli Studi di Udine, Italy — https://www.uniud.it/it
