This document discusses creating more inclusive schools through intercultural learning and appreciation of diversity. It emphasizes shifting from seeing differences as problems to opportunities for learning, collaboration, and changing together. Key strategies discussed include developing intercultural skills through critical reflection, collaborative inquiry into the school context to understand barriers, and using evidence to stimulate organizational change. The goal is increasing participation of all students through more welcoming, cooperative learning environments and removing obstacles in both school structures and people's minds.

1. Learning from Diversity
eTwinning professional development workshop
Intercultural appreciation and inclusion:
challenging schools
Isabel Paes
ACIDI, IP – Portugal

2. High Comissioner for Immigration
and Intercultural Dialogue (ACIDI)
(…)‘to fight all forms of discrimination,
through positive actions of awareness,
education and training, and to promote
interculturality, through intercultural and
inter-religious dialogue, based on the
respect of the Constitution, the Law and
recognising the value of cultural diversity
and mutual respect.’

3. intercultural learning
Condition of sustainability in our multicultural societies
Changing Multicultural into Intercultural Contexts
Multicultural Intercultural
Culture as a static concept Culture as a dynamic concept
Difference is recognized Understanding of Difference
Poor management of diversity Constant efforts to deal with
diversity
Differences coexist Differences interact:
people learning from each
other and changing together

4. common challenges faced by
schools in Europe
. growing diversity
. a large number of students facing
barriers
(particularly regarding opportunities for
full participation and low achievement)
• How to respond to diversity?
• How to promote equity in education?

5. equity in education
• high expectations: every person is able
to learn and achieve
something
and
• relevant opportunities for all:
- participation
- learning

6. inclusion:
a paradigm shift - From Them to Us
Us Them
Us

7. challenging beliefs in school
Opposite ways of looking at educational difficulties:
Perspective 1: Difficulties defined in terms of
student characteristics (deficit perspective)
Perspective 2: Difficulties defined in terms of
organizational conditions (curricular
perspective)
From Ainscow, M. (1994) Special Needs in the Classroom: A Teacher
Education Guide. Cambridge: UNESCO Publ.

8. example: Learning from Diversity
a school development guide
Developing a School’s Network – Inclusive Education Project (ME)
Disseminating a Guide for School Development (ACIDI/ME)
key issues
• collaboration
• coordination teams
• shared leadership
• joint problem solving
• managing time for development activities
• action learning
• external elements
• school’s networks
Learning from Diversity (Caldeira et al., 2004)
www.acidi.gov.pt

9. example: developing a schools’
network
The project challenge for the schools
developing a curricular perspective approach:
● How can we make a better use of the resources available
for learning and participation?
- students
- teachers and their partners in school
- parents and other partners in the community
- other schools and external elements
● How can we reorganize the curriculum and school’s
policies in order to improve opportunities for all
students in the local community?
Using the INDEX FOR INCLUSION (Booth e Ainscow, 2001, CSIE)

10. key lessons: developing more
inclusive schools
• improvement has to be led from within
• it is a long development process requiring
leaders committed and fixed in a school
• ‘building bridges’, an effective role for leaders:
- shared leadership
- involving different people
- developing new values and a shared
commitment towards equity
- encouraging experimentation
Collaboration in school and supportive school’s
networks are the best means of mobilising
available expertise. (Mel Ainscow, 2008)

11. inclusive education:
an organizational perspective
• The process of increasing the participation of
students in, and reducing their exclusion from the
curricula, cultures and communities of local schools
• Restructuring the cultures, policies and practices of
schools so that they respond to the diversity of
students in their locality
• The presence, participation and achievement of all
students vulnerable to exclusionary pressures, not
only those with impairments or those who are
categorised as ‘having special educational needs’
From Ainscow, M., Booth, T. and Dyson, A. (2006) ‘Improving
Schools, Developing Inclusion’. London: Routledge

12. developing more inclusive schools
a process of removing barriers to learning and
participation - specially those faced by the students
most vulnerable to marginalization...
... starting with removing the obstacles buried in our
own minds:
learning to live together - learning from diversity
The best way to reach new values:
involving all people in a school’s community in
successful initiatives that bring innovation

13. learning from diversity in school
• looking at diversity as an opportunity for
learning: developing intercultural skills
• building welcoming cooperative learning
environments that fosters collaboration:
partnerships/organizing learning events
• developing research skills through
collaborative inquiry – analysis of the
school context
• using evidence as an engine for change

14. building intercultural skills in school
• Intercultural competence as an essential tool for all
• Critical reflection: sharing different views/challenging
beliefs: a cross curricular task
Creating conditions for personal and social change
looking at oneself as a learner
It requires:
• Modifying the process of knowledge construction:
learning through cooperation; creating conditions for
cooperative learning
• Giving students a more active role in their own learning
• Changings in the hidden curriculum, in classroom
management and interaction and in the teacher’s role.
(From Díaz-Aguado, 2000)

15. organizing school-based learning events
• Meeting different people with different roles
• Getting to know each other
• Sharing good practices and achievements
• Providing and getting feedback
• Discussing the details of practice with peers
• Developing self-confidence
• Building new tools and strategies
• Creating a common language
• Sustaining communities of practice
Learning to work in collaboration
Learning together in school

16. school context analysis through
collaborative inquiry
• Developing a focus
• Inviting external elements as ‘critical friends’
• Involving students as researchers
• Listening to different / hidden voices
• Classroom / school observation
• Writing ‘stories’
an action learning approach
(Mel Ainscow, 2008)

17. using evidence as a stimulus for
change: overcoming barriers
opportunities for joint planning and practice:
• involving different people from every group in
the local community
• developing a common sense of purpose
• engaging with evidence
• leading change step by step
The most important factor: the collective will to
make it happen (Ainscow, 2008)

18. “… if you think the subject of education is knowledge, then
to make it more powerful, wonderful and inclusive, it follows
that knowledge should get more general, that some
knowledge should illuminate other knowledge. Perhaps that
is why the idea of ‘theory’ is so appealing.
But the subject of education isn't knowledge - it's
people. To make them more powerful, wonderful, and
inclusive, we can only help create with them
circumstances in which they can gradually transform
their own needs, knowledgeability, and grasp of their
future possibilities.”
(Lave, 2001)

19. bibliography
Ainscow, M. (1994) Special Needs in the Classroom: A Teacher Education
Guide. Cambridge: UNESCO Publ.
Ainscow, M.; Booth, T. (2001) Index for Inclusion. Bristol: CSIE.
Ainscow, M., Booth, T. and Dyson, A. (2006) Improving Schools, Developing
Inclusion. London: Routledge.
Caldeira, E.; Micaelo, M.; Paes, I.; Vitorino, T. (2004) Learning from
Difference. A School Development Guide (Portuguese version). Lisboa:
ACIME/DEB (ME)
Díaz-Aguado, M.J. (1996) Programa de Educación para la Tolerancia y
Prevención de la Violencia en los Jóvenes. Madrid: Ministerio del TAS
Lave, J. (2001) Learning in Practice: The Kalundborg Production School. CUP