Beneficial and interesting
The Potsdam project’s approach of linking the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with teaching formats in line with Internationalisation at Home proved to be extremely beneficial: sustainability topics arouse interest among Potsdam teaching staff in committing themselves to the internationalisation of teaching and to networking on a long-term, interdisciplinary and global basis.
Network and partnerships
International partnerships at a (higher) educational level are consolidated and student teachers can gain (practical) intercultural experience without leaving their familiar environment. Such short-term formats at the same time act as ‘icebreakers’ for stays abroad by student teachers, whereby they can reduce their inhibitions and foster their motivation for wider intercultural experiences.
Being able to implement the sustainable development goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015 primarily requires high-quality education. That empowers people and communities to act in a globally responsible manner. Future teachers play a decisive role when it comes to preparing younger generations for the challenges they face in a constantly evolving world. Our summer school raised awareness of this. It also enabled us to expand our international partnerships in this field, hone our students’ technical terminology skills and integrate more intercultural priorities into their teaching.Professor Britta Freitag-Hild, Chair Teaching English as a Foreign Language (Didaktik der Anglistik und Amerikanistik mit dem Schwerpunkt interkulturelles Lernen), until 2022 project manager of ‘UP Network for Sustainable Teacher Education’ at the University of Potsdam
International and intercultural
Examples of this are the summer school ‘Teaching the SDGs − Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship’, which took place in 2022, and the project week ‘1 Week for Future’, which was held for the third time in 2024.
Focusing on the SDGs meant that both formats enabled student teachers, pupils, teaching staff and lecturers to experience interdisciplinary, language-sensitive ways of working and to enjoy intercultural encounters.
Globally relevant issues were dealt with collectively and the participants developed (greater) sensitivity for other cultural, region-specific and socio-political perspectives. This involves otherness being understood as an enrichment and learning opportunity – an important attitude for the career of (prospective) teachers.
Expertise from around the world
The summer school introduced an interdisciplinary team of Potsdam teaching staff and international lecturers from several European countries, Australia, Colombia, India and the USA to a wide variety of professional expertise, disciplines and perspectives.
There were 32 Potsdam and 22 international student teachers who learned and collaborated in four discipline-specific study groups. These had already formed in a hybrid fashion the previous summer semester and finally met in Potsdam. The course was supplemented with interdisciplinary workshops and a cultural programme in Potsdam and Berlin.
There’s nothing more valuable than face-to-face encounter, especially when it comes to intercultural and international interaction. Online formats certainly offer important platforms, but direct human interaction creates connections that extend far beyond a pure exchange of professional views. I was particularly pleased to see how the participants – both lecturers and students – enjoyed meeting in person at the summer school after the long period of contact restrictions caused by the coronavirus. These personal encounters have strikingly demonstrated how essential they are to personal growth and motivation in international cooperation.Stefanie Goertz, project coordinator in the ‘UP Network for Sustainable Teacher Education’
Workshops for pupils
The project week ‘1 Week for Future’ involved teaching methodology lecturers coordinating with schools in Potsdam and Cairo to provide seminars to student teachers that prepared them for developing workshops dealing with the SDGs that they would subsequently deliver to eighth-grade pupils during the project week.
This occurred in a hybrid form – both locally at the schools as well as via an online discussion. Icebreaking activities involving the pupils from both schools were arranged in advance and created familiarity which enabled collaboration during the project week.
Positive side effect: individual participants in both formats subsequently decided on an internship semester or a study visit abroad.
The project week and summer school as well as other transfer projects associated with internationalisation are superb opportunities to achieve multiple internationalisation objectives at once: we were not only able to consolidate partnerships, enable our student teachers to gain practical experience in aspects of the Sustainable Development Goals that are now of existential importance to everyone and furthermore to train them in the interdisciplinary and sensitive teaching of culture and language. We were at the same time able to realise the desired side effect that cooperation with our partners established trust and motivated students to travel to Cairo or Jakarta for their internship semester or to Colombia or the USA for a semester abroad. This simultaneously makes internationalisation all the more rewarding.Dr Manuela Hackel, expert in the internationalisation of teacher education at the Centre for Teacher Education (ZeLB)