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University of Bremen: Mainstreaming Diversity & Inclusion

Diversity and Inclusion’ content-focused network

Diversity awareness as a central aspect of professional skills

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Focus and objectives

The ‘Lehramtsstudium International: Mainstreaming Diversity and Inclusion’ project facilitates two key outcomes. On the one hand, University of Bremen trainee teachers gain international and transcultural experience through a range of teaching and school-based opportunities. On the other hand, lecturers from partner universities outside Germany engage in discussions about the significance of diversity and inclusion as overarching themes in teaching, and about the diversity of students and criticising discrimination in teacher training itself.

Detailed discussions and dialogue

In this project, detailed academic discussions form the basis for networking lecturers across subject and national borders. They cover developing and implementing joint, transnational teaching concepts in formats which range from mutual inspiration in teaching with analogue and digital participation, to entire seminar courses taught collaboratively.

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Although we all come from very different places, and even continents, our passion for education and inclusivity unites us. It has been wonderful connecting with people.
Master’s degree student, University of Toronto

Impressionen der International teaching Week.

Working with partners from Austria, Canada and Namibia makes it possible to engage in deep teaching and learning-related discussions which, while greatly varied, centre around a common core of recurring ideas of diversity and inclusion in education studies.

For lecturers and students involved in the project alike, this provides both an opportunity for reflection on their own fundamental ideas and beliefs and their historical roots in their respective national contexts, along with inspiration to develop these ideas further.

 

Collaboration structures in practice

In addition to building robust collaboration structures for study and practice stays abroad, the project also develops flexible formats for placement semesters linked to universities abroad. Further, the project also made it possible to develop a network of expertise as the basis for wide-ranging and high quality services for students. We took networking opportunities for students into greater depth by holding a summer school and an International Teaching Week.

International Teaching Week & Summer School

The summer school is an intensive experience with other students outside the university semester, while the International Teaching Week is integrated into the course of the semester.

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The whole week was a great success. The opportunities to work together, to immerse ourselves in the working atmosphere of the University of Bremen, to meet new colleagues, and to share ideas and experiences which we can build on both in theory and in practice. [...]
Lecturer, University of Vienna

Both programmes include collaboratively developed events for students along with workshops for lecturers and researchers which dealt with diversity and inclusion as both the starting point and goal dimension of teacher education.

Impressions from the International Teaching Week

Impressions of the International Teaching Week.

Cathrin Eisenstein

In addition to visiting schools in Bremen, summer school participants engaged with questions such as school and teacher professionalism in their respective contexts and got to know different approaches and practices in the context of the university phase of teacher education.

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The event helped us see [teacher] students’ needs and their understanding of inclusive education.
Lecturer, KPH Vienna/Krems

The International Teaching Week included opportunities for discussion such as the conversation following Prof. Inci Dirim’s opening presentation on provision for multilingualism in teacher education, a workshop on diversifying trainee teachers, and a panel discussion with teachers from around the world. These all framed the visits to seminars and lectures, particularly regular classes, as part of the ‘Responding to School Heterogeneity’ course, which the education studies departments at the University of Bremen offer as a compulsory course for all trainee teachers.

International Summer School

A network is born

Austausch und Diskussion zweier Projektteilnehmenden.

Rich and varied conversations between international partners in the context of preparing for and delivering the summer school and other discussion formats gave rise to new partnerships. These are no longer bilateral relationships between Bremen and its partners in Windhoek, Vienna, Winnipeg and Toronto, but have grown out of thematic interconnections into a genuine network.

For example, students from Namibia took part in an online workshop prepared jointly by students from Bremen and Vienna, while Bremen students benefitted from expertise in linguistic diversity and empowerment which emerged at the intersection between colleagues from Canada and Namibia.

Impact beyond the project itself

Ultimately, it was not only the students who benefitted from the quality and stability of the content-focused collaborations. Shared practical development work to support students and demand for students in internationalised teaching are essential to consolidate the network of teacher training-specific priority partnerships.

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