Exploring and Educating Cultural Literacy through Art (EXPECT_ART)

The overall aim of EXPECT_art is to identify current barriers and potentials for promoting critical cultural literacy by means of arts education, education through arts and uses of arts in education within and across different educational contexts in Europe, to generate and activate knowledge on how to enhance critical cultural literacy and understanding among European citizens. 

The objectives of the project are: 

1. Identification of existing measures and barriers for critical cultural literacy in arts education, education through arts and uses of arts in education at the national and local levels through secondary data analysis and the study of existing practices through fieldwork 

2. Exploration of the impacts and potentials of decolonization of arts education, education through arts and uses of arts in education to foster critical cultural literacy, by conducting in-depth case studies of schools and local communities in six countries applying critical ethnography and community-based research in Art Exploratoriums

3. Development and dissemination of interventions and workshop formats for enhancing critical cultural literacy through formal and informal arts education. 

EXPECT_Art utilizes an approach to cultural literacy that is informed by critical pedagogy and decolonial theory. This is operationalized by a community-based research design, including art-based methodologies, involving children, teachers and citizens directly as research participants. The research design consists of three interconnected parts: Researcher Art Exploratorium, Community-Based Art Exploratoriums and Cultural Literacy Hubs. The project will be implemented through field research in 12 schools and local communities in Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Spain and involves research institutions and cultural and creative industry partners in each country.

Service-Learning | Social mentoring in the context of new immigration and asylum

In the events, students act as mentors in learning tandems or in a language café and support newly immigrated or refugee mentees in learning German and in school and training. This is framed by (self-)reflection that is critical of racism and linguism. The programme is part of an overarching project that bundles cross-campus service learning courses and makes the university part of the "Bildung durch Verantwortung e.V." university network.

Future-orientated teacher training: Education for sustainable development (ESD) in the school of the migration society (co-operation project with zepf)

Dealing with sustainability and migration-related diversity is crucial for shaping our future. Despite the relevance of both topics for the future and their mention in the 2030 Agenda, they are rarely considered together. This applies not only to a number of education policy documents at national and international level, but also to teacher training - despite the fact that teachers are seen as key change agents for sustainable and inclusive education in the migration society.
The project "Future-orientated teacher training: ESD in the school of the migration society" addresses this point and consists of three sub-projects:

Sub-project 1: Together with Dr Michael Zimmer-Müller, Doz. Dr Barbara Pusch conducted an online survey among all student teachers at the Rhineland-Palatinate University of Technology Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU) in May 2024. The survey captured the views of ten per cent of student teachers in the intersection of ESD and migration society. The initial results of the survey will be presented in August 2024 at the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) in Nicosia under the title "How do Student Teachers Perceive Education for Sustainable Development and Intercultural Education? Initial Findings from a Survey Conducted in Germany" presented by Barbara Pusch.

Sub-project 2: Group discussions with student teachers form the basis for using the documentary method (Bohnsack 2021) to reconstruct students' orientations at the intersection of ESD and migration society. The aim is to gain in-depth insights into the practices and knowledge contexts of the prospective teachers.

Sub-project 3: Building on the findings of the first two sub-projects, starting points for future-oriented teacher training at the intersection of ESD and migration society will be developed.

The overarching aim of the project is to establish ESD and pluralism in migration society as integral and interlinked components of teacher training and to emphasise their importance for a sustainable and inclusive society.