Conference Agenda

The European Commission (2017) points out that teachers need to be prepared for career-long professional development, collaborative work and for dealing with diversity in their classrooms. According to the Paris Declaration (Council of the EU, 2015), due to the increasing numbers of immigrants entering the EU, the question of addressing the diversity of students is one of the most pressing challenges for educators. At the same time, TALIS results (OECD, 2019) show that teachers across the EU do not feel well prepared for teaching in diverse settings. Teachers are central to addressing a key challenge for schools in the 21st century, which is to teach different students with a variety of abilities, motivations and backgrounds to succeed in school and later in life. Diversity awareness can support teachers’ capacities to meet the needs of diverse classrooms and schools and create more inclusive classrooms. In the symposium, we will explore diversity awareness together with the social and emotional competencies of teachers and principals from several different perspectives as well as several different countries. The symposium brings together insights from two European Erasmus+ projects The HAND IN HAND: Empowering teachers across Europe to deal with social, emotional and diversity related career challenges (HAND:ET) and HEAD: Empowering School Principals for Inclusive School Culture. In the first paper, Odak and colleagues base their discussion of teachers’ role in supporting diversity and social justice in schools on an extensive literature review. The second paper by Roczen and colleagues in addition to the first theoretical paper provide empirical support by focusing on the process of measuring of social and emotional competencies and diversity awareness of teachers across Europe. The following papers bring provide further insights into diversity awareness from individual countries. From Slovenia, Kozina and Vršnik Perše explore the role of mindfulness in fostering social-emotional competencies and diversity awareness of teachers using HAND:ET data. From Sweden, Dahlström and Oskarsson focus on practicing diversity awareness in the classroom by using empathic curiosity.From Austria, Fredericks and colleagues report on teachers' self-assessments of their well-being, and multicultural and egalitarian beliefs in the context of teaching in a diverse environment using data from the HAND:ET project. The symposium ends with a paper of Mlekuž and Veldin focusing on teachers and principals and their role in building inclusive schools in Croatia and the Republic of North Macedonia using the data from the HEAD project.

Today’s society is characterized by diversity among students. In school students with different backgrounds, from different cultures and with different ambitions meet each other. Through increased awareness of diversity, we believe that teachers can choose more consciously how to meet and promote student’s diversity in the classroom. Diversity awareness is much about understanding oneself, what prejudices I have, and where this prejudice comes from. To understand and meet other people, you must first understand and meet yourself, your values and your preconceived notions. Further, it is also essential to talk about diversity, norms and privilege in schools and societies. This is one of the reasons to work on increasing curiosity about others. Being curious about others is one of the cornerstones for gaining an increased understanding of other people, their values and actions. We believe that being empathetically curious about yourself and others and willing to work to develop this curiosity is crucial for the program. The HAND IN HAND: Empowering teachers program should be understood as a tool for teachers, when reflecting on their teaching from the perspective of diversity awareness. The concept of empathic curiosity, within the program, is used as a tool to better understand others, in the society and in the classroom. Programs aimed at embracing diversity benefit by working closely with perspective taking and empathic concern of others (Miklokowska, 2018). Empathic curiosity can be directed towards ourselves, towards people in our vicinity or unknown people we meet. Further, empathic curiosity defined by Mattson(2020) means identifying with the needs of other people by trying to understand or perceiving them. Empathic curiosity can be described as a combination of empathic dialogue and empathic listening (Gøtzsche et al., 2022). The HAND IN HAND: Empowering teachers program contains several elements where empathic curiosity is practised. Examples of such elements are empathic dialogue exercises where empathic listening and empathic questioning are practiced. Through exercises designed to practice empathic listening in order to understand another person, teachers in the program practice their ability to listen empathetically, which is part of empathic curiosity. Result from focus group discussions with 120 teachers in Sweden will be presented at the symposium. The topic of the focus group discussions concerned how teachers perceive that empathic curiosity can serve as a tool to embrace diversity in today's classrooms.

Gøtzsche, K, Berg Nielsen, H, Dahlström, H, Norberg, M, Eliasson, E, Oskarsson, M, Wiklund Lind, G (2023). Draft. Hand:et: – A training programme to develop SEDA competences in teachers and other school staff Mattsson, C. (2019). Empatisk nyfikenhet – att bemöta intolerans, hat och extremism i klassrummet. Dembra. (2), 24-33. (In Swedish) downloaded 2019-11-18 from https://gup.ub.gu.se/publication/279238 Miklikowska M. Empathy trumps prejudice: The longitudinal relation between empathy and anti-immigrant attitudes in adolescence. Dev Psychol. 2018 Apr;54(4):703-717. doi: 10.1037/dev0000474. Epub 2017 Dec 14. PMID: 29239638.

Increasing diversity in classrooms poses a new challenge teachers need to respond professionally to (Nishina et al., 2019). Hence, teacher trainings must consider this while promoting social-emotional competencies and providing continuing professional development (European Commission, 2021). To support teachers, eleven partners and thirteen associated partners cooperate in the Erasmus+ project “HAND in HAND: Empowering teachers across Europe to deal with social, emotional and diversity related career challenges” (03/2021 to 02/2024), that develops a training programme enhancing social-emotional competencies and diversity awareness using a mindfulness-based approach, assuming this to impact teachers’ self-care and wellbeing (Ellerbrock et al., 2016; Emerson et al., 2017; Zarate et al., 2019). The training is currently implemented as a whole-school-whole-year support system in five consortium countries (Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Sweden, Portugal). A longitudinal study (before/after effects) investigates the programme’s impact. The pre-assessment was carried out as an online survey (08-10/22) that consisted of socio-demographic questions (age, gender, personal/professional background) and questions aiming to capture participants’ status quo, attitudes, and skills regarding diversity (awareness), social-emotional competencies, mindfulness, and wellbeing. We used standardized scales such as “The Teacher Cultural Beliefs Scale” that has two subscales measuring teachers’ multicultural (6 items) and egalitarian beliefs (4 items) on a 4-point-scale (Hachfeld et al., 2011), the “WHO-5 Wellbeing Index” consisting of 5 items (6-point-scale) assessing a person’s subjectively perceived wellbeing (Topp et al., 2015) and others. In Austria, data from 157 participants (131 teachers, 24 principals and 2 school counsellors from 32 primary schools) were collected. The sample consists of 90.4% (N = 142) women and 9.6% (N = 15) men. The participants were randomly assigned (as whole school teams) to either an intervention (N = 78) or a comparison group (N = 79). Participants’ ages ranged from 25 to 63 years (M = 42.01; SD = 10.77). Teachers had worked at their current schools from 0 to 27 years (M = 6.43; SD = 5.98) and had overall work experiences as teachers from 1 to 40 years (M = 13.06; SD = 10.27). Preliminary findings indicate that participants' wellbeing, multicultural and egalitarian beliefs are linked to their perceptions of being able to teach well in a diverse environment. However, more comprehensive and detailed analyses are still pending at this time. In our contribution we will outline the HAND:ET implementation and accompanying research in Austria and present results from the pre-assessment, focusing on the participants' attitude towards and handling of diversity.

Ellerbrock, C. R., Cruz, B.C., Vásquez, A., & Howes, E. V. (2016). Preparing Culturally Responsive Teachers: Effective Practices in Teacher Education. Action in Teacher Education, 38(3), 226-339. https://doi.org/10.1080/01626620.2016.1194780 Emerson, L. M., Leyland, A., Hudson, K., Rowse, G., Hanley, P., & Hugh-Jones, S. (2017). Teaching Mindfulness to Teachers: a Systematic Review and Narrative Synthesis. Mindfulness, 8(5), 1136-1149. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-017-0691-4 European Commission (2021). Teachers in Europe: careers, development and well-being. Eurydice Report. Publications Office. Hachfeld, A., Hahn, A., Schroeder, S., Anders, Y., Stanat, P. & Kunter, M. (2011). Assessing teachers‘ multicultural and egalitarian beliefs: The Teacher Cultural Beliefs Scale. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(6), 986-996. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2011.04.006 Nishina, A., Lewis, J. A., Bellmore, A., & Witkow, M. R. (2019). Ethnic Diversity and Inclusive School Environments. Educational Psychologist, 54(4), 306-321. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2019.1633923 Topp, C. W., Østergaard, S. D., Søndergaard, S. & Bech, P. (2015). The WHO-5 Well-Being Index: A Systematic Review of the Literature. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 84(3),167-76. https://doi.org/10.1159/000376585 Zarate, K., Maggin, D. M., & Passmore, A. (2019). Meta-analysis of mindfulness training on teacher well-being. Psychology in the Schools, 56, 1700-1715. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22308

In terms of inclusion schools nowadays experience growing diversity, not only with students with disabilities but also with students from diverse cultural, linguistic, socio-economic and other different backgrounds (Gollnick & Chinn, 2002). This growing diversity and a multicultural environment spell new challenges and opportunities for schools that strongly impact the work of teachers and principals (Billot et al., 2007). Creating an inclusive school culture is therefore one of the most important elements of leadership in multicultural educational environments, as it promotes social justice within the school (Foster, 1995) by creating a school culture, where consensus for school values on respecting the diversity is reached and the leaders are selected based on their attitudes and support towards inclusive values and their encouragement of collaboration (Dyson et al., 2004). Moreover, principals’ pedagogical vision, goals and leadership style influence the way multiculturalism is reflected at the school level (Keung & Rockinson-Szapkiw, 2013). The “HEAD: Empowering School Principals for Inclusive School Culture” project developed a curricular framework for the professional development of primary and secondary school principals in Croatia (CRO) and the Republic of North Macedonia (RNM) with a view to developing their capacities in establishing an inclusive school culture by creating inclusive school policies and practices through participatory decision-making (NEPC, 2020). In this presentation, comparison of data from the pre-test and post-test evaluation will be used to describe the effectiveness of the developed curricular framework and professional development programmes (four different PD programmes for CRO and RNM and two school settings). Our sample comprised of 90 principals: 39 from primary schools (CRO: experimental group: N = 14; control group: N = 5; RNM: experimental group: N = 15; control group: N = 5) and 51 from secondary schools (CRO: experimental group: N = 22; control group: N = 10; RNM: experimental group: N = 14; control group: N = 5). The programmes’ impact was evaluated using a two-way mixed-measures ANOVA (between-subjects variable - group: experimental, control; within-subjects variable - time of measurement: pre-test, post-test). The results of the impact study showed that the HEAD intervention proved to be very successful for Macedonian primary school principals, where an increase in majority of areas of inclusive school environment was detected. Besides the impact study results the presentation also provides lessons learnt and recommendations for improvement of professional development programmes for principals and for systemic support for principals in creating inclusive school cultures.

Billot, J., Goddard, J. T., & Cranston, N. (2007). How principals manage ethnocultural diversity: Learnings from three countries. Journal of the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration & Management, 35(2), 3–20. Dyson, A., Farrell, P., Polat, F., Hutcheson, G., & Gallannaugh, F. (2004). Inclusion and pupil achievement. Research Report No. 578. Department for Education and Skills. Foster, M. (1995). African American teachers and culturally relevant pedagogy. In J. A. Banks & C. A. McGee (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education (pp. 570–581). Macmillan. Gollnick, D. M., & Chinn, P. C. (2002). Multicultural education in a pluralistic society (6th ed.). Merrill. Keung, E. K., & Rockinson-Szapkiw, A. J. (2013). The relationship between transformational leadership and cultural intelligence: A study of international school leaders. Journal of Educational Administration, 51(6), 836–854. NEPC. (2020, March 3). Professional development on inclusion for school leaders: A pilot project in Croatia and North Macedonia. https://www.edupolicy.net/2019/09/19/professional-development-on-inclusion-for-school-leaders-a-pilot-project-in-croatia-and-north-macedonia/