Continuous professional development on virtual exchange in Europe: insights from the Erasmus+ VE introductory online course

This presentation focuses on the Erasmus+ online introductory training course, which aims to introduce university educators and administrative/technical staff to Virtual Exchange (VE). The training, which requires no previous experience with VE, engages the participants in tasks that help them understand the requirements to successfully integrate an Erasmus+ VE project into existing courses and curricula, while gaining experience in digital literacy, including communicating and collaborating online. After a brief presentation of the structure of the four-week course, we will show how the design of the course – based on an experiential learning approach – elicited reflections and discussions on pedagogical and technological issues crucial to successful VE projects. Finally, we will show how forum interactions between teaching and administrative staff helped all the participants understand the pedagogical, technological, and administrative implications of setting up VE projects, and identify the necessary steps to engage the different stakeholders (teachers, administrative and technical staff, top management, and students) within their institutions. The overall evaluation of all training courses was highly positive: respondents reported discovering that the course boosted their confidence in communicating or working in a culturally diverse setting. They also felt that the training helped them develop their intercultural awareness, digital competences, active listening, communication skills, and acquire ideas for new teaching practices.

Preparing Pre-service Early Childhood Candidates for Diverse Classrooms

The demographics of schools in United States (U.S.) are rapidly changing. Therefore, teachers in the U. S. need to be prepared to teach children with a wide variety of diverse backgrounds. This article describes an introductory early clinical experience purposefully designed to provide early childhood pre-service teachers from a large Midwestern university in the U. S. with opportunities to teach children in a high-need and diverse setting. Data from exit slips and surveys associated with the Open Doors program were analyzed over four years. Results indicated that almost 90% of candidates felt the experience was beneficial to their professional growth and would consider working in a diverse school. Slightly over 90% felt the experience increased their knowledge and skills regarding working with diverse students. Implications for similar projects are provided.

Role of Women and Environment in Temsula Ao’s Laburnum for My Head

Women and environment play significant role in Temsula Ao’s Laburnum for My Head (2009). Women empowerment relates to giving women more power over their own life and the circumstances they are facing with. Empowering women is to empower them to break the traditional picture of perfect womanhood where patriarchy dominates and women get all the bad things in their life. Women through their self-assertion contribute greatly towards women empowerment. It is this self-assertion of women that forms the core of Temsula Ao’s collection of short stories entitled Laburnum for My Head, and this paper. Writers of literature has always been lured and urged by their physical and biological environment to manifest the beauties of nature in their creative endeavour. Temsula Ao’s Laburnum for My Head showcases the correlation between literature and the physical and biological aspects of nature. This paper relates Ao’s stance on women and environment in Laburnum for My Head by placing the stories in such diverse setting as ecology, environment, non-human animal, violence, bloodshed, marriage, motherhood, animal rights etc.

Uneasy Agents of Tridentine Reforms: Catholic Missionaries in Southern Ottoman Hungary and Their Local Competitors in the Early Seventeenth Century

From the 1570s onwards, the territories of southern Ottoman Hungary with their amalgam of Orthodox, Catholics, Reformed, Antitrinitarians, and Muslims of various ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, were the focus of Rome–directed Catholic missionary and pastoral endeavors. Prior to the establishment of the Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide in 1622, several Jesuits had already been active in the region and sought to implement Tridentine reforms in this religiously, linguistically, and legally-diverse setting. The activity of the Jesuits, however, was complicated by the presence of the Bosnian Franciscans, who were legally Ottoman subjects, and with whom the Jesuits were in a permanent competition over the jurisdiction of certain missionary territories. Furthermore, the Jesuits also had to contend with the local authority and influence of Orthodox priests and Ottoman judges (kadis), who, in several instances, proved to be more attractive “alternatives” to many Catholics than the Catholic authorities themselves. Drawing primarily on Jesuit and Franciscan missionary reports, this article examines how this peculiar constellation of local power relations, and the ensuing conflicts among missionaries, Orthodox clergymen, and Ottoman judges, influenced the way(s) in which Tridentine reforms were implemented in the area. In particular, this study addresses those cases where various jurisdictional disputes between Jesuits and Bosnian Franciscans on the one hand, and Jesuits and Orthodox priests on the other, resulted in contestations about the administration and validity of the sacraments and certain rituals, and led Jesuits, Franciscans, and even Roman authorities to “deviate” from the Tridentine norm.

The Panharmonic Music of the Piraeus

This chapter examines the treatment of foreigners in Plato’s Republic. It argues that by giving the dialogue a diverse setting and cast of characters, Plato indicates the importance of cross-cultural engagement in provoking examinations of justice. As the drama unfolds, Plato demonstrates this by depicting foreigners and metics helping the dialogue’s Athenian characters recognize the discordance within the Athenian belief that one should seem just, but be unjust. Although this philosophy was initially the backbone of Athenian imperialism, eventually citizens came to use it on each other, with the help of the sophists’ teachings. As the dialogue proceeds, the incongruity between Socrates’ deeds (visiting a diverse place, worshipping a non-Greek goddess, applauding a non-Greek procession, and engaging in an all-night discussion with foreigners) and the city he and his interlocutors develop in speech (which excludes the foreign and treats non-Greeks as enemies) serves to prompt reflection on the tension found in Greek attitudes toward barbarians.

Preparing Pre-service Early Childhood Candidates for Diverse Classrooms

The demographics of schools in United States (U.S.) are rapidly changing. Therefore, teachers in the U. S. need to be prepared to teach children with a wide variety of diverse backgrounds. This article describes an introductory early clinical experience purposefully designed to provide early childhood pre-service teachers from a large Midwestern university in the U. S. with opportunities to teach children in a high-need and diverse setting. Data from exit slips and surveys associated with the Open Doors program were analyzed over four years. Results indicated that almost 90% of candidates felt the experience was beneficial to their professional growth and would consider working in a diverse school. Slightly over 90% felt the experience increased their knowledge and skills regarding working with diverse students. Implications for similar projects are provided.