The DIALLS Platform: Supporting Cultural Literacy and Understanding of European Values Over the Internet

In this chapter we present the process of designing and developing a novel online platform for supporting cultural literacy learning, involving the elaboration and understanding of European values in collaborative dialogue between students, with teacher-led reflection on wordless texts. Wordless texts are books or videos that comprise sequences of pictures which stimulate student readers to reconstruct the attendant narratives (see Chapters 10.1007/978-3-030-71778-0_5 and 10.1007/978-3-030-71778-0_6, this volume). The narratives in question, available publicly, are designed to stimulate discussions relating to European values, notably tolerance, empathy and inclusion (Lähdesmäki et al. in Intercultural dialogue in European education policies: A conceptual approach. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2020). The main questions for platform design were therefore how to facilitate productive discussions involving European values, on or around such wordless texts, and to structure such discussions in a way that is closely anchored in the texts.

Intercultural Education for the Twenty-First Century: A Comparative Review of Research

Based on the assumption that globalization should not imply homogenization, it is important for education to promote dialogue and intercultural understanding. The first appearance of the term ‘intercultural education’ in Europe dates back to 1983, when European ministers of education at a conference in Berlin, in a resolution for the schooling of migrant children, highlighted the intercultural dimension of education (Portera in Intercultural Education 19:481–491, 2008). One of the mandates of intercultural education is to promote intercultural dialogue, meaning dialogue that is “open and respectful” and that takes place between individuals or groups “with different ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic backgrounds and heritage on the basis of mutual understanding and respect” (Council of Europe in White paper on intercultural dialogue: Living together as equals in dignity. Council of Europe, Strasbourg, p. 10, 2008). Such backgrounds and heritages form cultural identities, not limited to ethnic, religious and linguistic ones, as culture is a broader concept including several layers such as “experience, interest, orientation to the world, values, dispositions, sensibilities, social languages, and discourses” (Cope and Kalantzis in Pedagogies: An International Journal 4:173, 2009). As cultural identities are multi-layered, so is cultural diversity, and therefore it becomes a challenge for educators and researchers to address it (Hepple et al. in Teaching and Teacher Education 66:273–281, 2017). Referring to Leclercq (The lessons of thirty years of European co-operation for intercultural education, Steering Committee for Education, Strasbourg, 2002), Hajisoteriou and Angelides (International Journal of Inclusive Education 21:367, 2017) argue that “intercultural education aims to stress the dynamic nature of cultural diversity as an unstable mixture of sameness and otherness.” This challenge relates to the dynamic concept of culture itself, as socially constructed, and continuously shaped and reshaped through communicative interactions (Holmes et al. in Intercultural Education 26:16–30, 2015).

An Introduction to Dialogue for Intercultural Understanding: Placing Cultural Literacy at the Heart of Learning

This book is a result of an extensive, ambitious and wide-ranging pan-European project focusing on the development of children and young people’s cultural literacy and what it means to be European in the twenty-first century, prioritizing intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding. The book explores themes underpinning this unique interdisciplinary project, drawing together scholars from cultural studies, civics education and linguistics, psychologists, socio-cultural literacy researchers, teacher educators and digital learning experts. This chapter sets the context for the book by introducing the DIALLS project (Dialogue and Argumentation for cultural Literacy Learning in Schools) and its core aims and themes. It sets the tone of interdisciplinarity and its importance for an educational future where issues of living together, social responsibility and sustainable development transcend traditional categories of learning. DIALLS is seen as an opportunity for a synthesis of thinking, but our book allows each author to explore the goals of the project from their own interdisciplinary angle.

Using Wordless Picturebooks as Stimuli for Dialogic Engagement

In this chapter we explore how collaborative meanings can be made as teachers and young children (six-year-olds) engage together in reading wordless picturebooks. The activity of talking about these visual texts was a central part of the DIALLS project as children joined together not only to make meaning from them, but also use them as stimuli for deeper philosophical thinking about themes around living together and social responsibility. The discussions gave children the opportunity to engage in ‘genuine dialogue’ (Buber in Between man and man, trans. R.G. Smith. Routledge, London, 1947), as they co-constructed meaning from the narratives and as they then related the themes within them to their own lives, values and identities.

Being (Un)safe Together: Student Group Dynamics, Facework and Argumentation

Small group work offers the opportunity for students to engage in many-sided discussions. Students can learn how to argue standpoints and develop argumentative competence (i.e. learning to argue) but may also, by using argumentative structures, learn about and tease apart relevant facets of the topic at hand (i.e. arguing to learn). Although these processes can be beneficial for both arguing to learn as well as learning to argue, their success is predicated on the characteristics of the group enacting them. Discussions happen in a social, interpersonal context. Especially in small group collaborative learning, the social relationships between students should have a stronger and more direct impact on the form and content of their contributions than in more direct, teacher-led instruction. In this chapter, we will seek to specify the relations between cognitive and social aspects of collaborative argumentation and illustrate them with an example from the DIALLS lesson recordings.

Engaging Teachers in Dialogic Teaching as a Way to Promote Cultural Literacy Learning: A Reflection on Teacher Professional Development

Effective teacher professional development (PD) is an important part of successfully implementing educational innovations. However, research has shown that not all PD is effective, largely because it has not been developed based on theoretical understandings around teacher professional learning, such as reflective practice, teacher collaboration and teacher agency and inquiry. This chapter concerns the PD program developed as part of the DIALLS project. The chapter places particular emphasis on the ways in which the PD program was informed by the literature on teacher professional learning and effective features of PD, as well as the literature on promoting dialogic pedagogy.

Educating Cultural Literacy with Open Educational Resources: Opportunities and Obstacles of Digital Teacher Collaborations

In this chapter, we set the context for how teachers can use the CLLP and its resources sustainably by introducing why it is important for teachers to engage in long-term collaboration to implement the core aims and themes of DIALLS in a meaningful way. In the following chapter, we will introduce research on the opportunities and obstacles of online collaboration among teachers. Considering that the goals of DIALLS deal with issues of living together, social responsibility, and sustainable development, we will emphasize how effective online collaboration not only among students but also among teachers can help make DIALLS have a long-lasting impact that shapes the educational future of Europe. Thus, we will emphasize how to promote a long-lasting community of practice for DIALLS teachers and how this community may enable them to become professional DIALLS teachers.

Dialogue on Ethics, Ethics of Dialogue: Microgenetic Analysis of Students’ Moral Thinking

In this chapter we propose a methodological approach: we intend to explore the relations between children’s representations of moral issues as elaborated in dialogue (dialogue on ethics, DoE) and the ethical dimension of the children’s moral conduct towards each other (ethics of dialogue, EoD), where we expect to find interesting relations to explore. For example, if a child expresses tolerance towards a character in a video, to what extent does that child express tolerance towards the ideas and utterances of other children present in the interactive situation? The values we intend to focus on are the three main values at the heart of DIALLS: tolerance, empathy, and inclusion. We will examine the possible reciprocity between talking and doing, form and content, meta-dialogue and dialogue.

Creative Ways to Approach the Theme of Cultural Diversity in Wordless Picturebooks Through Visual Reading and Thinking

Cultural diversity, as one of the most important characteristics of European community in the framework of the DIALLS project (see Chapter 10.1007/978-3-030-71778-0_1 for overview), is integral to notions of cultural identity and cultural literacy. The acknowledgement of identity formation as an ongoing, dynamic process through interaction rather than a pre‐conceived characteristic arises as an imperative need, in order to encourage democracy to thrive through constructive confrontation and integration (Rapanta et al. in The Curriculum Journal, 2020). According to Bland, picturebooks that authentically reflect cultural diversity can move even young readers towards “flexibility of perspective” (CLELE Journal, 4(2):45, 2016). Bishop (Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom, 6(3):ix–xi, 1990) highlights the need for young readers to recognise themselves in books they read, learn about the lives of other people, and be able to cross between groups and worlds. However, reading wordless picturebooks can be a challenging task, because of the ambiguity and open nature of their visually rendered narratives. The affordances of wordless picturebooks and the challenges embedded in their reading are discussed by the authors in Chapter 10.1007/978-3-030-71778-0_5 of this volume. This chapter presents several creative ways to analyze and approach the theme of cultural diversity in class, through various disciplinary lenses and methodological approaches.

Social Responsibility Through the Lens of an Agenda for Cultural Literacy Learning: Analyses of National Education Policy Documentation

The contemporary world is marked by numerous new challenges: growth of inequality, migration, development of new technologies, climate change. All of them create tensions among nations, social groups or cultures. In the face of growing multiculturalism and need for dialogue, social responsibility as a concept in the educational field has received due attention. For instance, Berman (Educational Leadership, November:75–80, 1990; Children’s social consciousness and the development of social responsibility, University of New York Press, New York,1997; Leadership for social justice and democracy in our schools, Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 123–144, 2011) emphasized the importance of education for social responsibility in school and classroom and defined it as personal investment in the well-being of others. Vallaeys (GUNI Report of Higher Education in the World 5:88–96, 2014) discussed social responsibility as a matter of university mission and function. Berman (Leadership for social justice and democracy in our schools, Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 123–144, 2011) related the concept of social responsibility to the development of social consciousness that meant balancing on personal self-realization and personal achievement with equal focus on social self-realization and collective achievement. In particular, a person becomes conscious that personal development (i.e. How will I lead my life?) is interrelated with the development of others (i.e. What does the way I lead my life mean for the life of others?). In this case, social responsibility embraces cultural values and creates empowerment, cooperation, compassion, and respect.