Abstract
In today’s globalized world with dynamic processes of political, social, and societal change (Mergner et al., 2019) the university should be a place of encounter between people with different (cultural) backgrounds. The learning arrangement presented here therefore initiates intercultural exchange and aims to help students see diversity as an asset rather than a challenge (Roos, 2019). To this end, an intercultural project was initiated at TU Dortmund in Germany in 2017. In the context of different learning environments future teachers were invited to have encounters with young newcomers through a nearly completely self‐managed learning arrangement. The students were prepared for the encounters in focused courses dealing with theoretical backgrounds and didactic concepts. They would then prepare the lessons with the newcomers. In the context of this learning arrangement the following questions were important: What did the university students expect with regard to the encounter with newcomer students from schools? How did they prepare the lessons? What did students and newcomers think about the encounters later? What have they learned? And what do these reflections mean for inclusive and intercultural teacher education at universities? In the project we could observe that the didactic approach supports the students’ level of sensitivity towards differences and encourages future teachers to train the education of newcomers in a non‐judgmental framework (Bartz & Bartz, 2018). Based on a selection of qualitative empirical findings (ethnographic approach during six lessons in a period of two years and 147 interviews including the students’ and newcomers’ points of view about their learning encounters at TU Dortmund), this article discusses opportunities to create more innovative spaces for inclusive practices and cultures under the restricted terms of a mass university.
Highlights
In Germany, as in many other parts of the world, global‐ ization and migration have led to an increasing influx of students from different backgrounds in schools and universities
It is quite important to underline that this expe‐ rience works in both ways: Newcomers, for their part, get the opportunity to become more familiar with higher education settings, are invited to a new learning arrange‐ ment and can speak their own truth, if they like, instead of being addressed as passive and as people being in need (Brewer, 2016, p. 136)
There were students with no objections who seemed to be very open‐minded in rela‐ tion to teaching newcomers (5 = type 1), students with mixed feelings (35 = type 2), and students who had major concerns (25 = type 3)
Summary
In Germany, as in many other parts of the world, global‐ ization and migration have led to an increasing influx of students from different (cultural) backgrounds in schools and universities. In the context of teacher training, it is important to help future teachers to use this diversity as an opportunity Research conducted in this field shows that many teachers already have positive attitudes towards heterogeneous student groups (Ruberg & Porsch, 2017) but are struggling with the practical tasks in school (Grimm & Schlupp, 2019). Recent studies call attention to the fact that teachers feel unprepared to teach newcomers, have many insecurities about teaching them and are strug‐ gling with increased learning demands like language sup‐ port (e.g., Bačáková & Closs, 2013; Kipouropoulou, 2019; Lechner & Huber, 2017) To put it in a nutshell, teach‐ ing refugee students is often perceived as a challenge for teachers (Kleina & Ruberg, 2020). The authors are responsible for the content of this publication
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