Blended and Online Learning for Global Citizenship: New Technologies and Opportunities for Intercultural Education 2020022881, 9780367408213, 9780367821661

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Blended and Online Learning for Global Citizenship

By showcasing international, European, and community-based projects, this volume explores how online technologies using collaborative and blended learning can be used to bolster social cohesion and increase students’ understanding of what it means to be a global citizen. With the pace of technology rapidly increasing, Blended and Online Learning for Global Citizenship draws timely attention to the global lessons being learned from the impact of these technologies on peace building, community development, and acceptance of difference. In-depth case studies showcasing successful projects in Europe, Northern Ireland, and Israel explore blended learning and illustrate how schools and educators have embraced online technologies to foster national and international links both within and beyond communities. This has, in turn, equipped students with experiences that have informed their attitudes to cultural and political conflicts, as well as racial, ethnic, and social diversity. Building on the authors’ previous work Online Learning and Community Cohesion (2013), this thought-provoking text will be of interest to researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of international and comparative education. Educators and school leaders concerned with how multiculturalism and technology play out in the classroom environment will also benefit from reading this text. William J. Hunter is Professor of Education at Ontario Tech University, Canada and Professor Emeritus at the University of Calgary, Canada. Roger Austin is Emeritus Professor of Education at Ulster University, Northern Ireland.

Routledge Research in International and Comparative Education

This is a series that offers a global platform to engage scholars in continuous academic debate on key challenges and the latest thinking on issues in the fastgrowing field of International and Comparative Education. Titles in the series include Transculturalism and Teacher Capacity Professional Readiness in the Globalised Age Niranjan Casinader Residential Schools and Indigenous Peoples From Genocide via Education to the Possibilities for Processes of Truth, Restitution, Reconciliation, and Reclamation Edited by Stephen James Minton Transnational Perspectives on Curriculum History Edited by Gary McCulloch, Ivor Goodson, and Mariano González-Delgado Japanese Schooling and Identity Investment Overseas Exploring the Cultural Politics of “Japaneseness” in Singapore Glenn Toh Considering Inclusive Development across Global Educational Contexts How Critical and Progressive Movements can Inform Education Christopher J. Johnstone Blended and Online Learning for Global Citizenship New Technologies and Opportunities for Intercultural Education William J. Hunter and Roger Austin For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/RoutledgeResearch-in-International-and-Comparative-Education/book-series/RRICE

Blended and Online Learning for Global Citizenship New Technologies and Opportunities for Intercultural Education

William J. Hunter and Roger Austin

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of William J. Hunter and Roger Austin to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hunter, William J. (Bill), editor. | Austin, Roger (Professor of education), editor. Title: Blended and online learning for global citizenship : new technologies and opportunities for intercultural education / edited by William J. Hunter and Roger Austin. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020022881 | ISBN 9780367408213 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367821661 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Blended learning—Cross-cultural studies. | Web-based instruction— Cross-cultural studies. | Computer-assisted instruction—Cross-cultural studies. | Internet in education—Cross-cultural studies. | Multicultural education—Crosscultural studies. | International education—Cross-cultural studies. | Civics—Study and teaching—Cross-cultural studies. Classification: LCC LB1028.5 .B563 2021 | DDC 371.33/44678—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022881 ISBN: 978-0-367-40821-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-82166-1 (ebk) Typeset in Perpetua by Apex CoVantage, LLC

We want to dedicate this book to the policy makers who create the conditions under which blended learning may take place and to the teachers whose skills and attitudes bring this work to fruition in the classroom.Together, they have created life-changing opportunities for the children they teach across the globe.

Contents

List of tables Acknowledgments About the Authors and Contributors 1

Blended Learning in an Age of Conflict

viii ix xi 1

W I L L I A M J . H UNTE R , R OGE R A USTI N, A ND R HI A NNON T URNER

2

Shared Education in Northern Ireland: Systemic Change Through Blended Learning

31

R O G E R A U S T I N , R HI A NNON TUR NE R , SA M M Y TA GGART , A N D MA I R E A D DA V I DSON

3

Lessons Learned From 15 Years of Multicultural Online Collaborative Learning in Israel

59

A S MA A G A N A Y E M , E LA I NE HOTE R , A ND M I R I SHONFELD

4

Building Cultural Awareness and Understanding in Europe’s Schools: Insights From the European Commission’s eTwinning Programme

92

CO N O R G A L V IN, R OGE R A USTI N, E LE NA R E V YA KI N A, A N D A N N E MCM OR R OUGH

5

International Links and Global Citizenship

122

W I L L I A M J . H UNTE R A ND R OGE R A USTI N

6

Blended and Online Collaborative Learning for Citizenship in Catalonia, Spain

151

A N D R É S B E S O L Í , R OGE R A USTI N, A ND WI LLI A M J . HU N T ER

7

Promises Fulfilled and Challenges Ahead

173

R O G E R A U S T I N A ND WI LLI A M J . HUNTE R

Index

197

Tables

1.1 1.2 1.3 3.1 5.1

Different curriculum “homes” for global citizenship education in Asia and Pacific countries U.S. students’ experience with online courses, 2012–2016 MediaSmarts information literacy problem categories Evolution of the TEC model Countries involved in Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning

12 20 22 69 141

Acknowledgments

We want to express our appreciation to many people who contributed to the work of writing this book, starting with those named in several of the chapters; they have provided us with timely drafts and responded to all our requests for clarification with grace and good humor. We count ourselves very lucky to have had such an excellent team of colleagues to work with. We believe that the book has been immeasurably strengthened by their specialist knowledge and research on blended learning for global citizenship in Northern Ireland, Israel, the European Union, and Catalonia. However, we take responsibility for the final versions in the book and blame for any errors lies at our door. A number of other people have contributed vital information or read early drafts of chapters; we wish to thank Mark Baker from the Education Authority in Northern Ireland for his insights on Chapter 2 and to the many teachers who gladly cooperated with the research described in that chapter. We have had the good fortune to work with Eamon McAteer from what was called C2K and with a number of other colleagues in the Education Authority who are responsible for the Shared Education programme. We also benefitted from the advice and information provided by Ciara Mahon from the Curriculum Council for Examinations and Assessment. We also wish to place on record our thanks to the staff of Currie Primary School and Holy Family Primary School in Belfast for their readiness to describe the remarkable work they are doing together in the Shared Education program. It would have been very difficult for us to have written Chapter 5 on International links without the considerable patience and support of Liz Neil from the British Council and the teachers in Northern Ireland who are involved in the Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning project, in particular, the local coordinator Ciara Crawley. Likewise, we are grateful to Ed Gragert for helping us to get a better understanding of iEARN and for reviewing an early draft of Chapter 5. To all of them we hope we have done justice to the remarkable work described in that chapter.

x Acknowledgments

Thanks are also due to the Catalan educational advisers, M. Albert and P. Saura and the teachers in Barcelona who agreed to take part in a research survey that provided essential data for Chapter 6. We also want to recognize the incredible work and dedication of the thousands of teachers who have taken up the challenge of focusing on intercultural education and global citizenship and have taken advantage of the affordances of communications technologies to bring children together. Behind this work is a whole set of teams at Routledge Publishing; thanks to all of them and special thanks to those we have worked with: Elsbeth Wright, Saharsh Saxena, AnnaMary Goodall, Ramachandran Vijayaraghavan, and the copyediting team. Each of us also wants to thank our families for what is now generations of support and for being living reminders of why education is so important to us. To Kay, Bill says Kiitos paljon, Macushla, and to Rosella, artist, baker, and muse, Roger says thank you for your patience and encouragement.

About the Authors and Contributors

Roger Austin is Emeritus Professor of Education at Ulster University in Northern Ireland. He has a BA and PhD from Manchester University and a post graduate certificate in education from Durham University. He has taught in Pakistan, France, and England prior to his work at Ulster University in 1978. He has been a pioneer in the use of online and blended learning for intercultural education and community cohesion. He directed the European Studies (Ireland and Great Britain) Project from 1986 to 1992 and codirected the Dissolving Boundaries Program from 1998 to 2013. He has published on modern French history, the teaching of history, and since 2000 has coauthored E-Schooling. Global Messages from a Small island (2008) and Online Learning and Community Cohesion: Linking Schools (2013) alongside 50 peer-reviewed articles. Andrés Besolí is an associate lecturer at the University of Barcelona, Spain, and an online adjunct instructor at the Open University of Catalonia, also in Barcelona, Spain. His research interests lie in virtual learning environments and interactive digital storytelling applied to the teaching and social dissemination of the past. He holds a PhD in didactics of social sciences and heritage, and a BA (Hons) in audiovisual communication from the University of Barcelona, and a BA (Hons) in history from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He has participated in various funded projects on the presentation of historical and heritage knowledge in educational settings and museums. Mairead Davidson is a teacher educator at Ulster University, Northern Ireland. Her research interests include initial teacher education, with a focus on learning and teaching methods. She got her first degree from Queens University, Belfast, in 2006, before receiving a post graduate certificate in education and a master’s degree from Ulster University. Prior to taking up her current post, she was a subject leader and ICT coordinator in a Post Primary School in Northern Ireland.

xii Authors and Contributors

Conor Galvin is Director of the Structured PhD program in Education at UCD Dublin, College of Social Sciences and Law where he lectures on various education, public policy, and research methods programs. His research interests include European Commission policy making, policy networks, professional knowledge, and the impact of new and emergent technology on learning and society. His PhD is from the University of Cambridge, England, where he also took an MPhil in development and organization having previously completed an MA in language and literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. Before joining UCD, he taught at the University of Wales, Swansea, and University of Cambridge, England. Asmaa Ganayem is the founder and CEO of InnDigital, a center for digital development within Arab society in Israel, and a researcher on Internet usage and the digital gap in Arab society in Israel. She is also an expert on the development and assimilation of innovative pedagogical models in teaching and learning and cofounder and codirector of the TEC Center at the MOFET Institute. She is a digital activist for social development and equity and was chosen as Woman of the Year on the Internet by surfers in the Arab sector in 2011 and 2016. She completed her MA in information systems in Berlin, and her PhD in Internet research at the University of Haifa. Elaine Hoter is Head of Pedagogy at the Technology Education and Cultural Diversity Center and Head of Innovation at Talpiot College, where she teaches in the master’s program in English as an international language. She also heads the team of seven colleges that produced a prizewinning MOOC on multiculturalism in Hebrew, English, and Arabic through a virtual world. In 1995, she developed the first online course in Israel connecting pupils and student teachers in an online learning experience and has since developed many different courses, connecting different communities. She co-convened the first online conference for teacher educators in 2001. Elaine has received awards for her research and was awarded the Israel Unity Prize 2018 for bringing together diverse parts of the population through technology and education. She is a Fulbright scholar and received her PhD from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. William J. Hunter is a Professor of Education at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Ontario, Canada, and an emeritus professor at the University of Calgary. His research interests include online teaching and learning, the use of technology in teaching, and innovation in postsecondary education. He holds a BA and a PhD from Kent State University in Ohio, USA. He coauthored Online Learning and Community Cohesion: Linking Schools with Roger Austin in 2013.

Authors and Contributors

xiii

Anne McMorrough is a teacher educator and a teacher who specializes in areas that explore the affordances of digital technologies in education, and creativity/innovation in primary classrooms. She holds an MEd and PhD by research from University College Dublin within the National University of Ireland and is a qualified teacher at both primary and secondary level. Dr. McMorrough is an award-winning eTwinner and, as an eTwinning ambassador and advocate, has undertaken research in a range of panEuropean projects and led/contributed to teacher professional development programs in many European settings, including Belgium, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Macedonia, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. Elena Revyakina is a post-doctoral researcher on a number of projects in the University College of Teacher Education Vienna (Austria) and University College Dublin (Ireland). These focus on policy and practice relating to methodological innovation in initial teacher education, acceptance and resistance in this, and the role of organized stakeholders in such innovation. She recently completed award-winning PhD research at UCD within the National University of Ireland, with a focus on the discourses powering the field of education policy innovation in Russia, related actor mediation, and institutional accommodation in an era of globalized education reform. She now lives in Austria and has studied and worked internationally as a linguist and educator. Miri Shonfeld is the head of the Technology, Education, and Cultural Diversity (TEC) Center at the Mofet Institute and a faculty member of the graduate program in technology in education at Kibbutzim College of Education in Tel-Aviv. Her research deals with online learning environments, collaborative work, intercultural education, and faculty development. She got her bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from Tel-Aviv University and her PhD from NOVA university, USA. She edited the book Collaborative Learning in a GlobalWorld with David Gibson in 2019. Sammy Taggart is a teacher educator in technology and design education at Ulster University, Northern Ireland. His research interests focus on the use of educational technology to support learning and teaching, including the use of virtual and augmented reality and 360 video, particularly within initial teacher education. He holds a bachelor’s degree in education from Stranmillis University College and a master’s degree in educational multimedia from Queen’s University Belfast. Working with examination authorities, charitable Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) groups and local organizations, he works to promote greater awareness of the educational, technological, and engineering challenges and opportunities associated with the fourth industrial revolution.

xiv Authors and Contributors

Rhiannon Turner is Professor of Social Psychology and Director of the Centre for Identity and Intergroup Relations at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research focuses on intergroup relations, prejudice, and prejudice-reduction, particularly the role of intergroup contact. She got her first degree from Cardiff University in 2000, before receiving a master’s from the University of Kent in 2002, then a DPhil from the University of Oxford in 2006. Prior to taking up her current post in 2012, she was a lecturer, then senior lecturer, at the University of Leeds.

1

Blended Learning in an Age of Conflict William J. Hunter, Roger Austin, and Rhiannon Turner

A World in Conflict The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) is a think tank that has been dedicated to developing measures of peace and conflict internationally and relating those measures to economic activity for just over a decade (IEP website, n.d.). One of the organization’s principal activities is preparing an annual summary of the level of conflict in the world using an aggregate of 18 measures of the economic costs of “containing, preventing and dealing with the consequences of violence” (p. 63)—the Global Peace Index (GPI).1 In addition to reporting data and rankings for virtually all of the world’s nations, the index makes comparisons over time. In 2019, for the first time since it was first published, the index showed a slight increase in peacefulness; however, the trends that the IEP has reported since 2008 have been daunting: • • • •

•

The average level of global peacefulness has deteriorated by 3.78 per cent since 2008. Over that period, 81 countries deteriorated in peacefulness, while 81 improved. The gap between the least and most peaceful countries continues to grow. Since 2008, the 25 least peaceful countries declined on average by 11 per cent, while the 25 most peaceful countries improved by 1.8 per cent on average. Conflict in the Middle East has been the key driver of the global deterioration in peacefulness. Of the three GPI domains, two recorded a deterioration while one improved. Ongoing Conflict deteriorated by 8.7 per cent and Safety and Security deteriorated by just over four per cent. However, Militarisation improved by 2.6 per cent. The indicator with the most widespread deterioration globally was the terrorism impact indicator. Just over 63 per cent of countries recorded increased levels of terrorist activity. However, the number of deaths from terrorism has been falling globally since 2014 (Institute for Economics and Peace, 2019, p. 4)

2 William J. Hunter, Roger Austin and Rhiannon Turner

The world is in conflict and children are suffering as a consequence. Moreover, current events suggest that the problem is expanding. For example, in the autumn of 2019, as this chapter was being written, 600,000 children in Cameroon were being denied access to education as a consequence of internecine conflicts rooted in the area’s colonial past (U. N. News, 2019; Tah, 2019). Still, it is worth noting that Save the Children’s 2019 Global Childhood Report (Save the Children, 2019) provided documentation for a lot of positive global achievements in child health and education (e.g., fewer child murders, more children in education, less malnutrition) over the last century, but the exception to this pattern of improvement was with respect to the impact of conflict on children, evident in data provided in UNICEF (2018b): Worldwide, nearly 31 million children have been forcibly displaced at the end of 2017. This number includes some 13 million child refugees, approximately 936 thousand asylum-seeking children and an estimated 17 million children displaced within their own countries by violence and conflict. Yet more children have been displaced by natural disasters and other crises, though they are not included in this total. (2018a, unnumbered) UNICEF went on to break these numbers down by country and region and reported that the largest numbers by far were in Syria and Afghanistan. If we are to reverse these worrying trends, it will be essential that human beings learn to have a greater appreciation of cultural differences and that they learn skills to improve communication and cooperation with people from different cultural groups. The digital tools that are now available in much of the world provide us with technologies that make such communication more feasible and more accessible than has ever been the case before. Information and misinformation travel at the speed of Twitter and events anywhere are having impacts everywhere. One arena in which nations can promote and develop the skills and understandings necessary to shape a more harmonious world is in the education of children. That is the focus suggested by the title of this book: Blended and Online Learning for Global Citizenship: New Technologies and Opportunities for Intercultural Education. That is to say, the tools and methodologies that enable international communication are starting to be used to deliver education that fosters both local and global citizenship through education about cultural differences and across cultural boundaries. Conflict in Schools Throughout the world, teachers are struggling to deal with conflict and violence in their students’ lives. In the most extreme cases, this may mean that children are not getting any schooling at all; for example, UNICEF (2018a) reported

Blended Learning in an Age of Conflict

3

that globally 263 million children and youth were not in school. Many of these children live in countries beset with conflict and violence. However, direct violent attacks on schools, teachers, children, and administrators may well be a bigger problem than the lack of access to schooling. O’Malley (2007) provided a truly frightening list of such direct attacks (bombings, large-scale kidnappings, missiles, torture) in six of the most difficult countries. The political climate in some countries may also threaten children. The growth in nationalist and populist politics in many nations has been well documented by the United Nations in its International Migration Report (2017), which notes: •

The number of international migrants worldwide has continued to grow over the past seventeen years, reaching 258 million in 2017, up from 248 million in 2015, 220 million in 2010, 191 million in 2005 and 173 million in 2000. (p. 4)

•

The number of international migrants worldwide has grown faster than the world’s population. Due to this faster growth rate, the share of migrants in the total population increased from 2.8 in 2000 to 3.4 per cent in 2017. (p. 5)

•

The global level of forced displacement across international borders continues to rise. By the end of 2016, the total number of refugees and asylum seekers in the world was estimated at 25.9 million representing 10.1 per cent of all international migrants. (p. 7)

Reactions to all of this migration have included substantial backlash, including a rise of populism and nationalism in Europe that Galston (2018) characterized as a threat: “Left unaddressed, the rise of anti-immigrant, anti-internationalist sentiment, which has shifted the political balance within Europe, could have grave consequences for liberal democracy itself” (para. 3). As we noted in our previous work, children around the world already suffer a variety of consequences rooted in ethnocentricity, racism, and religious bigotry (Austin & Hunter, 2013). The current chapter was written in the summer and autumn of 2019 at the time of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tweeted threats to round up and deport aliens, his tweeted call for outspoken congresswomen of color to “return to where they came from,” his alienation of key allies in Europe, his trade war with China, and his attempt to add a citizenship question to the U.S. census—a move that many believe would serve to reduce federal support to communities with larger numbers of immigrants. A direct reflection of the impact of such attitudes is the incarceration of children at the U.S. border (Associated Press, 2018). The combined impact of such assaults on children of racial and ethnic minorities may not be known for years to come but Potok

4 William J. Hunter, Roger Austin and Rhiannon Turner

(2017) made a good start in cataloging the ways schools and children were responding to the hate-filled rhetoric of the presidential campaign and the first two months of Trump’s presidency. Below we outline a few examples of the anecdotes he reports: • • • • •

An Arizona high school counselor reported white students holding up a Confederate flag in a school assembly (a direct taunt to African-American children whose ancestors were slaves prior to the Civil War). A middle school teacher in Washington told of a student blurting out in class, “I hate Muslims.” A Georgia high school teacher said many students were making jokes “about Hispanic students ‘going back to Mexico.’” A teacher in Oregon described a black girl running out of a classroom in tears after being racially harassed in two classes. A Massachusetts middle school teacher described how a white student, on the day after the election, went around asking each non-white student he passed, “Are you legal?” (online, Hate Goes to School, para 4, parenthetical explanation added)

In short, direct violence against children and schools and the impacts of broader social conflicts on children are widely recognized as problems of global proportions. The magnitude of the problem may leave people with a sense of hopelessness and a kind of paralysis that might prevent effective action. Those attitudes amount to an abandonment of our children and their future; educators must develop effective ways of protecting children and preparing them to build a better future. Six months later, as we prepared this manuscript for publication, the Global Coronavirus pandemic created a whole new context for all of this conflict, the impact of which may not be clear for quite some time. In the remainder of this chapter, we will outline responses to the conditions that are posing difficulties for children with particular attention to intercultural communication, global citizenship, intergroup contact, and the use of communications technologies. Response and Reaction Education, broadly conceived to include informal education, may be considered to have both positive and negative effects on children according to Bush and Saltarelli (2000). They therefore put forth a vision of peacebuilding education that would seek to initiate or support an educational process that allows students to articulate, accommodate and accept differences between and within groups,

Blended Learning in an Age of Conflict

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particularly (though not exclusively) in regions characterized by latent or manifest violence. This entails a distinct two-fold process that nurtures and constructs positive inter-group relations while marginalizing and deconstructing negative inter-group relations. (p. 23) Bush and Saltarelli’s vision is now nearly two decades old but the problems persist. In 2010, the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack2 was formed and has been monitoring and documenting attacks on schools (e.g., Education Under Attack, 2018). Faced with these challenges and equipped with the availability of tools that enable intercultural communication, one appropriate direction for educators would be to reexamine our views of what citizenship is and what it should be. Intercultural Education as a Vehicle for Moving Toward Global Citizenship We will be using the term “intercultural education” to refer to a wide range of approaches that focus on increasing cross-group communication and understanding. Those approaches include cultural pluralism, intercultural relations, culturally relevant pedagogy, and others aimed at improving intergroup understanding. Examining this work is complicated by the variety of methods used, the range of subject areas and age groups included, variations in dependent variables (achievement, attitudes, attendance, etc.), the country or countries studied, and the groups included in the study (i.e., particular immigrant groups, racial minorities, subcultures within a nation, etc.). Historically, much of what we refer to as intercultural education has its roots in “multicultural education.” Intercultural and Multicultural Education

Multicultural education is generally portrayed as teaching that respects diversity by recognizing cultural differences and incorporating teaching materials and ideas that reflect the world views and experiences of the groups represented in a class. The originator of the concept, James Banks, argued that it was also about power sharing: The multiculturalists view e pluribus unum as an appropriate national goal, but they believe that the unum must be negotiated, discussed, and restructured to reflect the nation’s ethnic and cultural diversity. The reformulation of what it means to be united must be a process that involves the participation of diverse groups within the nation, such as people of color, women, straights, gays, the powerful, the powerless, the young, and the old. The

6 William J. Hunter, Roger Austin and Rhiannon Turner

reformulation must also involve power sharing and participation by people from many different cultures who must reach beyond their cultural and ethnic borders in order to create a common civic culture that reflects and contributes to the well-being of all. (Banks, 1993, p. 24) These ideas emerged in the wake of the U.S. Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court (1954) decision on school segregation which established the principle that, with respect to schooling, “separate is not equal.” Individual states struggled over time to implement desegregation, principally by busing children from racially segregated communities to schools where racially different students would meet, interact, and work with one another. Desegregation changed the schooling environment and multicultural education was meant to change schooling processes so that children in those integrated environments would engage in what Turner and Cameron (2016) refer to as “direct contact.” Ladson-Billings (1994) provided further elaboration regarding what multicultural education must attend to, namely teachers’ beliefs about students, curriculum content and materials, instructional approaches, educational settings, and teacher education (1994). For Banks and Ladson-Billings then, multiculturalism involved an intense reformulation of education with the explicit purpose of bringing diverse groups together. Portera (2008) discussed the relationship between intercultural and multicultural education and indicated that “intercultural” has come to be preferred in Europe while “multicultural” remains the North American term and observed that “Perhaps, because of the impossibility of respecting all diversities, in many European schools multicultural pedagogy has become a sort of pedagogy of assimilation of the minority” (p. 485), an insight Portera credits to Nieke (1995). In the conclusion of this work, Portera argued: The intercultural educational approach represents the most appropriate response to the challenges of globalization and complexity. It offers a means to gain a complete and thorough understanding of the concepts of democracy and pluralism, as well as different customs, traditions, faiths and values. Intercultural education helps to identify the risks of globalization and multicultural communities; of economically motivated rules and regulations, without any intervention by governments and/or politics. Moreover, the intercultural approach can help to identify new opportunities (e.g. fruitful exchanges between different people; new interactive/paritetic forms of communication and relationship). Since intercultural education takes into consideration both the common objectives of all human beings and specific peculiarities, it transcends the mere acknowledgment of equal dignity of all people of the world, regardless of skin colour, language and religion (basic

Blended Learning in an Age of Conflict

7

principles of trans-cultural education), respect for differences (right to have the same opportunities though being different), or peaceful coexistence (basic principles of multi-cultural education, which is a desirable goal when we consider wars and injustices in many parts of the world). (pp. 488–489) Portera also argued that multiculturalism aims to foster tolerance while interculturalism aims to foster a more egalitarian sense of respect. We use “intercultural” in the title of this book to convey our agreement with the broader meaning described by Portera, to acknowledge the importance of respect, and to make clear to European readers that we are not advocating assimilation. However, we also consider that the literature on multiculturalism calls for mutual respect and power sharing rather than assimilation, so we will use the term “multiculturalism” when referring to research that emerged from that tradition. For example, in a study of multiculturalism in The Netherlands, Verkuyten and Thijs (2013) included a comprehensive literature review and indicated both a range of positive benefits and the need for continued research on the impact of various forms of multiculturalism in diverse settings and in particular a need for more research that examines the role that parental attitudes can have on the effects of multicultural programs. The complexity of this sort of research is well illustrated in a large-scale study of nearly 2,000 grade six students in southwest Germany (Schwarzenthal, Schachner, van de Vijver, & Juang, 2018). They focused on two sets of culturally important norms, 1) equity/inclusion which was based on the conditions Allport (1954) identified as necessary for contact to have a positive effect in prejudice reduction (see Intergroup Contact Theory following) and 2) cultural pluralism defined by assessment items that reflected awareness and acceptance of cultural differences. They found: Equality/inclusion is related to greater outgroup orientation, especially among non-immigrant background students, and to lower perceived discrimination, especially among students of immigrant background. Cultural pluralism can make an additional contribution as it is also related to greater outgroup orientation. Neither equality/inclusion nor cultural pluralism may be fully effective on their own as they meet different, but equally important, needs: the need to engage in positive contact and the need to recognize and appreciate cultural variations. (p. 268, emphasis in original) A thorough investigation of intercultural education would almost certainly demonstrate that the term itself is laden with distinctive cultural meanings. The preceding work from The Netherlands and Germany shows a different set of sensitivities at work, focused on intercultural education, compared to

8 William J. Hunter, Roger Austin and Rhiannon Turner

Spain, where the driving concern was improving the quality of education for Roma children (Salgado-Orellana, Berrocal de Luna, & Sánchez-Núñez, 2019). Similarly, intercultural education in the Nordic countries was recognized as an exceedingly complex topic by Mikander, Zilliacus, and Holm (2018), who differentiate among “critical intercultural education,” “multicultural education,” and “intersectionality” and suggest that all of these concepts could be viewed as part of “social justice education” (pp. 46–49). All of these varying terms share a central focus on improving understanding and communication between individuals with different backgrounds. Taking that one step further, we might focus on how to become more skilled in these areas, bringing us to a further area of inquiry, intercultural competency, which has been defined as the set of values, attitudes, skills, knowledge, and understanding that are required for understanding and respecting those who are perceived to be culturally different from oneself, for interacting and communicating effectively and appropriately with them, and for establishing positive and constructive relationships with them. Intercultural competence is therefore a broader construct than either tolerance or respect. (Barrett, 2018, p. 95) Barrett goes on to discuss examples of how various teaching methodologies (e.g., cooperative education and problem-based learning) have been used to foster the development of intercultural competency. A similar concern for instructional methods that that can help to develop and promote intercultural understanding has been the focus of inquiry into culturally responsive pedagogy. Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP)

As described by Gay (2015), culturally responsive pedagogy emerged as an extension of multicultural education: Culturally responsive teaching is an outgrowth of multicultural education. In the United States, it focuses primarily on the instructional aspects of educating ethnic and racial minority groups (or groups of color) such as Indigenous (or Native), African, Asian, and Latino Americans, various biracial groups, and recent immigrants. (Gay, 2015, p. 124) However, the emphasis on instructional methods that contribute to the understanding of the dynamics of group difference and the prospects for reducing the

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effects of prejudice make it highly applicable to intercultural education settings. CRP focuses directly on the dynamics of teaching and learning, principally in publicly funded schools, and on the academic outcomes of programs designed to be responsive to cultural difference. An early statement on multiculturalism by the American Association for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (AACTE, 1973), concluded in part: “The goal of cultural pluralism can be achieved only if there is full recognition of cultural differences and an effective educational program that makes cultural equality real and meaningful” (p. 265). The constituents of that “effective educational program” have yet to fully materialize, but that has been the thrust of CRP. Gay (2015) described the requirements of such a program: it is not enough to solve the achievement dilemmas of marginalized, underachieving students of color. Instead, corrective strategies need to be comprehensive and address the whole child. This means attending to intellectual, personal, social, cultural, political, and ethical skills, perspectives, and experiences, simultaneously. (p. 133) In essence, she called for a radical refocus on education aimed at equality. Such a refocus might well include attention to teacher education, to curriculum change, to teaching methods, and to every other aspect of school life. Our treatment here will not attempt to address all those areas, but we do want to focus attention on the role of teachers in this model. In her seminal work proposing “culturally relevant pedagogy,” Ladson-Billings (1995) examined anthropological studies of education and observed a common feature in works that attempted to alter the behavior and language of minority culture children: Three of the terms employed by studies on cultural mismatch between school and home—culturally appropriate, culturally congruent, and culturally compatible—seem to connote accommodation of student culture to main-stream culture. Only the term culturally responsive appears to refer to a more dynamic or synergistic relationship between home/community culture and school culture. (p. 467) Ladson-Billings began her work with a conviction based on personal experience, that there was much to be learned by observing teachers who had been identified by African-American parents as highly successful in working with their children. She found that these teachers, in the course of extensive group

10 William J. Hunter, Roger Austin and Rhiannon Turner

discussions about one another’s teaching, were distinguished by their adherence to an ethic of care that Ladson-Billings characterized as “the teachers spoke of the import of their work for preparing the students for confronting inequitable and undemocratic social structures,” (1995, p. 474) and an ethic of personal accountability reflected in their making teaching choices that derived from their knowledge and experience even when that required some form of resistance to established school policy or authority. In developing a theory around her observations, Ladson-Billings proposed three important conceptions influencing the performance of “culturally relevant teachers” (p. 478): •

their conceptions of self and others, believing that • • • •

•

the way they structured social relations by • • • •

•

all of their students could achieve academic success, teaching is an art—unpredictable, always in the process of becoming, they were members of the community and teaching was giving back, teaching is a process of pulling knowledge out, maintaining fluid student–teacher relationships, demonstrating a connectedness with all of the students, developing a community of learners, encouraging students to learn collaboratively and be responsible for one another, and

their conception of knowledge, that it • • • • •

is not static; it is shared, recycled, and constructed, must be viewed critically, requires teachers to be passionate about knowledge and learning, involves teacher scaffolding to facilitate learning, and needs to be assessed in multifaceted ways that incorporate multiple forms of excellence. (adapted from Ladson-Billings, 1995, pp. 478–481)

Framed this way, it is clear that CRP demands much from teachers: “Teachers need to believe that schools can be sites for social transformation even as they recognize that schools have typically served to maintain social inequities” (p. 24). Nevertheless, such beliefs strike us as central to fostering intercultural education and intergroup contact. The concerns for the promotion of equity, tolerance, and social justice that permeate the intercultural education literature are also critical elements in thinking about the role of citizenship education, to which we turn next.

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Global Citizenship and Citizenship Education In calling for and describing a “peacebuilding education” that would serve to protect children and to enhance the development of peacebuilding skills, Bush and Saltarelli (2000) argued that there is “an important positive role for intellectual leaders to play in developing new concepts of the state, and its relationship to the citizen” (pp. 18–19). Such new concepts of the relationship between states and citizens might have had an antecedent in The Commonwealth of Nations and are implicit in the work of such transnational entities as the United Nations and the European Union. It is clear, though, that Bush and Saltarelli do not see such new concepts as arising quickly and replacing existing notions of citizenship. Indeed, speaking specifically about Northern Ireland, they indicated that the efforts to address polarization of the communities were gradual and multifaceted: “The response was not to attempt to desegregate the system in one fell swoop. In that case—and in most cases—this was neither possible politically, nor would it have been effective socially” (p. 25). For them, “The point to be emphasized within the context of constructive educational initiatives is that even within severe conflicts there are spaces for peacebuilding; spaces that are often dangerous, tenuous and fluid, but very much in existence” (p. 25). Finding and capitalizing on such spaces is key for them in moving toward a more peaceful society. In our view, the work of the Dissolving Boundaries Project (see Chapter 2) demonstrated that creating the conditions for constructive contact between the communities by engaging teachers and schools in online educational projects was one way of finding a space for peacebuilding. Other ways of finding peacebuilding spaces include promoting global awareness and/or global citizenship and creating programs that foster intercultural awareness/ cultural responsiveness. Global Awareness and Global Citizenship

The need for greater awareness of global issues and appreciation for the concept of global citizenship has been recognized by UNESCO: Beyond cognitive knowledge and skills, the international community is urging an education that will help resolve the existing and emerging global challenges menacing our planet, while wisely tapping into the opportunities it provides. In this context, there is growing interest in global citizenship education (GCE), signaling [sic] a shift in the role and purpose of education to that of forging more just, peaceful, tolerant and inclusive societies. (2014, p. 5)

12 William J. Hunter, Roger Austin and Rhiannon Turner

Following a recognition that the concept of global citizenship is subject to a wide array of definitions and controversies, UNESCO went on to say: Despite differences in interpretation, there is a common understanding that global citizenship does not imply a legal status. It refers more to a sense of belonging to a broader community and common humanity, promoting a ‘global gaze’ that links the local to the global and the national to the international (Marshall, 2005). It is also a way of understanding, acting and relating oneself to others and the environment in space and in time, based on universal values, through respect for diversity and pluralism. (p. 14. Citation style modified) It is this sense of broader community that we seek to explore in the context of blended learning in schools. Marshall’s (2005) examination of the perceptions of workers for non-governmental organizations who engaged with secondary school teachers regarding England’s citizenship curriculum indicated that global citizenship needed to be considered in the broader context of critical pedagogy and social justice. This seems to accentuate the notion that global citizenship is not simply a matter of knowledge but that it also incorporates ways of perceiving, thinking, and acting, all of which would need to be reflected in curriculum documents. Many nations have citizenship education in their curricula, but UNESCO (2014) pointed out that the disciplinary home for citizenship education can vary. For example, they credit Chung (2013) with assembling the data reported in Table 1.1: Table 1.1 Different curriculum “homes” for global citizenship education in Asia and Pacific countries Moral/Value Education/Ethics

Civics/Citizenship Education

Religious Education

Health and Physical Education

Bhutan China Indonesia Japan, Mongolia Republic of Korea

Malaysia Philippines Singapore

Brunei Darussalam Fiji Iran Maldives Myanmar Pakistan Thailand

Papua New Guinea Republic of Palau

UNESCO (2014) also acknowledges that for some nations, citizenship education takes place in integrated cross-curriculum programs, saying that the scope of such programs is

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wider than a single subject and indeed wider than the curriculum itself. Ideally, GCE becomes part of the ethos of a learning environment, influencing senior management decisions, teacher practices and relationships between educational institutions and communities. (p. 25) The question of why global citizenship education is now emerging as such an important direction for schools around the world is specifically addressed in UNESCO (n.d.), which points to explanations like the following. •

• •

•

•

Educators are increasingly focused on the importance of understanding and addressing issues like supporting peace, human rights, equity, acceptance of diversity, and sustainable development—which led UNESCO to launch the Global Education First Initiative3 in 2012 with the overarching goal of empowering global citizens. Communication technologies have connected people around the globe, leading to a sense of interconnectedness and to participation in a larger community/communities. Large numbers of people are engaged in “sub-regional, regional and international governance bodies” and in private enterprises and civil societies so that they need to “think and act globally and locally at the same time” (p. 2). Increased cultural heterogeneity in communities because of transnational migration requires learning how to live together in harmony. The global influence of democracy leads to demands for civic and other rights at the national level. Tensions and conflicts among populations often extend beyond national boundaries as do issues of sustainable development and climate change, requiring cooperation and collaboration between nations.

Another UNESCO document (2015a) focused on “topics and learning objectives,” but noted that the concept of citizenship has evolved over the past century because of increasing global contacts, including multilateral treaties and agreements as well as international concerns about human rights. In this document, UNESCO again indicated that notions of citizenship vary across nations and that global citizenship may be perceived by some as complementary to citizenship in a nation-state or as threatening it. From their perspective, in line with what we have said prior, global citizenship has three core conceptual dimensions: Cognitive. To acquire knowledge, understanding and critical thinking about global, regional, national and local issues and the interconnectedness and interdependency of different countries and populations.

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Socio-emotional. To have a sense of belonging to a common humanity, sharing values and responsibilities, empathy, solidarity and respect for differences and diversity. Behavioral. To act effectively and responsibly at local, national and global levels for a more peaceful and sustainable world. (UNESCO, 2015a, p. 15, Box 1) This document further expands what each of the preceding core dimensions means in detail and provides two possible learning outcomes and three key learning attributes along with examples of the kinds of learning objectives implied by each dimension. Together, UNESCO (2014) and UNESCO (2015a) suggest teaching content and methods that fit with the preceding core dimensions and provide examples of how all of this plays out in projects that link learners in different countries. UNESCO (2014) also calls for educators to put information technologies to work in the service of citizenship education: Online learning opportunities are also important for global citizenship education and can include the use of distance and opening learning platforms, social media and the Internet for researching issues and for completing projects, including collaborative work. Innovative approaches incorporate a blended learning environment, with online and offline activities, so that learning is not confined to the computer screen and there are opportunities for collaborative learning and experiential practice. (p. 29) Several of these UNESCO documents refer to the importance of information exchange both within classrooms and between schools in the same or different countries. Underlying such assertions, we believe is an implicit recognition of the value of intergroup contact along the lines first laid out by Allport (1954). As Roulston and Hansson argued about several international programs that sought to bring diverse groups together: “While not always acknowledged, these approaches appear to embrace contact theory” (2019, p. 2). With that in mind, we turn now to what Ellison and Powers (1994) called “one of the most durable ideas in the sociology of racial and ethnic relations” (p. 385). Intergroup Contact Theory Intergroup contact theory (Allport, 1954) proposed that positive interactions between members of different social groups could improve intergroup relations, provided that those interactions were characterized by equal status, cooperation, common goals, and institutional support. The robust

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relationship between intergroup contact and more positive out-group perceptions is now well established. Pettigrew and Tropp (2006) conducted a large-scale meta-analysis of over 500 studies on face-to-face contact involving 250,000 participants from 38 nations, finding a robust small-to-medium negative effect of contact on prejudice, with prejudice reduction observed in 94% of samples. Studies which met the optimal conditions proposed by Allport (1954) yielded the greatest reductions in prejudice, but even studies in which conditions were less than optimal still produced on average a significant reduction in prejudice as a result of contact. In the 13 years since this exhaustive review, more than 1,000 further papers on intergroup contact have been published, making contact theory arguably the most intensively studied and applied theory of prejudice reduction. One important recent development in contact research is evidence that people who have had more contact with culturally different groups not only developed more positive out-group perceptions, they also 1) showed a greater belief in an equal society and more concern for the environment (Meleady, Crisp, Dhont, Hopthrow, & Turner, 2019); 2) had an increased likelihood of working towards peace and reconciliation (Tropp et al., 2017); 3) were more likely to hold balanced, conciliatory viewpoints (Shirlow, 2003); and 4) were better able to demonstrate multiple perspectives, critical thinking, decision making, problem solving skills, creativity and academic self-confidence (Meleady, Crisp, Hodson, & Earle, 2019). Face-to-Face Contact in Schools

Arguably, contact should be especially effective at promoting positive outcomes in the classroom when children from different social backgrounds are present (Turner & Cameron, 2016). Children spend a considerable proportion of their lives in the classroom, often working together under the conditions specified by Allport, for example completing tasks that require teamwork and cooperation, with the encouragement of teachers, in order to achieve common goals. Indeed, there is evidence that children who experience diversity at school hold more positive intergroup attitudes (Davies, Tropp, Aron, Pettigrew, & Wright, 2011; Killen, Crystal, & Ruck, 2007; Tropp & Prenovost, 2008; Turner, Tam, Hewstone, Kenworthy, & Cairns, 2013), demonstrate

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more prosocial behavior toward out-group members (Abbott & Cameron, 2014), and have more inclusive friendships (Bagci, Kumashiro, Smith, Blumberg, & Rutland, 2014; Feddes, Noack, & Rutland, 2009; Jugert, Noack, & Rutland, 2011). These positive outcomes suggest that attending a diverse school increases the likelihood of meaningful contact. For example, Žeželj, Jakšić, and Jošić (2015) found that Serbian children who engaged in supervised contact with Roma peers in school subsequently held positive attitudes toward Roma in general. In addition, Vezzali and Giovannini (2012) found that Italian secondary school students who had experienced more high-quality contact with immigrants held more positive attitudes toward immigrants and even two unrelated groups, disabled and gay people. Where these positive intergroup contact experiences develop into meaningful friendships, they are especially likely to be beneficial. Among children aged six through to adolescence, cross-group friendship has been shown to predict more positive out-group attitudes in numerous intergroup contexts (Aboud, Mendelson, & Purdy, 2003; Ata, Bastian, & Lusher, 2009; Feddes et al., 2009; Wagner, Van Dick, Pettigrew, & Christ, 2003; Titzmann, Brenick, & Silbereisen, 2015). Turner, Hewstone, & Voci (2007), for example, found that white primary school children aged 8–11 years and white and South Asian high school students aged 11–15 years who had cross-group friends held more positive out-group attitudes. Also, Turner et al. (2013) found that children in Northern Ireland attending integrated schools with both Catholic and Protestant students learning alongside one another reported greater experience of diversity and more cross-group friendships than children attending segregated schools. Moreover, regardless of school type, children with greater experience of diversity had more cross-group friendships, which were in turn associated with greater empathy and self-disclosure and a more positive attitude toward the other community. There is also evidence that children with cross-group friends are more socially competent (Eisenberg, Vaughan, & Hofer, 2009; Lease & Blake, 2005); have higher self-esteem, well-being, and resilience (Bagci, Kumashiro, Smith, Blumberg, & Rutland, 2014; Fletcher, Rollins, & Nickerson, 2004); and are better at taking the perspective of out-group members. Consequently, they were more aware of how it feels to be discriminated against and to think that race-based exclusion is wrong (e.g. Killen et al., 2007; Tropp & Prenovost, 2008). Friendship represents an especially effective form of contact because it involves sustained intimate contact (Davies et al., 2011; Wagner et al., 2003) with opportunities for mutual self-disclosure, the voluntary sharing of intimate or personal information with one another, thought to be key to developing close relationship (Miller, 2002). During cross-group friendships, self-disclosure increases emotional connection by promoting intimacy and trust and indicates an active, committed, valued relationship (Davies et al., 2011; Turner et al., 2007).

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Online Intergroup Contact

An important recent development in the contact literature is around online forms of intergroup contact (e.g., Amichai-Hamburger & McKenna, 2006; White, Harvey, & Abu-Rayya, 2015). In this digital age, where young people spend more time communicating with one another online, it is especially important to understand how computer-mediated intergroup contact compares to face-to-face contact and what consequences it might have. Hasler and AmichaiHamburger (2013) argue that while it is sometimes difficult to achieve Allport’s (1954) optimal conditions in face-to-face contact, the Internet may be uniquely suited to achieving these conditions. The usual subtle indicators of status present during face-to-face contact are absent, and because people feel more confident in text-based online contact owing to visual anonymity, lower status individuals may feel more confident in speaking up. Whereas face-to-face diverse groups are more likely to divide into subgroups, with detrimental effects on cooperation and performance, there is evidence of an advantage for group diversity in online collaboration, with diverse online groups correlating with lower interpersonal conflict and higher group performance (Mortensen & Hinds, 2001; Polzer, Crisp, Jarvenpaa, & Kim, 2006; Staples & Zhao, 2006). Moreover, because online contact may be less costly, both financially and socially, and less logistically challenging than face-to-face contact, it may receive greater support from authorities (Amichai-Hamburger & McKenna, 2006). White and Abu-Rayya (2012) developed and tested an E-contact program in religiously segregated high schools in Australia and found that groups of two Christian and two Muslim children who worked cooperatively online over nine weeks to achieve a common goal (complete a classroom project on environmental issues) subsequently showed a reduction in intergroup bias and intergroup anxiety that remained six months later. Importantly, the dual identity of the participants was emphasized: children were reminded that they not only belonged to their religious group but also to the shared category of Australian. While some researchers have argued that the lack of nonverbal and social cues during visually anonymous online interactions might result in shallow and impersonal relationships (e.g., Sproull & Kiesler, 1986), more recent research suggests that visual anonymity can actually enhance online communication because people have more control over how they present themselves. In fact, there is some evidence that participants ask more intimate questions and like their interaction partners more during online interaction than during face-toface contact, particularly when enough time is given for friendships to develop (Bargh & McKenna, 2004; Joinson, 2001; Tidwell & Walther, 2002). These findings highlight the importance of online contact involving long-term collaboration (Walther, 2009). In creating a protected environment in which participants meet an out-group member while remaining in their own familiar physical

18 William J. Hunter, Roger Austin and Rhiannon Turner

surroundings, and by inhibiting the activation of negative stereotypes about the other group because one cannot see physical cues to those stereotypes, the anxiety that often accompanies face-to-face intergroup contact should be minimized (Amichai-Hamburger & McKenna, 2006; Walther, 2009). This is an important advantage of online contact, because anxiety about meeting out-group members can lead to less positive intergroup attitudes and less successful encounters which can confirm rather than reduce negative expectations and prejudices (Stephan & Stephan, 1985; West & Turner, 2014). Amichai-Hamburger and Hayat (2013) outlined a number of additional advantages of online intergroup contact that together create a unique protecting and enabling psychological environment. First, in contrast to face-to-face contact, in which people’s physical characteristics and group memberships (e.g., race, gender, weight, physical stigmata) may be immediately obvious, many online interactions do not reveal these cues, and therefore, Internet users have a higher level of control regarding if and when this information is disclosed to the interaction partner. People may feel less limited by what is expected of them based on their stereotypes and can gradually disclose this information if and when they feel ready. Second, there is less immediacy in online contact; Internet users can take the time to shape and reshape their message before sending and stop the interaction at any point if they are not happy, which may help to mitigate intergroup anxiety. Third, the Internet is easily accessed at all times through a number of devices (e.g., desk top computer, laptop, smart phone), making intergroup contact easier than ever before. Fourth, the Internet is entertaining and exciting, and competition between different platforms will guarantee that user experience will continue to improve. This may help to increase the likelihood that people continue to engage online with those from different backgrounds to themselves. Video-Based Contact

While there is some literature to suggest that video conferencing might be a positive addition to online contact, to date the work seems to be limited to postsecondary learners. For example, van Oostveen, Childs, Clarkson, & Flynn (2016) demonstrated that the use of webcams and mic/headsets as a key element of online delivery can support the development of a feeling of closeness between postsecondary students. There does not appear to be published research on the specific contribution of videoconferencing in the context of school-based projects intended to reduce intergroup conflict or enhance intercultural education. As the technology improves and becomes more affordable, it seems likely that this will become a fruitful area of inquiry; however, at this point in time, there is still very little research available. In our review of the different elements for contact, face-to-face, asynchronous contact online, and synchronous online contact through videoconferencing, we

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found very little research on projects which had used ALL of these elements in a blended approach to developing intercultural education (though we have reported here on examples from Northern Ireland and Israel). While geographical distance means that some links can only work through online connectivity, there are others like the case studies of Northern Ireland, Israel, and Catalonia where blended learning opens up new challenges about the respective roles of each in promoting citizenship. Counter-Productive Contact

Crucially, online contact provides an excellent supplement to traditional faceto-face contact, in the form of blended contact. Online contact enables dialog to be maintained after face-to-face contact has finished or to be maintained between sessions of face-to-face contact. This is important because contact effects diminish over time if contact is not maintained (Jones & Rutland, 2018). It is also likely to help to maintain and strengthen any new cross-group friendships that are developing rather than their being damaged by the potentially disjointed nature of face-to-face contact, particularly in segregated settings where such contact is infrequent (Austin & Turner, 2020). While intergroup contact theory has a long history and has been extensively researched and refined in light of empirical findings, it is not without its detractors. Connolly, for example, examined contact between Northern Irish Catholic and Protestant adolescents in the context of a disco. Finding evidence that this contact actually hardened the community divide, he noted: With hindsight, it is not too difficult to understand why this form of contact appears to have actually helped to feed into the children’s existing sectarian beliefs. In essence, it provided a context where two groups of children, who were already deeply divided, were brought together unwittingly into an arena which itself is a highly contested and status-ridden one. (Connolly, 2000, p. 188) That is to say, the conditions laid out for positive contact (see earlier) were not met in this environment. It is tempting to dismiss Connolly’s findings for this reason, yet Dixon, Durrheim, and Tredoux argued (2005) that those conditions constitute an “optimal contact strategy” that “invites researchers to discover an ideal world” (p. 699) where contact can have the intended anti-prejudice effects: We have argued that contact research tends to gravitate toward the investigation of relations unfolding under rarified conditions. As a corrective to this tendency to prioritize ideal forms of contact, we advocate that

20 William J. Hunter, Roger Austin and Rhiannon Turner

more research be conducted on the mundane, seemingly unimportant, encounters that constitute the overwhelming majority of everyday contact experiences. (p. 703) It seems clear that contact in and of itself will not suffice to reduce prejudice and that negative contacts have negative consequences. However, our position has been that schools are an environment in which it ought to be possible to deliberately structure such ideal conditions. One advantage of the contact hypothesis and its “idealized” conditions is that it provides us with guidance about how to go about creating the circumstances in which intergroup contact may be beneficial. Blended and Online Learning As noted previously, we see potential for both synchronous and asynchronous information and communication technologies to support teachers in the creation of opportunities for effective positive contact. In conditions in which direct contact would be prohibitively expensive or potentially risky, online methods may be the only option for bringing groups together. When risks are manageable and travel costs are not prohibitive, blended learning methods support a combination of direct contact and online contact that may well provide optimal conditions for effecting change. In the past 25 years, digital technologies have provided educators with new tools for learning and teaching, including tools that enable flexible delivery at a distance. Although there is a range of terms for identifying such technologies (e.g., online learning, e-learning, distance education, blended learning) and distinctions are made between synchronous (e.g., video or audio conferencing) and asynchronous (e.g., online discussion fora), it is clear that the use of these tools has been increasing, at least in technologically developed nations. For example, Seaman, Allen, and Seaman (2018), defining distance education broadly, reported the percentages of U.S. students taking some form of distance education increased steadily from 2012 to 2016 as illustrated in Table 1.2:

Table 1.2 U.S. students’ experience with online courses, 2012–2016

Taking some distance courses Taking only distance courses Adapted from graphic, p. 11.

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

13.3% 12.6%

14.1% 13.1%

14.2% 13.9%

15.4% 14.3%

16.7% 14.9%

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Recent results from a Canadian study (Donovan et al., 2019) showed the same pattern: “In 2016–2017, 18% of all Canadian postsecondary students were taking at least one online course for credit” (p. 7). Preliminary results from an even more recent study indicated a further 10% increase in one year (Johnson, Donovan, Seaman, & Bates, 2020). All of these studies were based on postsecondary education and it is difficult to find comparable recent enrollment data on primary and secondary education. However, a 2011 study by the U.S. National Center for Educational Statistics examined the extent to which school districts reported students engaged in online learning (Queen & Lewis, 2011). The report provided detailed analysis of enrollments according to school levels, poverty classifications, community types, and regions of the country, but the key findings for our purpose were an estimate that over 1,800,000 primary and secondary students (74% in upper secondary grades) were enrolled in some kind of online education and that 55% of school districts reported that such programs were available to their students. Clearly, these North American data are selective and at best can be regarded as indicative of the growth of online education in technologically developed nations, but we regard them as a strong “proof of concept” while recognizing that the current infrastructure for such programs is weak or nonexistent in many parts of the world. We consider it important to note that data such as those reported above do not usually distinguish between online learning and blended learning, but since much of the work reports on numbers taking “at least one” online course, it seems safe to conclude that the results also reflect growth in the prevalence of blended learning since many of the respondents would be taking a combination of online and face-to-face courses and others would be taking online courses that involve a face-to-face component. The research on the effects or impact of blended/online learning is equivocal, in part because of the particular form of online education examined. For example, the Fully Online Learning Community model (van Oostveen et al., 2016), which makes extensive use of videoconferencing in a constructivist learning environment, represents a substantially different experience from programs that rely on the online environment solely for content delivery and asynchronous discussion. Differences related to the specific technologies used, the ages of the learners included, the subjects taught (among other possibilities) would likewise be expected to have different impacts. Moreover, most studies have focused on some form of academic achievement as the outcome measure. Responding to the rather pessimistic conclusions in the OECD’s (2015) report on students, learning, and computing that there was “no appreciable improvements in student achievement in reading, mathematics or science in the countries that had invested heavily in ICT for education” (p. 15), Pérez-Sanagustín et al. (2017) conducted a systematic review of technology impact studies. They identified ten categories of “21st century

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skills” and ten “other” outcomes that had been sought as evidence of achievement in the 352 studies they reviewed. In the final analysis, however, their findings did not really contradict the OECD but led them to provide some well-founded recommendations for future research and practice. Of particular note for our purposes is that none of those 20 outcome categories focused on the ways that technology might serve to promote interaction between children from communities in conflict (or even from intercultural settings). For too many educators, blended learning and other online technologies have been valued only to the extent that they advance either traditional achievement goals, critical thinking, or the development of technology skills. This has been especially true in university- and college-level online learning, but as we will explain in Chapter 7, a review of literature by Carr (2020) has given us some reason to think this may be changing. We mean to expand that mission. The need is clear. During the last half century, new technologies have emerged that radically alter the ways that people engage with one another. It is stunning to realize that it has been just 30 years since Tim Berners-Lee first conceived of the World Wide Web and then created the tools to operationalize it. In that short time, we have moved from using computers as individual devices for information storage and data analysis to having them become a globally networked “information universe” (Berners-Lee, Cailliau, Groff, & Pollermann, 2010). In effect, in those three decades, we have moved from what H. G. Wells (1938) envisioned as a “world encyclopedia” to what he called the “world brain.” Such visions of the Internet often have Utopian undertones, but it is also clear that the Internet is not uniformly positive in its social impact. MediaSmarts4 is a Canadian nonprofit organization that is dedicated to educating young people about safe Internet use. Their website has links to resources on a large variety of problem areas as indicated in Table 1.3. To this list we could add political manipulation, fraud, and several other problematic categories (see, e.g., Graham and Dutton (2019) for an impressive recent compilation of essays on the social impact of the Internet). Recently, Finland received recognition for its comprehensive approach to teaching primary school children how to recognize fake news (Henley, 2020). The Finnish program actually extends to all school grades and has a strong focus on social

Table 1.3 MediaSmarts information literacy problem categories Authenticating Information Cyberbullying Cyber Security Excessive Internet Use

Gambling Online Hate Online Ethics Online Marketing

Privacy Pornography Sexual Exploitation Sexting

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media. Henley quotes Finnish teacher Kari Kivinen’s general description: “The goal is active, responsible citizens and voters. Thinking critically, factchecking, interpreting and evaluating all the information you receive, wherever it appears, is crucial. We’ve made it a core part of what we teach, across all subjects” (Henley, 2020, p. 1). Other sites with media literacy tools for teachers include • • •

Center for Media Literacy5 Habilo Médias (française)6 CyberCivics7

The focus of the resources found on sites such as these is generally to “webproof” young people—to warn them about game addiction, sexual predators, and manipulative marketing and also to help them develop the knowledge and skills to critically analyze the information on the Internet and to encourage them to think independently. There is great value in such services, but they do not address the other side of the coin—productive and socially constructive uses of the Internet. For that, we believe young people need the kind of modeling and supervised practice that can occur with skilled teachers in connected classrooms where students can learn together. As Amichai-Hamburger and McKenna (2006) concluded: The Internet has an enormous potential for providing tools to create effective intergroup contact. Its unique characteristics provide an excellent basis for such a contact, for example, by creating a secure environment, reducing anxiety, cutting geographical distances, significantly lowering costs, and by creating equal status, intimate contact, and cooperation. (p. 838) Amichai-Hamburger and McKenna (2006) argued further that the anonymity and control that characterize online interactions can promote selfdisclosure and reduce anxiety, but others, such as Lapidot-Lefler and Barak (2012) claim that online interactions can also increase stereotype-based judgments and have a disinhibiting effect on antagonistic behaviors. That is, the fact that interaction occurs online does not guarantee socially positive outcomes. In sum, well-designed positive contact learning experiences created and managed by knowledgeable and skilled teachers and delivered using an appropriate combination of online and blended learning methods can create the conditions under which children may begin to develop the trust and confidence that will reduce prejudice and improve intercultural communication. We will discuss examples of such projects in the coming chapters.

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Conclusion In a qualitative review of empirical research on intercultural education, Çiftçi (2016) identified nine themes in 26 studies that fit the selection criteria (empirical studies published in refereed journals between 2004 and 2014), and it is worth noting that this is only a small fraction of the published work on intercultural education. While some of Çiftçi’s nine themes pertained to methodological or reporting issues, others had direct bearing on the work we are reporting here. First, Çiftçi reported that the research he reviewed showed research participants indicated that they were satisfied overall with the use of digital tools and intercultural learning and that they demonstrated increased knowledge of both their own and the target “other” culture as a consequence of their participation in the intercultural projects. In addition, he reported that participants in the research studies required training in the use of the relevant technologies and in the types of interpersonal communication that would foster the development of intercultural competence. It seems noteworthy to us that Çiftçi’s work took place outside of the context of intergroup contact theory; however, his focus on the nature of the interpersonal communication that takes place in the project seems consistent with the conditions necessary for positive intergroup contact. Much of the work in this book reflects the themes that Çiftçi identified. For example, Chapter 2 on Northern Ireland and Chapter 3 on Israel examine new work that has emerged in the last five years and builds on well-established blended learning programs for intercultural education in schools. We wished to understand better how online and face-to-face contact were making links between schools possible in political contexts that were either emerging from conflict or still affected by it. It was also important for us to examine the conditions in which promising but relatively small-scale programs could begin to influence the entire educational system in a given area. The analyses in the Northern Irish and Israeli settings are consistent with Çiftçi’s findings of satisfaction with the technological tools used and with the acquisition of knowledge about one’s own and another’s cultures. We see this in the compelling evidence of the projects’ impacts on children and their teachers and in their growing appreciation of the institutional and cultural barriers to the widespread adoption of blended learning for citizenship. Chapter 4, on the European Union’s eTwinning program, moves outside purely regional or national parameters to explore one of the largest and most successful programs of its kind that uses ICT to cross national boundaries to develop citizenship education. The chapter assesses how the eTwinning initiative emerged and how a range of strategic economic, educational, and political factors have ensured that adequate funds have been provided to run a huge network of linked schools across the member states of the EU. With eTwinning we see

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both the importance of professional development and the fruits of a massive effort to support the development of a transnational identity. Chapter 5 moves the focus to an even wider international scale through an examination of two groundbreaking programs that are linking young people in affluent “Western” countries with partners around the world in less affluent countries. Our investigations of the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN) and the Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning project (CCGL) offer contrasting approaches to the ways that projects are funded and the challenges involved in seeking to deploy online learning as a regular means of connecting young people together for global citizenship. Both iEARN and CCGL are anchored around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This chapter also includes an examination of the curricular focus of interschool links. Chapter 6 opens up the question of whether a model using blended learning to link schools for global citizenship can be adopted in other regions or countries that have experienced sustained tension around issues of language and identity— common foci of intercultural education projects. The study of Catalonia offers insights into how language, in this case Catalan, can become politicized in a way that presents challenges for teachers. The chapter explores the difficult interplay between the need for citizenship to reach out to the wider world while at the same time respecting the importance of indigenous culture and identity. In Chapter 7, we draw together six important themes which emerged from the empirical evidence of Chapters 2–6. We reassess the arguments for the use of blended learning in global citizenship, reflect on the debate about whether the focus of this kind of work should be social justice or social harmony, and assess what we now know about the critical success factors. We conclude with our observations on the distinctive roles that face-to-face and online learning contribute to education for global citizenship, the extent to which blended learning can be disseminated, and what new areas of research have been identified as needing further study. Notes 1. It is not possible to provide a detailed account of IEP’s methodology here, but it is clearly laid out in two appendices to the report (IEP, 2019, pp. 84–95). As an example, two of the many indicators used in assessing “militarism” are “Military expenditure as a percentage of GDP” and “Number of armed services personnel per 100,000 people” (IEP, 2019, p. 85). 2. Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack. http://protectingeducation.org/. Accessed May 6, 2020. 3. Global Education First Initiative. www.unesco.org/new/en/gefi/home/. Accessed May 6, 2021. 4. Media Smarts. http://mediasmarts.ca/. Accessed May 6, 2020. 5. Center for Media Literacy. www.medialit.org/. Accessed May 6, 2020. 6. Habilo Medias (française). http://habilomedias.ca/english/index.cfm. Accessed May 6, 2020. 7. CyberCivics. www.cybercivics.com/. Accessed May 6, 2020.

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28 William J. Hunter, Roger Austin and Rhiannon Turner Jugert, P., Noack, P., & Rutland, A. (2011). Friendship preferences among German and Turkish preadolescents. Child Development, 82(3), 812–829. Killen, M., Crystal, D., & Ruck, M. (2007). The social developmental benefits of heterogeneous school environments. In E. Frankenberg & G. Orfield (Eds.), Lessons in integration: Realizing the promise of racial diversity in American schools (pp. 57–73). Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press. Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). What we can learn from multicultural education research. Educational Leadership, 51(8), 22–26. Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491. Lapidot-Lefler, N., & Barak, A. (2012). Effects of anonymity, invisibility, and lack of eye-contact on toxic online disinhibition. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(2), 434–443. Lease, A. M., & Blake, J. J. (2005). A comparison of majority-race children with and without a minority-race friend. Social Development, 14(1), 20–41. Marshall, H. (2005). Developing the global gaze in citizenship education: Exploring the perspectives of global education NGO workers in England. International Journal of Citizenship and Teacher Education, 1(2), 76–92. Meleady, R., Crisp, R. J., Dhont, K., Hopthrow, T., & Turner, R. N. (2019). Intergroup contact, social dominance and environmental concern: A test of the cognitive-liberalization hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000196 Meleady, R., Crisp, R. J., Hodson, G., & Earle, M. (2019). On the generalization of intergroup contact: A taxonomy of transfer effects. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 28(5), 430–435. Mikander, P., Zilliacus, H., & Holm, G. (2018). Intercultural education in transition: Nordic perspectives. Education Inquiry, 9(1), 40–56. Miller, N. (2002). Personalization and the promise of contact theory. Journal of Social Issues, 58, 387–410. Mortensen, M., & Hinds, P. J. (2001). Conflict and shared identity in geographically distributed teams. The International Journal of Conflict Management, 12, 212–238. Nieke, W. (1995). Interkulturelle Erziehung und Bildung. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Wiesbaden: Verlag. OECD. (2015). Students, computers and learning: Making the connection. PISA, OECD Publishing. Retrieved from https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/students-computers-andlearning_9789264239555-en O’Malley, B. (2007). Education under attack: A global study on targeted political and military violence against staff, students, teachers, union and government officials, and institutions. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Retrieved from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000150548 Pérez-Sanagustín, M., Nussbaum, M., Hilliger, I., Alario-Hoyos, C., Heller, R. S., Twining, P., & Tsai, C. C. (2017). Research on ICT in K-12 schools e a review of experimental and surveybased studies in computers & education 2011 to 2015. Computers and Education, 104, A1–A15. Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 751–783. Polzer, J. T., Crisp, C. B., Jarvenpaa, S. L., & Kim, J. W. (2006). Extending the faultline model to geographically dispersed teams: How collocated subgroups can impair group functioning. Academy of Management Journal, 49, 679–692. Portera, A. (2008). Intercultural education in Europe: Epistemological and semantic aspects. Intercultural Education, 19(6), 481–491. Potok, M. (2017). The Trump effect: The campaign language of the man who would become president sparks hate violence, bullying, before and after the election. Southern Poverty Law

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30 William J. Hunter, Roger Austin and Rhiannon Turner Turner, R. N., Tam, T., Hewstone, M., Kenworthy, J., & Cairns, E. (2013). Contact between catholic and protestant schoolchildren in Northern Ireland. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 43, 216–228. UNESCO. (2015a). Global citizenship education: Topics and learning objectives. Retrieved from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232993 UNESCO. (n.d.). Global citizenship education: An emerging perspective. Retrieved from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232993 UNESCO, Education Sector, & Tang, Q. (2014). Global citizenship education: Preparing learners for the challenges of the 21st century. Retrieved from https://en.unesco.org/news/ global-citizenship-education-preparing-learners-challenges-twenty-first-century-0 UNICEF. (2018a). Global initiative on out-of-school children: South Sudan country study. Retrieved from http://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/global-initiative-out-of-schoolchildren-south-sudan-country-study.pdf UNICEF. (2018b). Displacement. Retrieved from https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-migrationand-displacement/displacement/ United Nations, International Migration Report. (2017). Department of economic and social affairs, population division. International Migration Report 2017: Highlights (ST/ESA/SER.A/404). Retrieved from www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/publications/ migrationreport/docs/MigrationReport2017_Highlights.pdf U.N. News. (2019, June 21). Over 80 per cent of schools in Anglophone Cameroon shut down, as conflict worsens. Retrieved from https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/06/1041071 van Oostveen, R., Childs, E., Clarkson, J., & Flynn, K. (2016). Becoming close with others online: Distributed community building in online PBL courses. The College Quarterly, 19(1). Retrieved from http://collegequarterly.ca/2016-vol19-num01-winter/becoming-closewith-others-online.html Verkuyten, M., & Thijs, J. (2013). Multicultural education and interethnic attitudes. European Psychologist, 18, 179–190. http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000152 Vezzali, L., & Giovannini, D. (2012). Secondary transfer effect of intergroup contact: The role of intergroup attitudes, intergroup anxiety and perspective taking. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 22, 125–144. Wagner, U., Van Dick, R., Pettigrew, T. F., & Christ, O. (2003). Ethnic prejudice in East and West Germany: The explanatory power of intergroup contact. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 6(1), 22–36. Walther, J. B. (2009). Computer-mediated communication and virtual groups: Applications to interethnic conflict. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 37, 225–238. Wells, H. G. (1938). World Brain. London: Methuen & Co., Project Gutenberg, Australia. Retrieved from http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1303731h.html#ch2 West, K., & Turner, R. N. (2014). Using extended contact to improve physiological responses and behavior toward people with schizophrenia. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 50, 57–64. White, F. A., & Abu-Rayya, H. M. (2012). A dual identity-electronic contact (DIEC) experiment promoting short-and long-term intergroup harmony. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(3), 597–608. White, F. A., Harvey, L. J., & Abu-Rayya, H. M. (2015). Improving intergroup relations in the Internet age: A critical review. Review of General Psychology, 19(2), 129–139. https://doi. org/10.1037/gpr0000036 Žeželj, I., Jakšić, I., & Jošić, S. (2015). How contact shapes implicit and explicit preferences: Attitudes towards Roma children in exclusive and non-inclusive environment. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 45, 263–273.

2

Shared Education in Northern Ireland Systemic Change Through Blended Learning Roger Austin, Rhiannon Turner, Sammy Taggart, and Mairead Davidson

Introduction In this chapter, we present evidence to suggest that systemic educational change toward social cohesion in a post-conflict society like Northern Ireland needs to adopt blended learning to be affordable and sustainable. While face-to-face links between schools undoubtedly have an effect on pupils’ outlook, if we want to bring about change that can be embedded in all schools, we need to harness the power of online connectivity. In making this case, we wanted to foreground the real, lived experiences of teachers involved in this work because their commitment to working together across communities is critical. The extracts that follow are from a conversation with teachers in June 2019, presented in greater length later in the chapter. They form part of a much bigger picture about the way that blended learning is building strong cross-community partnerships between schools in an area of north Belfast that was once known for its sectarian violence. Staff from two schools, one Protestant and one Catholic, are involved in a program called “Shared Education” which provides state funding to encourage cross-community collaboration. Currie Primary and Holy Family Primary, North Belfast When you step off the train at York Street station in north Belfast and walk toward Currie Primary School, you take a journey through Northern Ireland’s past and present. On the side of a decaying redbrick building are panels which tell the passerby the story of the “Ulster-Scots Shipbuilding Empire” in colorful images of great seagoing vessels, like the Titanic built by Harland and Wolff, the nearby shipyard. The images on another building portray the construction of a great transport network, The Belfast and Northern Counties Railway built in 1845. The bold header for these images reads “ULSTER-SCOTS WHO CONNECTED BELFAST TO THE WORLD.” These evocations of a glorious

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engineering past are a reminder of what Ulster Scots, the descendants of the Protestant settlers who came to Ireland from Scotland in the 17th century, had brought to this part of Belfast which is now a fairly quiet backwater of modest but well-maintained housing. Just round the corner, on the Limestone Road, you come face-to-face with the present. A large painted mural on the side of a house reads, “VOTE LEAVE E.U. REV.18.4.” Under the slogan in bold black letters are the words “Loyalist Tigers Bay.” Across the street are the “Jesus Saves Bible Church” and the “Sunday School for Boys and Girls.” Here religion and politics run close together. This is the catchment area for Currie Primary School, which has a mainly Protestant intake. Currie, however, has been linked to the neighboring Holy Family Catholic School for nearly twenty years. We asked the current principals and teachers from the two schools to reflect on how this linkage had happened and what impact it was having on children and their families. They agreed to having their names and schools identified, a measure of how confident they feel about their partnership. My name is Siobhan McQuaid. I am the Principal of Holy Family Primary School. I’ve worked there for 28 years through lots of different times and events and have a great working relationship with Currie Primary School . . . The principal before me . . . and the previous principal in Currie Primary School . . . worked together because they knew nothing was happening really in the area and things were very, very difficult. They knew that something had to happen. We were all involved in EMU (Education for Mutual Understanding) projects with schools, which were miles and miles away from our area. And we thought that that just does not make sense. It really should be the children who are living very near to each other (who) should be involved in shared activities together. So it was very slow to start. And lots of neutral ground and neutral venues were used. But that was the beginning of it. NICOLA MCMAHON: (teacher involved in Shared Education at Currie Primary School) We have a joint choir now with pupils from Holy Family and Currie. And they have competed in competitions together. And Christmas . . . the children from Holy Family come down and they sing in the local Presbyterian church at our carol service. And then our children will go up and sing in the Holy Family carol service . . . 10 years ago, that was completely unheard of, and nothing like that had been tried . . . I think the work that we’re doing in both schools . . . with the parents and the children, is really, really making such a difference to the calmness in the area. PRINCIPAL:

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In this chapter we will show how this striking story is part of a wider process of transformation in many of the schools in Northern Ireland. In our previous analysis of online learning and community cohesion (Austin & Hunter, 2013), we highlighted the impressive achievements of the European Studies Program and the Dissolving Boundaries program in addressing long-standing cultural differences between children growing up in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland (now more commonly referred to as simply “Ireland”), and England. Both programs had made extensive use of online and face-to-face contact between young people aged 8–17 and evidence from a range of sources had shown that the effect of well-managed interschool links was having an impact on pupils’ perceptions of “others” even a year after they had completed their work together (Department of Education and Skills Inspectorate, Ireland, and the Education and Training Inspectorate, Northern Ireland, 2012; Rickard & Austin, 2017). We drew attention to the fact that these government-funded initiatives were based on the premise that ongoing problems around identity in post-conflict Northern Ireland could not be addressed by focusing exclusively on children there but required the engagement of other parties across the border in Ireland, in England and in the broad context of the membership of both the United Kingdom and Ireland in the European Union. In the last five years, there has been a shift in policy direction in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Funding for both the programs outlined above ceased in 2013. The Dissolving Boundaries Yearbook (2014) noted that “Starting with 52 teachers, initially, we estimate that approximately 500 schools, 2,500 teachers and as many as 40,000 pupils have been involved in Dissolving Boundaries since the program began (p. 1).” In spite of the evidence of impact on policy and practice both on the island of Ireland and in other parts of the world (Austin, 2014), as we noted in our earlier book: “these programs remain on the margins of government priorities rather than at the centre” (Austin & Hunter, 2013, p. 40). There were, however, two important legacies of this work. The first was that the final phase of research on the Dissolving Boundaries (DB) program confirmed two critical points: evidence published by Rickard, Grace, Austin, and Smyth (2014) showed that even a year after their involvement in the program, children who had taken part had clearly enjoyed the experience. The authors noted: Asked if they enjoyed taking part in DB, 93% of students said yes, with an equal percentage of students on each side of the border. There was a very slight difference between Catholic students’ and Protestant students’ responses, with 95% of Catholic students and 89% of Protestant students claiming they enjoyed the participation. When asked to explain why they enjoyed taking part, the common theme running through individual

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responses was that children enjoyed communicating with other children across the border by sending them messages in forums, working together in wikis, meeting them in videoconferences and meeting them face to face. (p. 16) For those students who did not participate in DB but were in similar classes in the same schools, there was a difference in attitude toward communicating with students in another school, with just over 20% of the non-participating cohort responding “no” to the question “Do you like the idea of sending messages to students in another school?” The final published evidence of the impact of the DB program examined more closely the interplay between teachers’ use of online and face-to-face contact (Austin, Rickard, & Reilly, 2017). The authors commented that while a number of studies had examined the role of online communication between pupils and others had studied the effect of face-to-face work, very little work had been done on blended contact where teachers had used a combination of face-to-face and online work. They noted that: Given the age of the youngest participants in the program, around 8 years, the physical distance between schools, on average 200 miles (320 kilometres), and the prohibitive costs of overnight accommodation, most face-toface meetings took place in a single day and involved the 2 schools travelling to an agreed mid-way location such as an outdoor pursuit centre or cultural venue. It is important to stress the nature of the face-to-face contact which took place; it was of relatively short duration and its purpose was often more about intercultural education than academic study. In these two critical respects, the model of “blended contact” in DB was very different from the cases described in current research on blended learning such as those described by Dziuban, Picciano, Graham, and Moskal (2016) which overwhelmingly refer to courses in higher education where university students have a mix of face-to-face and online course delivery. (p. 4) We need to underline here that the relative infrequency of face-to-face contact in the DB program sits in marked contrast to the work which we will be analyzing later on Shared Education between schools in Northern Ireland. It is also important to note that only 13% of the teachers in the DB study had organized the face-to-face work in one of the participating schools rather than neutral venues, due to the time and distance involved in crossing the border (p. 11). One final finding from this research is relevant in the context of this chapter: 66% of the 146 teachers involved in this survey perceived one of the consequences of the face-to-face work to be “increased communication with

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partner pupils online” (p. 12). Others commented on the readiness of pupils to communicate more outside of normal school hours. All of this matters because it showed that blended learning might significantly increase the frequency of contact between the participants and, as Kuh (2003) has shown, this is one of the key factors in shaping effective collaborative learning. The second legacy of the Dissolving Boundaries Program was that it helped to support the case for a new policy initiative called Shared Education which was designed to bring schools closer together in cross-community partnerships within Northern Ireland. To put this in context, we will examine the historical, political, and socioeconomic forces that have guided education in Northern Ireland and in particular those that have tried to address the latent problems linked to the fact that some 93% of children in Northern Ireland attend schools that are predominantly Catholic or Protestant (Department of Education, 2019). Historical Context of Northern Ireland Northern Ireland was created by the 1920 Government of Ireland Act which split the island of Ireland into two parts, the six counties in the north east corner making up Northern Ireland and remaining part of the United Kingdom, while the rest of Ireland was given “home rule” status and then independence as the Irish Free State in 1922. This came about after centuries of British rule of the island of Ireland was challenged by those who wished to be an independent, sovereign nation. However, the descendants of 17th century English and Scottish immigrants, mostly Protestants, wanted to retain their historic ties with the United Kingdom and thus opposed Irish independence. While the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 which confirmed the partition solution brought a temporary cessation to the fighting and created the Irish Free State, it left an uneasy legacy among Irish Republicans who wanted the whole of the island to be completely separate from Britain. Indeed, until 1998, articles 2 and 3 of the constitution of the Irish Republic laid claim to the whole of Ireland. This not only caused anxiety on the part of the Protestant population about the long-term intentions of their neighbor across the border but also gave a degree of legitimacy to those who carried on a guerrilla campaign to create a united Ireland. However, 1998 was a game changer. After thirty years of conflict from 1966 to 1996 with serious loss of life mainly within Northern Ireland, a series of ceasefires ultimately led to the decommissioning of weapons and an eventual peace agreement, the so-called Good Friday or Belfast Agreement. This resolution of the conflict, brokered by the British and Irish governments with the help of the United States, set up structures that were built on the principle of power-sharing between the political parties in Northern Ireland that represented the views of Unionists and Nationalists/Republicans as well as those who did not fit into

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these traditional positions. But as we shall see, this resolution was fragile and often at risk of fracture. Politics in Northern Ireland The power-sharing arrangements include an elected Assembly in Northern Ireland and an executive of ten ministers. At the time of writing this chapter, in April 2020, we can highlight three significant features of political life. The first is that between 2017 and2019, the power-sharing structures collapsed and were not restored until January 2020. At the heart of the collapse was a history of mistrust and an inability to show the kind of partnerships that had been a feature of the early years of power-sharing. In this vacuum, toxic elements emerged, the second key feature of our analysis of the political landscape. Paramilitary organizations continue to exercise a malign influence across Northern Ireland. A Department of Justice Report on community attitudes to paramilitaries (Department of Justice for Northern Ireland, 2019, p. 20) noted that “more respondents living in Belfast either strongly agreed or agreed that paramilitary groups create fear and intimidation in their area (32%) in comparison to urban areas other than Belfast (15%) and rural areas (7%).” As an illustration of a worsening political climate, in the summer of 2019, both the national flags of Ireland and the United Kingdom as well as flags associated with the paramilitaries on each side began to reappear in a return to traditional habits of “marking territory.” There has been a resumption of higher levels of political violence by Republican elements clustering around the title “the new IRA” that included the shooting of the journalist Lyra McKee in May 2019 (Linstroth, 2019). Violence and intimidation also continue to be the stock-in-trade of Loyalist paramilitary organizations, such as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) according to the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s Paramilitary Crime Task Force (Kearney, 2019). The third factor in the present political situation was Brexit, the plan for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union (EU) in 2020 following a referendum in 2016 which narrowly supported this idea. The reason this issue has enflamed division in Northern Ireland is that in the main, the “Unionist” parties, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the smaller Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) were strongly in favor of the UK leaving the EU while all the other parties in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein (SF), the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), the Alliance party, and the Green party were in favor of remaining in the European Union. Although voters in Northern Ireland and in Scotland opted in favor of remaining in the EU, the overall majority in favor of Brexit across the UK created a sense among “remainers” that the interests of Northern Ireland were seen as secondary.

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The debate about Brexit also puts the spotlight on the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. Now that the UK has formally left the EU, the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is no longer a symbolic one. Drivers who were used to traveling on the main cross-border roads would only know that they had crossed the border by noting that the speed restrictions had changed from miles per hour in Northern Ireland to kilometers per hour in Ireland. This “soft” border, enabled by common membership in the EU, had allowed people and goods to flow freely, without customs or police checks. Now that the UK has left the EU, there is a risk that a “hard border” will have to be reestablished not only slowing down the flow of commerce and people but reminding everyone that Ireland remains partitioned. During the so-called Troubles from 1966 to 1998, border posts were targeted by the IRA precisely because they were the visible signs of the border separating the island. The International Fund for Ireland (IFI), which supports efforts to build reconciliation, noted that A new sense of uncertainty is also being experienced within the border counties, unsure of how Brexit will affect its surrounding communities. We have already seen those opposed to reconciliation use Brexit as an opportunity to encourage paramilitary recruitment at a time when projects are working hard to provide peaceful alternatives. (IFI, 2018, p. 3) In summary, ongoing tensions between the main political parties have created a disruptive backdrop for reconciliation in schools, but one final point is worth making. There are some signs that Northern Ireland’s voting patterns are changing from the traditional blocks of Unionist and Nationalist. The Alliance party, a broadly center-left leaning party, which claims support from Catholics and Protestants as well as those from the growing newcomer population, achieved its best result in both the local and the European Parliament elections in May 2019, winning its first-ever seat in the European Parliament. And according to Hayward and McManus (2018), 45% of people in a 2017 survey in Northern Ireland no longer identified as being either “Unionist” or “Nationalist.” Education, the Economy, Schools, and Society Northern Ireland has a population of 1.8 million, served in 2018–2019 by just over 1,009 schools (Department of Education, 2019) of which 813 are “primary,” teaching children aged 5–11. When children reach 11 years of age, parents may choose to enter their children for examinations which are used to select pupils for the more academically orientated grammar school sector. Around one-third of children attend grammar schools; the remaining two-thirds

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of children attend nonselective secondary schools where attendance is mandatory until the age of 16. Sixty-three percent of pupils stay in education until the age of 18 either following academic courses in school or vocational courses in colleges of further education. Following the principle of parental choice, about 93% of pupils attend state-funded schools that are either officially nondenominational but, in effect, Protestant, or denominational and, in effect, Catholic. Separate schooling reflects wider divisions in society. In 2017, for example, it was reported that 90% of social housing remained segregated into single identity communities and that there were more peace walls separating communities than before the Belfast Peace Agreement (Capener, 2017). But the makeup of the population in society and in schools is slowly changing. According to the Department of Education (2019), schools are becoming more ethnically diverse. Some 4.6% of the school population are recorded as “non-white,” an increase of 1.2% compared to 2014. These changes are also reflected in the nature of intercommunal violence. A recent report from the Police Service of Northern Ireland noted that although sectarian incidents and crime were at their lowest level in 2019 compared to 2010, the number of racist incidents and crimes was at its highest level (PSNI, 2019). Northern Ireland’s public services are expensive to run. Education and policing make significant demands on the public purse, especially in the case of schools, where there is duplication of provision in some towns to run both non-Catholic and Catholic schools. (Roulston & Cook, 2019) The capacity of the economy to provide policing to address residual sectarian problems, an aging population with attendant health care needs, and an expensive school system are matters of some importance. On this it should be noted that while there has been some growth in the economy since 2007, the public sector still accounts for 27% of jobs. This was significantly higher than the overall UK figure of 19.5%. (NISRA, 2019). Furthermore, Northern Ireland has the UK’s highest deficit between revenue and expenditure and relies on a subsidy of £9.4 billion per annum from the UK government in Westminster to balance the books (ONS, 2018). Our point here is a simple one: as we shall see following, most of the money to support reconciliation in schools has come from either international donors or the European Union. At a time when official reports showed serious underfunding of schools in Northern Ireland (House of Commons, 2019), we need to look carefully at the affordability of reconciliation especially if we accept the case that all children should benefit from this. Dealing With Separateness Since as early as 1970, there have been various attempts to address the reality that many young people in Northern Ireland grow up leading what an authoritative outside source described as living in “a largely divided society, with Protestant

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and Catholic communities existing in parallel,” attending separate schools and living in separate housing estates (Archik, 2018, p. 1). Austin and Turner (2020) have shown that educational interventions involved changes to the common curriculum, such as the introduction of the cross-curricular theme of “education for mutual understanding (p. 363),” citizenship (Niens, O’Connor, & Smith, 2013, Worden & Smith, 2017), or contact schemes which provided funding for infrequent interschool meetings, often on neutral ground. Evaluation of these initiatives has shown that their impact was limited either because face-to-face contact work only reached a small percentage of the school population or, in the case of citizenship, which is mandatory in all schools, discussion of issues of identity or rights was blunted by the fact that most children were in schools which were, in the main, single identity (Niens et al., 2013). By 2006, however, with the support of the local assembly and executive, momentum began to build for a renewed approach. It was called Shared Education. Shared Education Shared Education, which first emerged as an idea in 2005, was designed to bring about systemic change by underlining the advantages of interschool collaboration not only in terms of improved community relations but, more generally, in offering wider access to courses at post-primary level and offering a model which could improve staff development and lead to better educational outcomes for pupils (Department of Education, 2015; Duffy & Gallagher, 2017; Gallagher, 2005, 2016; Hughes & Loader, 2015; Loader & Hughes, 2017). There is evidence that these aims are being achieved. Children involved in Shared Education have, for example, more friends from the other community, some of which extend beyond the school setting and on social media (Duffy & Gallagher, 2017; Hughes, Donnelly, Hewstone, Gallagher, & Carlisle, 2010, Hughes, Lolliot, Hewstone, Schmid, & Carlisle, 2012), less bias toward their own community, and greater trust, less anxiety, and more positive feelings when in the company of members of the other community. They also exhibit greater desire to seek out and get to know members of the other community (Hughes et al., 2010, 2012). In light of this evidence, in 2015 the Department of Education in Northern Ireland secured external funding to develop the Shared Education Signature Project (SESP) which involved around 380 schools, based on existing cross-community partnerships, with an expectation that there would be a minimum of six faceto-face sessions per annum for the children involved. Following an enquiry into Integrated and Shared Education by the Education Committee in the devolved administration in Northern Ireland, a Shared Education Act (2016) was passed to “deliver educational benefits to children and young persons,” and to promote “the efficient and effective use of resources,” “equality of opportunity,” “good relations,” and “respect for identity, diversity and

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community cohesion” (p. 1). In 2018, the rollout of Shared Education to a new cohort of schools (300 schools by 2019) which did not have existing partnerships was introduced through the Collaboration and Sharing in Education program (CASE), funded through the European Union. It was agreed that as part of the 30 hours of minimum contact time which pupils were expected to do in Shared Education, 20% could be online. It is an indication of the caution around the use of blended learning that funders wanted “as much of the online collaboration to be face to face by video conferencing” according to a well-placed source in the Education Authority (M. Baker, personal communication, February 21, 2020; Education Authority, 2018). Around 65% of the total number of schools in Northern Ireland are now involved in Shared Education, and the Northern Ireland Department of Education has made clear its intention to “mainstream” Shared Education, noting that “a two pronged approach which includes face-to-face contact supplemented by online collaboration is one method to sustain relationships and raise standards” (Department of Education, 2018, p. 7). This approach is not without its critics. Roulston and Hansson (2019), for example, have offered a critique based on the claim that Shared Education aims to promote both better educational outcomes as well as reconciliation whereas Integrated schools, which account for 7% of the school population and have to endeavor to recruit a balanced intake of Catholic and Protestant pupils, are more demonstrably concerned with reconciliation. They also point to potential savings to the public purse if separate schools were integrated into a single one. However, unlike the Canadian province of Newfoundland, which abolished denominational schooling in 1998 (Higgins, 2011), there isn’t the same political will within Northern Ireland to follow a similar nondenominational route (Austin & Hunter, 2012). It is certainly possible that the funding offered to schools that embark on Shared Education may attract some participants who are more concerned initially with increasing budgets, but the evidence we provide in the following section tells a different story. It sheds light on one of the central issues around Shared Education, namely whether its purpose is what researchers refer to as “social justice” or “social harmony” (Selvanathan et al., 2019). Our analysis suggests that these approaches are not mutually exclusive but need to be managed with great care. Promotional materials for Shared Education underline the importance of social justice, highlighting that there should be a direct focus on issues of reconciliation, identity, and culture (SESP, 2008). In reality, however, pupils feel awkward discussing difference during SESP classes, preferring to focus on similarities (Loader, 2015; Loader & Hughes, 2017), while teachers in Northern Ireland often feel ill-equipped to handle conversations around difference, and some school principals discourage discussion of difference, preferring to focus on enhancing social harmony in class (McGlynn, 2008).

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While intuitively appealing, a purely social harmony approach (in which group membership or group differences are not acknowledged) is not effective at improving intergroup relations and can even increase intergroup bias (e.g., Pahlke, Bigler, & Suizzo, 2012; Wolsko, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2000). Failure to acknowledge group membership during contact may mean that any positive perceptions developed toward individual out-group members do not generalize to the entire out-group, with people assuming that pleasant members of the other community are “exceptions to the rule” (Brown & Hewstone, 2005). In addition, contact in which identity is not discussed is less likely to result in close cross-community relationships (Davies & Aron, 2016; Davies, Tropp, Aron, Pettigrew, & Wright, 2011). When conversations around cross-community issues are avoided, pleasant contact leaves institutional, social, and political structures that perpetuate inequality and conflict intact (Dixon, Durrheim, Kerr, & Thomae, 2013; Hughes & Loader, 2015). In contrast, when group inequalities are acknowledged, contact can actually promote collective action (Becker, Wright, Lubensky, & Zhou, 2013). This idea of going beyond feelings of tolerance toward creating critical thinkers and active citizens resonates with the work of those who promote Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (see Chapter 1). Moreover, people are more likely to take the perspective of another group and empathize with them if they learn about the others’ experiences, which both predict more positive cross-community relations (Tam, Hewstone, Kenworthy, & Cairns, 2009; Turner, Tam, Hewstone, Kenworthy, & Cairns, 2013). Put simply, Shared Education has the potential to promote social justice and social harmony provided discussion of differences, objectives around reconciliation, and appreciation of difference are prioritized alongside educational objectives of Shared Education, and teachers are educated to discuss challenging topics in the classroom (Hughes & Loader, 2015; Loader & Hughes, 2017). Contentious topics should also be introduced gradually (Loader & Hughes, 2017); thus, a focus on social harmony should be prioritized initially, moving onto issues of social justice once children from the two schools have formed friendly relationships (Davies & Aron, 2016). A recent document for teachers issued by the Education Authority in Northern Ireland (2019b) called “A Pupil Pathway” provides a very welcome framework on what such an approach looks like in practice. Empirical Research Into Blended Learning in Shared Education

In the early stages of Shared Education, the model that emerged for contact between schools was dominated entirely by the premise that only face-to-face encounters had validity; it is a model which continues to exercise significant traction (Controlled Schools Support Council, 2019). The Education and Training Inspectorate (2018) evaluation of 125 partnerships in the first phase of Shared

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Education, for example, made no reference to the use of blended learning. The report noted concerns from teachers about the sustainability of their work once the external funding ceased, but the potential use of ICT to address this was not part of the recommendations of the report. It was not until 2017, when the Education Authority, the agency responsible for implementing the Shared Education policy, invited proposals for teacher professional learning that courses on blended learning were provided. Austin and Turner’s (2020) research, based on teacher perceptions of the impact of this approach on the work they were doing in schools, underlined the importance of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure in place in Northern Ireland. Investment in the ICT infrastructure through a public–private partnership called Classroom 2000 (C2K) has brought the capacity of online contact within the reach of every child in every school; in other words, ICT provision opens up the potential for an approach that could include all children irrespective of the type of school they attend. Furthermore, as part of the overall drive to encourage teachers to use ICT, the Department of Education in Northern Ireland has been steadily increasing its expectations that the use of ICT should be either accredited or assessed (Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment, 2020). The requirements include the expectation that pupils will use ICT to exchange communication with others. In other words, using ICT to link to another school could fall within the framework of what is expected, and even required, as part of the curriculum. This sort of alignment between one part of the curriculum, the use of ICT, with another, the need for schools to work together, is one key element in finding a way to sustain such work and make it accessible for all children. There is of course a cost to this—the annual expense of running C2k is £30 million, which works out at £85 per pupil (Education Authority, 2019a). We might think of this as comparable to investments in electricity, always there, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This figure needs to be set against other approaches to community cohesion which include significant costs for bus travel between schools, additional pollution, and lost time in pupil travel. Austin and Turner’s (2020) research, the first empirical study of blended learning in Shared Education, was undertaken in the context of a two day faceto-face training course in the use of a common Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), called Fronter, a real-time videoconferencing software package called “Collaborate” and sessions on how these ICT applications could enhance and extend face-to-face collaborative learning during Shared Education. Fronter provided the usual features of a VLE with space for the creation and sharing of resources and discussion fora with scope for quizzes and a curriculum-targeted multimedia library. Collaborate is a “virtual classroom” in which teachers and pupils can interact through videoconferencing in real time and where work can be displayed and edited synchronously. Both applications were available to all

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schools in Northern Ireland at no additional cost as part of the managed ICT service for schools. The course was taught by an experienced academic, an ICT trainer, and teachers who had already been using blended learning. Teachers undertaking the course were advised on the importance of creating group-togroup contact between their pupils in line with the contact hypothesis and creating online discussions which had a “social” element to foster friendships as well as work areas for study of agreed tasks. At the end of the initial two days, teachers were asked to deliver a six week course with their partner teacher in their schools and return for a final face-to-face event to present a report on their work. This allowed teachers to reflect on very recent experiences of applying blended learning to their Shared Education classes. Austin and Turner’s research (2020) was based on 58 teachers (50 females, 8 males; 36 Catholic, 21 Protestant, and one with no community affiliation) who were involved in the first phase of Shared Education. All participants opted between February 2017 and November 2018 to undertake the module Collaborative Learning Online for Shared Education and Reconciliation (CLOSER). A total of 144 teachers took the module, so this represented a return rate of 40.2%. Fifty-one taught at primary schools and three at post-primary schools (a further four participants did not respond to this question). Eighteen teachers said that their schools were within walking distance of one another, whereas public transport was required for the remainder. Teachers posted completed comments in the online survey anonymously. Findings

The teachers in Austin and Turner’s (2020) study reported that the pupils they had worked with were between four and 13 years old. All of the teachers reported that their work had been fitted into existing curriculum areas, with several focusing on “The World Around Us” and “Literacy,” often including work on Internet safety. Two teachers working in secondary schools linked classes in English with classes in Technology and Design. Seventy-four percent of the participating teachers had little or no knowledge of the VLE Fronter prior to their training and 79% reported a similar lack of knowledge with the synchronous software Collaborate, which allows real-time video and audio links and a shared whiteboard. In response to a question on whether they had used ICT as part of their previous work on Shared Education, 71% said it was entirely face-to-face and 19% said it was mainly face-to-face. Given the importance of reliable and accessible ICT to carry out their planned work, teachers were asked if they felt that the ICT provision in their schools was adequate. Nine percent said it was “adequate” while 55% claimed it was “somewhat adequate.” The remaining third expressed varying degrees of disappointment with their facilities.

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Teachers were asked which of the three means of interaction they had spent the most time on with their pupils. When asked which form of contact they used most, 45.3% of the participants indicated the asynchronous VLE, Fronter; 45.1% indicated face-to-face contact; and (9%) said Collaborate. In terms of explanation for the extensive use of Fronter, 90% of the teachers reported that it was the “best fit given the goals of their shared education work,” and 88% similarly indicated that Fronter “fitted in best into a busy day” (Austin & Turner, 2020, 367). Teachers were invited to comment more generally on the ways that they had used blended learning. One comment which was echoed by others showed how teachers were embedding the new ICT component into their previously planned face-to-face work to extend and deepen the link: Initially our Shared Education classes met with an ice-breaker face-to-face session so that when we progressed to Collaborate the children had some experience of each other and were excited to see themselves and their new friends on screen during follow up collaborate sessions. Fronter fitted in really well at all stages of the program and was used to prepare for, enhance and build upon face-to-face contact and collaborate sessions. (Austin & Turner, 2020, 367) Teachers were also asked about the ways that the three different elements, Fronter, Collaborate, and face-to-face work, had contributed to pupils’ knowledge of the topics being studied. Seventy-two percent said that Fronter was the most useful for this, with 14% placing face-to-face as the most important, and 5% suggesting Collaborate was the most important (the remaining respondents did not answer the question.) When it came to assessing the role of each method in terms of how each had contributed to pupils’ attitudes, 40% stated that faceto-face contact was the most important, 36% stated that Fronter was the most important, and 15% felt that Collaborate was of most value. Data showed the responses of teachers regarding their perceptions of the impact on pupils’ experience of Shared Education. There were no significant differences between teachers from a Catholic or Protestant background in their responses to these questions, suggesting cross-community agreement on the impact of blended learning. The most important change teachers noted in pupils was in terms of the development of friendships (indicating between slightly better or much better on average). Teachers noted that, “more regular access to each other in online forums has meant that children have a chance to chat in a way which is familiar to them” and “leaving comments for each other on Fronter and then matching the comment to the person during face-to-face activities helped to build on relationships” (Austin & Turner, 2020, 368). Another captured the way that the three elements had all contributed to this:

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Friendships have been developed from the very beginning of the process . . . the children were grouped in all the initial face-to-face meetings, with the groups being different on each occasion. This enabled them to develop friendships with a wider range of pupils from other schools. This was reinforced through using Fronter, where the children found out more about each other and were able to leave comments and interact with other. This in turn was further reinforced through the “real time” Collaborate session. (Austin & Turner, 2020, 368) The second biggest impact on the children related to getting the children ready to work together. This question had been asked because the workplace in Northern Ireland is regarded as the point where people are most likely to encounter those from a different background (Eyben, Morrow, Wilson, & Robinson, 2002). Teachers reported that children had worked well together both online and face-to-face: one noted that “group tasks are vital in getting children ready to work with others in the future” (Austin & Turner, 2020, 347–363). The asynchronous nature of Fronter meant that pupils had time to read other pupils’ comments and think about how to respond, an approach that suited some pupils better than the immediacy of face-to-face interaction. And for another teacher, one reason children worked well together was because they were motivated, they “looked forward eagerly” to the next interaction. Others simply “loved sharing and peer-assessing work online” (Austin & Turner, 2020, 369). The area that was seen as next most important in Austin and Turner’s (2020) research was called “normalising relations” between pupils. One teacher wrote that the blended approach fitted very comfortably into the pupils’ world because “regular contact using an online platform is familiar to 10 and 11 year olds in everyday life.” Another reinforced the sense that normalizing was taking place because of “more regular face-to-face contact coupled with greater on-line collaboration. . . . Pupils are no longer out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Use of Fronter has let us develop and extend lessons within our own schools but pupils are still learning, sharing and responding to each other’s work.” The aspect of Shared Education which teachers saw as coming next in importance was “respect for difference” (Austin & Turner, 2020). In many of the younger classes, this arose naturally through an online exchange of information about hobbies and interests. One of the teachers noted that “the children were able to ask questions about each other’s hobbies such as Gaelic and football or Irish dancing or Scottish dancing (p. 369).” Another commented that “pupils applied online safety protocols which naturally led to respect for difference. Pupils showed respect even in terms of the names they weren’t familiar with. Comments made on Fronter demonstrated respect.” Collaborate enables real-time interaction, including the sharing of music, for one teacher this meant “hearing

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songs in Irish near St Patrick’s Day gave children more of an insight into a different culture.” Although improvement in academic performance was not seen as a high priority by the majority of teachers in this first study of blended learning in Shared Education, they did on average perceive there to be a slight improvement in the children’s performance. Comments showed that the presence of an audience for pupils’ work had been motivational. One teacher noted that “children are more engaged with completing tasks online. They have improved ICT skills, they are more aware of their spelling and grammar, they self-edit and they have a wider audience for peer assessment.” Another echoed these perceptions, underlining the power of the communicative side of ICT: Children were enthused by the use of technology to engage with their new friends. This enthusiasm meant that children engaged more fully in art and literacy/ICT activities that they shared online and in the Fronter room with their buddies. (Austin & Turner, 2020, 369) According to another teacher, this meant that in addition to improved attitudes to work, pupils were also developing skills in both ICT and literacy, helping the teacher meet targets and raising standards. The link with the pupils in the other school meant that “pupils are seeing themselves how their potential can be raised.” Several teachers referred specifically to the way that online discussions in the pupil forum had benefitted pupils with learning difficulties. “It was fantastic to see two particular children in my class with learning difficulties writing their views in forums without hesitation, they didn’t get hung up on spelling and felt confident to expand their thoughts.” The two final areas in which teachers in this study were asked to comment on whether there had been any change were “reconciliation” and “handling controversial issues.” These were regarded as having been least affected by their experiences in Shared Education. In terms of reconciliation, one teacher noted that the young age of the children and the specific location of the schools were possible factors: I’m not sure how much the children appreciated that children from other schools may have been of a different religious background to themselves. They just saw each other as children. Therefore, I don’t know how much this process promoted reconciliation in our process—this may differ according to what area each of the schools is in geographically throughout N. Ireland. (Austin & Turner, 2020, 370) Another pointed to the relatively short time the schools had been working together to explain why reconciliation was perhaps too big a goal. “Perhaps too

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short for notable change in this area—this is the first time these particular classes have taken part in Shared Education lessons. Can see how reconciliation would result over a long term approach of shared education.” What these teachers felt they could do was, as one put it, to create the conditions in which “the children were able to appreciate differences between their communities but also able to learn and find a common ground together” (Shared Education teacher). Finally, in terms of “handling controversial issues” it was clear that teachers avoided these and felt this was inappropriate for the age of the children they were working with. These findings parallel past evidence that schools involved in Shared Education often shy away from discussion of cross-community issues (e.g., Hughes & Donnelly, 2005; Loader, 2015; Loader & Hughes, 2017; McGlynn, 2008). There was, however, a recognition that “this could be approached if pupils have been involved in Shared Education projects throughout their time in primary school.” And this is precisely what was uncovered in the case study of Currie Primary School and their partner Holy Family in Belfast. After several years of blended contact, the staff felt the children were ready to address more contentious questions: We did more face-to-face meetups and actually really went down the road of quite tough conversations around reconciliation, and our P7 program this year (final year of Primary school), . . . sort of capped off for these children that yes, we can all talk about being the same. And it’s nice to be different but when you’re going out into the world, you need to talk about the tough issues for living in a shared society. Should everybody be able to enjoy the 12th of July? (traditional Protestant celebration), should everybody be able to enjoy Saint Patrick’s Day (patron saint of Ireland, often celebrated in Catholic schools and ignored in Protestant ones) and we actually had some good, tough conversations . . .

NICOLA MCMAHON:

These findings parallel past research from both education and social psychology which suggests that discussion of contentious topics can be beneficial when they are introduced gradually (Davies & Aron, 2016; Loader & Hughes, 2017). In concluding this piece of research, Austin and Turner noted that an especially important outcome to arise was around the sustenance of friendships. It seems that blended learning allowed cross-community relationships to develop in a smoother, less disjointed and therefore sustained manner than face-to-face contact alone, which is inevitably interrupted when children are attending different schools. In particular, the asynchronous tool Fronter allowed children from the two schools to reciprocally share information about themselves with one another between face-to-face classes. This self-disclosure has been found to be critical in the development of cross-group friendships which promote more positive cross-community perceptions among pupils in

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Northern Ireland (Turner et al., 2013; see also Turner, Hewstone, & Voci, 2007). In light of this, it makes sense that teachers felt that Shared Education had helped to normalize cross-community relations and enhanced respect for difference. In other words, rather than thinking of social harmony or social justice as two opposed approaches to this kind of work, we postulate that you need the first in order to achieve the second. This research also contained an important pointer to the future: teachers were asked about how they saw the role of blended learning in future planning for Shared Education. The question asked teachers if ICT and face-to-face contact should be regarded as equally important. Fifty-seven percent of teachers “strongly agreed” with this statement, with a further 31% indicating that they agreed “somewhat.” Taken alongside the evidence that online contact was at least as important in terms of impact on children’s attitudes as face-to-face contact, Austin and Turner concluded that it was essential for all teachers to undertake courses like CLOSER to sustain the links into the future when current funding to support bus travel may be curtailed. One characteristic of this first phase of teachers involved in Shared Education was that it was a condition of acceptance onto the program that they already had a partnership with a school in the “other” community. In the new phase of Shared Education, the schools involved in “Collaboration and Shared Education” (CASE) were not required to have existing partners. Furthermore, in addition to schools linked within Northern Ireland, partnerships were established that were either cross-border, i.e., involving a school in Northern Ireland with one from one of the border counties in Ireland, between schools that were both in Ireland or both within Northern Ireland. Research Survey of Teachers in Phase 2 of Shared Education

The research undertaken with these teachers was based on a similar approach to the previous work. The courses were different in one respect in that the VLE Fronter had been replaced by either Google’s GSuite or Microsoft’s Office 365. Schools were free to choose which of these platforms to use to work together. Teachers who attended the CLOSER courses in the Autumn of 2019 and the Spring of 2020 were invited to complete an online anonymous evaluation of their experiences of blended learning. We were particularly interested to discover whether the shorter period of their partnership compared to the earlier cohort made any difference to the reported outcomes. We wanted to understand this new dimension to gain a better understanding of whether blended learning might be used as part of “mainstreaming” shared education, i.e., rolling it out to all the remaining schools in Northern Ireland who were further apart geographically and had no prior cross-community links.

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Preliminary Findings From the 2019–2020 Survey

Twenty-six teachers from primary schools in Northern Ireland responded to the anonymous online survey; there were almost even numbers of both religious denominations, Catholic and Protestant. A total of 45 teachers took the module so although the overall scale of the data was limited, we believe that the findings are of interest and can be seen as representative of this particular population. The average length of time that the teachers had been working together in Shared Education was 2–3 years and for some 88% of them, their linked school was over a mile away, meaning that walking with their pupils to the other school was not an option. The children who were involved in the linked schools were aged from 6 to 11 years old, with the majority in the older age bracket. In many respects, the data showed a similar pattern to the survey carried out in 2018. For example, when asked about the aims of Shared Education in their partnership, there was strong agreement that the principal goals were developing respect followed by developing friendships/preparing children to work together. Improving academic performance and dealing with controversial issues were once again seen as least important. Similarly, teachers noted a very wide range of topics that had been chosen for study, all within the Northern Ireland curriculum. The most popular were “The World Around Us,” “Personal Development and Mutual Understanding,” while other topics included science, computational thinking, Internet safety, and literacy. In short, a common curriculum provided relatively easy subjects for teachers to focus on in their collaborative work. Again, concurring with previous findings, questions which probed teachers’ prior experiences in Shared Education before they took the CLOSER module showed that nearly all the teachers had based their partnership entirely on faceto-face contact (23 out of 26). Teachers’ proficiency in the use of the synchronous software, Collaborate, prior to taking the CLOSER module was again very limited. Twenty-four out of 26 claimed to be “not at all proficient” or “not very proficient.” The data for experience with GSuite or Office 365 showed similar results. One noteworthy finding was that 22 out of the 26 teachers had chosen to use GSuite rather than Office 365. There were some interesting differences in the responses of this group of teachers compared to the 2020 Austin and Turner research. First, in response to a question about the relative amount of time that teachers had devoted to each of the three methods of interaction, face-to-face, asynchronous work in GSuite or Office 365, and the real-time tool Collaborate, a majority indicated face-to-face, with lesser time spent using the online software. This was also reflected in the impact that each of the three elements was thought to have had on their pupils with face-to-face being seen to have had the most effect on all measures including the development of positive attitudes to the children in their linked classroom.

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The main reasons stated by the teachers for the significant role of face-to-face was that this had been at the core of the planning they had done at the end of the previous school year and had, in effect, laid the foundation for all that was to follow. When they enrolled on the CLOSER module, they had to try to weave this new online element into their pre-existing plan. Furthermore, in contrast to the software that teachers had used in the previous survey which had been in use in schools for many years, both GSuite and Office 365 were only widely introduced in 2019. It is also worth noting that neither of these platforms offered easy to access threaded discussions, as had been the case in the previous VLE, Fronter. The challenges of coming to terms with new software were also reflected in responses to a question about the adequacy of ICT facilities in schools with only four out of 26 teachers indicating that they were entirely satisfied with what they had in school. In spite of these reservations, all teachers agreed that the online links had extended pupil-to-pupil interaction either considerably or to some extent. One teacher whose class was studying a novel with their linked class observed the effect of using GSuite on the whole class and on one pupil with special educational needs: Pupils became more aware they had a wider audience on the discussions in GSuite so began to take greater care with spelling and punctuation. It was clear within my group that the chosen book stimulated real interest and enthusiasm and they kept asking—can we read more? One boy in my class in particular who has SEN and poor reading skills really shone in the discussions around the book—fantastic and insightful ideas. The chosen book also encouraged pupils to talk about behaviours and issues around self-esteem and self- confidence and the need to talk about things and ask for help. (Shared Education teacher) Teachers were asked to comment on any changes they had observed in their pupils as a result of their blended work with the partner school. The aspect that was most changed was in getting children to work together and preparing for friendship. The least changed was in handling controversial topics, reconciliation, and academic performance, again, very similar to the previous survey. Analysis of the data also showed that teachers believed that blended contact was effective at promoting confidence at engaging in contact but less effective at promoting empathy, reducing anxiety, and promoting self-disclosure. In contrast to Austin and Turner’s (2020) survey, which found the majority of teachers agreed with the suggestion that online work should be given the same importance as face-to-face in future planning for Shared Education, the new survey found less support for this position with nine teachers strongly agreeing and 11 agreeing somewhat. However, one of the teachers noted that greater

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use would be made of online work in the future and this would have the added benefit of enabling the school to use work in Shared Education to complete one of the required ICT tasks. there was a new approach with the ICT, we were trying things out for the first time. However, we will use all three methods next year as I can see real value in these methods and would hope to incorporate an ICT task so that relevant work is being covered rather than doubling up and trying to squeeze in extra. (Shared Education teacher) As with the results from the previous survey, there were significant benefits for teachers from the CLOSER module; all the teachers claimed it had linked them more closely to their teaching colleagues in the partner school (18 considerably, eight somewhat). Finally, in response to a question on whether the module was a good format for teacher professional development, 24 said “considerably” and two “somewhat.” This is an important finding in the context of what kind of professional development is needed for understanding and implementing blended learning. Conclusion Three things stand out from the two surveys. The first is that the CLOSER module has reached around one-third of all the teachers whose schools are involved in Shared Education. The benefits for teachers and pupils are sufficiently extensive to suggest that sustainability of links between schools may require similar professional development opportunities for the two-thirds of schools already in Shared Education and the remaining third of schools not yet involved. This is especially relevant for schools not yet involved since they are all likely to be geographically further apart than the schools currently in the program. Second, the change from one learning platform, Fronter, to another (either GSuite or Office 365) appears to have slowed down the impact of the online element of blended learning. This makes it all the more important that teachers are alerted to the role of online work when they start their planning, rather than allowing the face-to-face part of contact to be given an assumed privileged position. Third, the relatively marginal position that blended learning has had in the overall strategy for Shared Education may hint at institutional, professional, and cultural barriers in a society in the liminal space between conflict and normality. Relying on traditional forms of contact making, such as face-to-face contact, involves a lower level of risk-taking even when this is expensive and damaging to the environment. It may need a shock to the system, like the emergence of

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the COVID-19 pandemic, to make innovative practices like blended learning more accepted. We end this chapter with some thoughts on issues that require further investigation. We still do not know how much contact between children is needed to make a long-lasting difference; children in the second phase of Shared Education in the CASE project are expected to spend 30 hours a year working together, of which 80% should be face-to-face and 20% online. It would require a longitudinal study to measure the effect of this and would need to take account of children growing up in a range of different communities taking account of socioeconomic and cultural factors. Individual personality factors may also affect the impact of educational interventions such as this as well as the attitudes of teaching staff, including both school leaders and classroom teachers. The key in all this is that the contact is meaningful and, through the kind of extended contact we’ve described in blended learning, that young people develop the confidence to form positive relationships with those who are from different backgrounds (Turner, 2020). Voices from the classroom—Supplemental Transcript Two North Belfast Primary Schools, Currie and Holy Family: A story about blended contact Earlier, we provided brief interview responses to illustrate points about Shared Education. Here, we are providing a fuller transcript of a focus group interview that we think effectively tells some of the story of what it is like to take part in a Shared Education partnership. My name is Siobhan McQuaid. I am the principal of Holy Family primary school. I’ve worked there for 28 years through lots of different times and events and have a great working relationship with Currie Primary School . . . The principal before me . . . and the previous principal in Currie Primary School . . . worked together because they knew nothing was happening really in the area and things were very, very difficult, . . . they knew that something had to happen. We were all involved in EMU (Education for Mutual Understanding) projects with schools, which were miles and miles away from our area. And we thought that that just does not make sense. It really should be the children who are living very near to each other (who) should be involved in shared activities together. So it was very slow to start. And lots of neutral ground and neutral venues were used. But that was the beginning of it.

PRINCIPAL:

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How did you involve the parents and local community? . . . at the start, it was just about communication between the schools, then it was sort of small groups meeting together. And then it was really the development of the parent program, which was probably when it all started to take off because the parents realised that they . . . had much more in common. The issues that they all had were similar. They weren’t different because of their religion or because of the school that they went to; they all had the same issues, and they wanted to help and support all those things . . . tension in the local area, and then all the social issues that families can have poverty, yes, neglect, domestic violence. INTERVIEWER: Were all the teachers keen to get involved? SIOBHAN: We just decided that the ploughing on method was the best . . . we’re doing it. Okay, and we waited for people to . . . object . . . I’ll be honest . . . we sort of kept it under the radar, and it was very slow. STEPHEN KING (Shared education coordinator in Currie): I think my journey really started whenever I was in primary school, I was always involved in what was Educational for Mutual Understanding (EMU) back then. And then through Teacher Training College at Stranmillis it was always evident there . . . so it had never really gone away from me as such . . . The children were enthused, because we were enthused, we were so excited about it, and that fed down to them. Yeah, you know, if you don’t get that, the children don’t get it. INTERVIEWER: The two schools are less than two minutes’ walk apart, so why did you do some work online? KEIRA MCCALLAN (teacher from Holy Family): So they had already met, they would have known each other and we did a face to face before we brought them into Fronter (the virtual learning environment used in both schools). Yeah, just to sort of remind them who everybody is and get to know each other again . . . The online work added an extra dimension to Nicola’s and my children and Steven’s children as well. So it’s sort of tapping into their world. They are online at home all the time. They’re all into their chats, and their apps and all the different things. So it was bringing a wee bit of that in. And I think they were really excited that we were allowing a bit of that into school. We were allowing them that online chat in a safe environment and actually, they are a bit shy when they meet up, they’re a bit awkward for the first 10–15 minutes. But the minute they were on the computer, I mean, they were straight in firing out complements to each other looking at each other’s work. ‘I really love this. Hey, do you remember me?’ It’s totally natural to them when you put them in to a chat room . . . NICOLA MCMAHON (teacher in Currie PS): . . . and that includes all the children from the Learning Support Class . . . the shyer ones when we meet up INTERVIEWER: SIOBHAN:

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would maybe kind of crowd around the adults, they were just straight in getting involved from the go. STEPHEN: One of the things that I remember that both of you put in place, which was a fantastic starter, was that they used the iPads to design posters for rules, rules around collaborating online, and they were then shared in the forum. KEIRA: . . . we’ve done so much e-safety work. They might not always practise it outside of school. And they might not always practise at home in their bedrooms, but they know what the rules are. They know how to be safe online, we have drilled into them . . . NICOLA: As soon as they put those school uniforms on, they know, this is how I behave at my school. So I’m not going say anything inappropriate. I’m not going to be unkind because that’s not what we do in either of our schools. And they just, they just know . . . INTERVIEWER: One of the ideas we discussed in the course was the contact hypothesis and the need to match children of equal status . . . how did you do that? KEIRA: The children were all the same age, but with Nicola having Learning Support Unit children there, we felt that actually a really surprising outcome was that the online forum just took out that ability barrier, because children who wouldn’t have engaged with the children in a live situation really did engage online. NICOLA: . . . I always find that they would have chatted away to the teachers or the classroom assistants, maybe one child, two children, but they weren’t as keen or they weren’t able to communicate with the other children as freely as the mainstream classes. But as soon as we put them onto Fronter many of those barriers were completely removed . . . they just thrived . . . INTERVIEWER: So how did you embed this work in the normal curriculum? KEIRA: We’re talking about building relationships and attitudes to other people, we just went with online communication, e-safety, it would be something that we would teach the children anyway, through ICT and PDMU, personal development and mutual understanding. And so it’s just a programme of knowing yourself and others. INTERVIEWER: Did you use both synchronous tools like Collaborate and asynchronous ones like the VLE? NICOLA: We realised that it would be just impossible to try and be on at the same time all the time, we sort of gave that up at the start because of different lunch times and getting into your computer room and all the different things. We just decided that that wasn’t going to be something that we could manage, but that the children still loved just coming down and finding the comments and replies. INTERVIEWER: So after working together through blended contact for three years, do you think the children had got to know each other by the time of their final year with you in primary school?

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We did more face to face meetups and actually really went down the road of quite tough conversations around reconciliation, and our P7 programme this year (final year of Primary school), actually . . . sort of capped off for these children that yes, we can all talk about being the same. And it’s nice to be different but when you’re going out into the world, you need to talk about the tough issues surrounding a shared society. Should everybody be able to enjoy the 12th of July? (traditional Protestant celebration), should everybody be able to enjoy Saint Patrick’s Day (patron saint of Ireland, often celebrated in Catholic schools and ignored in Protestant ones) and we actually had some good conversations . . .

NICOLA:

We wanted to tell this story here because we think it shows three really important points about blended contact for intercultural learning. The first is the very clear leadership of both of the Principals in normalizing links between the schools over an extended period of time, long before the current policy of Shared Education was developed. Part of this leadership meant bringing parents and the local community into the partnership at an early stage; another element was a determination to involve all staff in their respective schools so that the work became a core part of what the two schools did. The second was the way that the use of online work enabled children with different learning needs to be treated as equals, to have their voice, and to be able to participate fully in the linked work. Third, this in turn meant that the teachers were able to make judicious choices about how to use face-to-face and online work to build trust over a number of years. By the age of 11, the children were ready to talk about difficult and potentially divisive issues before they left primary school. References Archik, K. (2018). Northern Ireland: Current issues and ongoing challenges in the peace process. Retrieved from https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS21333.pdf Austin, R. (2014). Impact case study on the Dissolving Boundaries Program. University of Ulster, submitted for the Research Excellence Framework. Retrieved from www.ulster.ac.uk/ref2014/ Impact/25_2.pdf Austin, R., & Hunter, B. (2013). Online learning and community cohesion: Linking schools. London and New York: Routledge. Austin, R., & Hunter, W. (2012). Stirring political pots: ICT, denominational reform, Northern Ireland, newfoundland and labrador. In G. Galway & D. Dibbon (Eds.), Educational reform: From rhetoric to reality (pp. 253–274). London: The Althouse Press. Austin, R., Rickard, A., & Reilly, J. (2017). Face-to face contact in blended learning for intercultural education: The role of teachers. Irish Educational Studies, 36(3) 323–340. doi:10.1080/ 03323315.2017.1327364 Austin, R., & Turner, R. (2020). The role of blended learning for community cohesion: Lessons from Northern Ireland. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 29(4), 361–376.

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Office for National Statistics. (2018). Country and regional public sector finances: Financial year ending 2019 (p. 7). Retrieved from www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/ publicsectorfinance/articles/countryandregionalpublicsectorfinances/financialyearending2019 Pahlke, E., Bigler, R. S., & Suizzo, M. A. (2012). Relations between color blind socialization and children’s racial bias: Evidence from European American mothers and their preschool children. Child Development, 83, 1164–1179. Police Service of Northern Ireland. (2019). Incidents and crimes with a hate motivation recorded by the police in Northern Ireland. Retrieved from www.psni.police.uk/globalassets/inside-the-psni/ our-statistics/hate-motivation-statistics/2018-19/q4/hate-motivation-bulletin-mar-_19.pdf Rickard, A., & Austin, R. (2017). Assessing impact of ICT intercultural work: The dissolving boundaries program. In L. Tomei (Ed.), Exploring the new era of technology-infused education (pp. 1–388). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. doi:10.4018/978-1-5225-1709-2, 102–120. Rickard, A., Grace, A. R., Austin, R. S., & Smyth, J. M. (2014). Assessing impact of ICT intercultural work. International Journal of Information and Communication Technology Education (IJICTE), 10(3), 1–18. Roulston, S., & Cook, S. (2019). Isolated together: Pairs of primary schools duplicating provision. Retrieved from https://view.publitas.com/integrated-education-fund/transforming-education-03-isolated-together-pairs-of-primary-schools-duplicating-provision/page/1 Roulston, S., & Hansson, U. (2019). Kicking the can down the road? Educational solutions to the challenges of divided societies: A Northern Ireland case study. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. doi:10.1080/01596306.2019.1594171 Selvanathan, H. P., Leidner, B., Petrović, N., Prelić, N., Ivanek, I., Krugel, J., & Bjekić, J. (2019, June 24). Wedialog.net: A Quantitative field test of the effects of online intergroup dialogue in promoting justice- versus harmony-oriented outcomes in Bosnia and Serbia. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ pac0000395 SESP. (2008). SchoolsWorkingTogether [booklet]. Retrieved from http://www.schoolsworkingtogether. co.uk/documents/sep-booklet.pdf Shared Education Act. (2016). Retrieved from www.legislation.gov.uk/nia/2016/20/contents Tam, T., Hewstone, M., Kenworthy, J., & Cairns, E. (2009). Intergroup trust in Northern Ireland. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 45–59. Turner, R. N. (2020). Crossing the divide: Promoting confidence in contact in a diverse world. Journal of the British Academy, 8, 51–59. https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/008.051 Turner, R. N., Hewstone, M., & Voci, A. (2007). Reducing explicit and implicit prejudice via direct and extended contact: The mediating role of self-disclosure and intergroup anxiety. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 369–388. Turner, R. N., Tam, T., Hewstone, M., Kenworthy, J., & Cairns, E. (2013). Contact between catholic and protestant schoolchildren in Northern Ireland. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 43, 216–228. Wolsko, C., Park, B., Judd, C. M., & Wittenbrink, B. (2000). Framing interethnic ideology: Effects of multicultural and color-blind perspectives on judgments of groups and individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 635–654. Worden, E. A., & Smith, A. (2017). Teaching for democracy in the absence of transitional justice: The case of Northern Ireland. Comparative Education, 53(3), 379–395. doi:10.1080/0305 0068.2017.1334426

3

Lessons Learned From 15 Years of Multicultural Online Collaborative Learning in Israel Asmaa Ganayem, Elaine Hoter, and Miri Shonfeld

Introduction The Technology, Education & Cultural diversity program (TEC) in Israel’s Mofet Institute, a teacher education research and development center founded in Tel Aviv in 2005, maintains active online links among students in colleges and schools from three of Israel’s largest cultural groups: Religious Jewish, Secular Jewish, and Arab. Tensions among these groups are a persistent feature of life in Israel. Although there is a body of research examining school and teacher education initiatives that have sought to use collaborative learning to increase cross-community contact (Shonfeld & Gibson, 2018), face-to-face meetings remain difficult because of logistical, political, and cultural barriers including prejudice and stigmas. The TEC pedagogical model is implemented in various colleges and school programs using Internet platforms and tools for online interaction and meetings that create opportunities for people to transcend or circumvent these traditional barriers. These online exchanges include the use of social networks for learning, virtual reality platforms (such as Second Life), electronic boards (such as Padlet), and other Internet collaborative environments to improve communication between learners—school pupils and college students. In addition, translation software is being used to enable mutual understanding between Arabic and Hebrew speakers. This chapter describes Israel’s cultural diversity, its segregated educational systems, some previous attempts at multiculturalism, and the current TEC pedagogical model and TEC programs. It critically examines factors that contribute to the success of online collaborative learning, and reports on efforts to reduce cultural prejudice and improve digital skills. In addition to reporting on research literature related to these phenomena, we will present new data from interviews, feedback blogs, and annual surveys that offer wide and deep insights into the process.

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Israeli Society According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), about 9 million people live in Israel, out of which about 74% are Jews, about 21% Arabs, and about 5% belong to other groups (CBS, 2018). The demographic map is changing rapidly so figures change over time, reflecting political changes and cultural differences. Israel’s Arab and Jewish societies are both characterized by a wide range of internal diversity. Israel’s Jewish population consists of four different religious subgroups: secular (45%), traditional (25%), religious (16%), and ultra-orthodox (14%) (CBS, 2018). Religion plays a key role in Israeli systems and tensions among these subgroups concern the extent of religious practices in the public sphere and political affiliations. These differences are also reflected in physical living localities and neighborhoods. Israel’s population of Arab Palestinian citizens includes Bedouins, descendants of nomadic peoples who live primarily in the Southern part of Israel but does not include Palestinians living in either Gaza or the West Bank as they are under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority. The Arab population is distinguished nationally, religiously, and culturally from the Jewish majority. This Arab population is part of the historical Palestinian population resident in the areas before the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948. Consequently, there is deep tension between Arabs and Jews in Israel centered on land loss and unequal citizenship status (Adalah, 2011) for the Arab population (Al-Haj, 2004; Ali, 2006). Arabs in Israel are heterogeneous in terms of religion: about 84% are Muslims, 8% are Christians, and 8% are Druze. Much of the Arab population lives in the peripheral areas of Israel (CBS, 2018); however, substantial numbers also live in the four mixed cities—Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa, and Acre—each of which has a mixed population of Jews and Arabs. In most cases, however, the neighborhoods within the city are made up of only one religious group (Ali, 2006; Al-Haj, 2004). Land, housing, residency, and unequal citizenship are the biggest challenges facing Arabs in Israel. Since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the preexisting Arab-Palestinian localities have not been allowed to expand or to establish new Arab localities. At the same time, Jewish settlements have grown and expanded rapidly. Consequently, there is a land and housing crisis that contributes to a growing movement of young Arab couples and families buying or renting apartments in Jewish towns (which were exclusively Jewish, but not in religious Jewish settlements because most religious Jews live in exclusively religious Jewish areas and resist mixed housing). To date, mixed communities (such as Nof HaGalil, Afula, and Hadera) constitute about 10% of the Arab population. Arab-only communities are generally crowded localities with poor infrastructure relative to the Jewish localities. This situation is

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increasing tension as some Jewish localities stand against this movement and some Arabs are struggling to restore their rights in land and localities to what they were before 1948, especially in areas of the south occupied by Bedouins. These deep tensions impact everyday life and relations between Arabs and Jews, especially at the collective level, in the public sphere, and in matters pertaining to human rights. Although numerous friendships and cooperation have developed between individual Arabs and Jews, at the collective level continuous tensions and wide socioeconomical gaps exist between the Arab and the Jewish societies in Israel (CBS, 2010; Ganayem, 2010). Separated Educational Subsystems The school system in Israel reflects the division of society into subcultures as described prior. There are not only separate Jewish and Arab school systems, but also subdivisions within those systems. The Jewish school system is further subdivided into general (defined as non-religious, traditional, and secular) and religious (orthodox) schools. The Arab school system is subdivided in to four subsectors: Arab, Druze, Tschirkas, and Bedouin. The core curriculum in the educational subsystems is essentially the same; however, the Arab schools use Arabic as the language of instruction and dedicate more hours to the Arabic language. Arab students learn Hebrew as their first foreign language and English as a second foreign language. The religious Jewish schools designate more hours to Jewish religious studies and teach English as the first foreign language. Although the Arabic language is not part of the curriculum in the Jewish schools, a small number of Jewish schools have Arabic as a mandatory foreign language. Accordingly, from kindergarten, children study in a particular education stream (secular Jewish, religious Jewish, or Arab) and do not usually interact with children from the other streams within the system. An exception to the separate educational systems can be found in the existence of a small number of mixed schools. Four bilingual schools have both Arab and Jewish students and staff. The Jewish students in these schools come mainly from secular Jewish families and liberal Arab families. Most religious Jewish families have a conservative political affiliation and therefore refuse to have contact with Arabs (Bekerman, 2004; Bekerman, Gallagher, McGlynn, & Zembylas, 2009). There have also been initiatives to join secular and religious Jewish children within the same school where they would share classes; a number of these schools exist today in Israel (Cohen & Susser, 2000). The curriculum is adapted so that the children study religious subjects separately in these mixed Jewish schools while, through participation in other school activities, learners are exposed to the culture of others.

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For the most part, then, students grow and learn in schools and neighborhoods where they have no interaction with people from other cultures and where they do not get unbiased knowledge about them. They are massively exposed to the stigmas and cultural stereotypes commonly present in the media and the public sphere. In addition, wide gaps exist between schools from the different subcultures in budgets, infrastructure, programs, and performance, especially between Arab and Jewish schools (Hadad Haj-Yahya & Rudnitzky, 2018). The inequality at all socioeconomic levels presents challenges to any program or effort aimed at building bridges between groups of unequal status, undermining a critical factor necessary for the success of multiculturalism. The TEC pedagogical model (TEC model hereafter) presented in this chapter advocates for the possibility of challenging these constraints by reducing inequality among learners participating in virtual environments. Multicultural Projects in Israel Despite the challenges noted above, Israelis have increasingly worked on building opportunities for intercultural education. The position of the government toward encouraging multicultural collaboration between the various cultural groups has changed over the last 20 years; however, wide gaps can be seen between declarations and implementation of policies. In this section, we will further examine the reasons why so many children still have no interaction with other cultural groups and we will report on the diverse but sporadic attempts to build multiculturalism in Israel. In 1996, the Ministry of Education’s Kerminzer report recommended that schools teach social studies from kindergarten to 12th grade and that, within this framework, they encourage interaction between the different segments that compose Israel’s pluralistic society. However, the fragile political situation, including military attacks, bombing, and other physical violence, frequently interrupted and reduced efforts built on face-to-face programs, significantly reducing and weakening such activities and programs. In the last decade, two major reports and a well-reported presidential speech have paved the way for changes in the integration of multiculturalism in the Israeli school system. The Salomon & Essawi report (2009) commissioned by the Ministry of Education advocated the formation of a national policy of education for shared life between Arabs and Jews in Israel. This report summarized the status of programs for shared life by saying: Although previous Ministry of Education committees have drafted policy papers in the field of education on co-existence, tolerance and peace, there is no policy today that is effectively implemented in the education system as a whole. In the north and central regions there are active “islands” of

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educational activities oriented toward a shared life; also, there are ongoing encounters between Arab and Jewish youngsters which are organized by various NGOs. Still, these islands of activities do not constitute continents. (Salomon & Essawi, 2009, p. 45) The committee’s work was guided by the premise that education toward a shared life that becomes an important and integral and continuous part of the school curriculum and activities, at all ages K-12, may change mutual negative opinions and beliefs. Thus, it can contribute to a shared life based on a tolerant, equitable, and democratic foundation. The purpose of the present report, is to formulate the mandated policy in this field. (Salomon & Essawi, 2009, p. 46) The report was based on the concept of partnership which entails several complementary meanings including equality among partners; mutual respect and legitimacy; acceptance of the national and cultural right of existence of the partners; maintaining constructive and equitable relations based on a sensitive, empathetic dialogue; a sense of joint accountability; and striving toward a common peace. Notably, this construct, as defined by the committee, is not foreign to the State of Israel. The goals defined by the committee are well-grounded in declarations, conventions, and proposals published over the years in Israel by the Ministry of Education, among others, and worldwide. (Salomon & Essawi, 2009, p. 24) The main points of this policy, which has the potential to completely change multiculturalism in Israel, are: • • • •

The Ministry of Education is in charge of promoting education toward a shared life in collaboration with local governments, via society and business sectors, and other government ministries. Education toward a shared Jewish-Arab life should be anchored as an obligatory topic in one subject matter area (civics). There should be additional components that can be chosen by each school as it sees fit. Education toward a shared life should be imparted continuously, from kindergarten to 12th grade. Education toward a shared life should take place in three circles: knowledge; school culture; and individual and group experiences.

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•

• • • •

Encounters between Jews and Arabs, whether face-to-face or virtual encounters through other media, constitute an essential component in education toward a shared life, provided that such encounters are sustained over time and under professional supervision. For Jews, education toward a shared life should include Arab culture and language studies. The Ministry of Education should assume responsibility for training teachers, principals, and other educators in this field. The Ministry should promote the integration of Arab teachers in Jewish schools, and of Jewish teachers in Arab schools, and should initiate the establishment of joint Arab-Jewish schools. Implementation of education toward a shared life should be accompanied by periodic monitoring. (Salomon & Essawi, 2009, p. 6)

Although it is compulsory to learn Hebrew in Arabic schools and Arabic in some Jewish junior high schools, this knowledge does not allow the students to converse in the language of the other, whether Hebrew or Arabic. Even though Arab students can manage some Hebrew conversation, most Jewish students have no skills in speaking or understanding Arabic. This has been pointed out again and again as a flaw and barrier to intergroup communication but there are no changes in practice that would bring this to fruition in the foreseeable future. Education for Shared Living

In 2016, the State Comptroller published a special report on education for shared living and reducing prejudices that indicated: This audit report deals with the activities of the Ministry of Education in promoting education for a shared society and prevention of racism. Unfortunately, the findings of this report paint a disturbing picture regarding the minimal activities of the education system in support of the unity of Israeli society and toward eradication of the major problems of racism and xenophobia. The report teaches us that the State of Israel is doing very little to purge the severe phenomena of racism and hatred among youth and to promote a shared society. (Shapira, 2016, p. 1) The report claims that over the years, the administration of the Ministry of Education has avoided taking the necessary steps to create a sufficient organizational, budgetary, operative, and pedagogical infrastructure for effective organizational long-term actions for the prevention of racism among students.

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. . . the education system must convey an unequivocal message to all its different streams and to everyone entering the system: “Israel is a democratic state that belongs to all its citizens and rests on values common to all the groups and individuals residing in it.” (Shapira, 2016, p. 6) In addition, Israel’s President Rivlin, in what has become known as the Four Tribes speech (referring to the ultra-religious, religious, secular, and Arab sectors), pointed out one thing is clear, the demographic processes that are restructuring or redesigning the shape of Israeli society, have, in fact, created a ‘new Israeli order’. A reality in which there is no longer a clear majority, nor clear minority groups. A reality in which Israeli society is comprised of four population sectors, or, if you will, four principal ‘tribes’, essentially different from each other, and growing closer in size. Whether we like it or not, the make-up of the ‘stakeholders’ of Israeli society, and of the State of Israel, is changing before our eyes. (Rivlin, 2015, p. 1). The president set up an organization to encourage collaboration among the four tribes called Tikva Israeli—translated as “Israel hope in education”—which awards prizes on a yearly basis to encourage Arab-Jewish enterprises as well as meetings and joint trips between the faculties of the various teaching colleges. Meetings between students in Arab and Jewish schools have been few and far between because of the distances and transportation costs. There are examples of such programs which claim to have resulted in long-term changes in attitudes a year after completing the encounters. One example used a Mindfulness and Compassion-Based Program (Berger, Brenick, & Tarrasch, 2018). There are mixed Jewish and Arab football teams, but also school teams that refuse to play against children from other cultures. There are also well documented projects (e.g., Hoter, Shonfeld, & Ganayem, 2009; Shonfeld, Hoter, & Ganayem, 2013) based on what is called the Irish model for face-to-face meetings carried out by the Center for Educational Technology in Israel (CET). These projects include face-to-face meetings between principals of schools and projects using English to connect between high school pupils from east and west Jerusalem. Other face-to-face meetings include the work of NGOs for example Bina and the Rossling Center for Education and Dialogue. Also, while most teachers get their preservice preparation at religiously separate institutions, there are also well documented face-to-face projects on intergroup competence in teacher training institutions particularly in the mixed Arab and Jewish colleges. For example, Ari and Mula (2017) show long-term changes in intercultural

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competence. Most such projects are based on the contact hypothesis although there are some projects which include narrative components (Maoz, 2011), and some projects stress peace education (Salomon, 2002). When the ministry of education attempted to make understanding and accepting the other a national goal for all children, they required every school to arrange meetings with children from the other groups. However, as is evident in the project descriptions (in Hebrew) at the ministry site,1 most schools opted out of face-to-face or online meetings with other cultures and just met with special education children mainly from their own cultural group. Online Programs to Connect Arabs and Jews

The largest and most effective projects to connect cultures in Israel through the Internet are carried out by the TEC Center, as will be presented in the next section. Other projects join a few classes and many are short term. One exception is the schools online program offered by Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation (Hebrew acronym, MASHAV) which connects schools from all sectors in Israel (MASHAV, n.d.). Another collaborative online project, First Israel,2 brought to Israel from the United States, involves culturally different pupils working together in leagues and in competitions like building robots, 3D designing, etc. With the rise of social media, there have been successful attempts to bring large groups of students together to discuss various issues of the day. An example of this is the work of Arik Segal, a conflict management practitioner. He established and facilitates dialog groups on Facebook to bring together Israeli and Palestinian young people (Kampf & Cuhadar, 2015). Studies also show that online intercultural interaction leads to greater willingness to seek real future contact among group members, including between majority and minority groups (Cameron, Rutland, & Brown, 2007). In specific cases, a change in prejudice as a result of digital contact was made in relation to Muslims and Christians in Australia (White & Abu-Rayya, 2012) and Arabs and Jews in Israel (Walther, Hoter, Ganayem, & Shonfeld, 2015). The TEC Center and Programs The TEC Center was established in 2005 as an educational enterprise by the writers of this chapter, in order to build bridges between educators and learners from the separated educational subsystems in Israel using the potential of the Internet. It is a collaborative initiative of three highly diversified teacher education colleges in Israel: Kibbutzim College of Education (a secular Jewish college), Al-Qasemi Academic College (an Arab Muslim college), and Talpiot College of Education (a Jewish religious college). The center developed the TEC

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model and implemented various programs in colleges and schools. Between 2004 and 2011 the center was managed by the initiators through the three colleges, while in 2011 the center moved to the MOFET Institute, which has a mission to serve as a professional meeting-place for teacher educators and to facilitate an educational dialog among colleagues both in the teacher education system and in other settings in the education system. The TEC Center brings together individuals and groups who normally would not have the opportunity to meet, such as pupils, student teachers, and lecturers from different ethnic, religious, and cultural groups who connect with others outside of their own religious and political affiliations. Whereas many projects involve two cultural sectors, the TEC Center brings together three distinct cultural groups (Jewish secular, Jewish religious, and Arabs in Israel). These groups meet, mainly online, not to talk about conflict or to discuss differences but to advance a joint educational mission, such as enhancing thinking skills, digital skills, etc. Through these online interactions, they get to know each other as colleagues on an equal basis. The TEC center is the platform for implementing the TEC model in different programs: •

•

•

TEC for Teacher Education: Lecturers team-teaching students from different teacher education colleges. This program began in 2005 with three college courses, three lecturers, and 40 students, and recently expanded to include five colleges, ten courses, 30 lecturers, and about 700 colleges students. TEC4Schools: Teachers and instructors team-teaching pupils from different elementary and middle schools. This program began in 2009, with only gifted 5th class pupils, from nine classes, and about 90 pupils. More recently over 120 classes (from different schools), about 140 teachers and facilitators participated, serving about 4,000 pupils annually. TEC communities: There are three communities: 1. Lecturer forum: a forum for self-development, peer learning, and mutual support of lecturers teaching in TEC for Teacher Education, begun in 2012. 2. TEC Think Tank: a group of people who work in or are interested in multiculturalism in the digital age, in which participants belong to various organizations (governmental, public, associations and others), begun in 2013. 3. TEC research group: Each year part of TEC staff lead one or more research activities on one or more of TEC programs.

•

TEC Conferences and study days: Each year since 2005 the TEC leads the so called “Annual—TEC International day”; this is an online international conference in which all TEC programs present their annual projects

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and experiences, as well as lecturers from Israel and abroad who share their research and projects in the field. There were over 3,000 participants at the most recent conference. In addition, a special face-to-face study day is conducted to bring all college students that are participating in TEC for teacher education courses to a face-toface meeting with their online course mates to know each other better, learn and work together as well as to leverage their collaboration, mutual understanding, and widen their cultural competencies. The TEC Model: Development and Revision In Israel, the TEC model (Technology, Education and Cultural Diversity) is a framework for development and implementation of meaningful collaborative learning based on advanced technologies and multicultural participants. Lecturers, teachers, pre-service teachers, and pupils from different cultural backgrounds move through a gradual process of learning and teaching that develops their competencies in digital environments, education, and intercultural communication. The TEC model was informed by the contact hypothesis (Allport, 1954; Amir, 1969; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2000), collaboration theories (Slavin, 1989; Johnson & Johnson, 1999), and models of online collaborative learning and contact (Amichai-Hamburger & McKenna, 2006; Austin, 2006). The original TEC model was developed and implemented by the chapter authors in 2005, with updates based on their field experience (Hoter et al., 2009). The idea behind this model was to enable students to learn in a meaningful environment that meets the needs and the required skills for succeeding in the 21st century, mainly intercultural openness and awareness, as well as online collaboration skills. The intent of the TEC Model is to support the development of a “super-ordinate identity” that transcends local, regional, or national identity. Because the Internet provided new opportunities for online interaction and meetings, researchers began to examine the adaptation of the contact hypothesis to online approaches in the mid-1990s (Amichai-Hamburger & McKenna, 2006; Shonfeld, Ganayem, & Hoter, 2006). The TEC model builds bridges among learners from different cultural backgrounds in a gradual collaborative method that starts with small multicultural collaborative work using cutting-edge information technologies, such as virtual reality platforms and synchronous collaborative tools. The learning content can be any content in the curricula of the participating schools. The key elements of the model are: a gradual process, small group collaboration, institutional support, and longer-term interaction (at least one year) and team-teaching of

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teachers from diverse backgrounds. In addition, the model is based on apolitical content (avoidance of issues likely to result in group clashes that would bring out the deep stigmas and divisive political issues in Israel—divisions that, as discussed previously have resulted in the failure of previous multicultural programs) and equality of status among participating groups. The original TEC model involved five dimensions of gradual processes as outlined in Table 3.1: Table 3.1 Evolution of the TEC model Dimension of Change

Nature of Change

Social environment Online environment Communication methods

from individual to teamwork from Web1.0 tools to Web2.0 and collaborative social networks from Internet-based text and voice exchange to face-to-face encounters among the partners from dialog to peer review to parallel collaboration to sequential collaboration and finally to synergistic collaboration (Hoter et al., 2009; Salomon, 2012) from low complexity tasks to higher order thinking

Collaboration methods Levels of thinking

In this chapter, we introduce the revised version of the TEC model, which refines and expands the TEC model in several directions: •

•

• •

The main goal of the TEC model is to promote meaningful competences, rather than to build trust between students. Although trust is a critical element in intergroup contact, we found the level of personal support required for trust to develop was an unrealistic expectation given the multidimensional goals of these courses and the growing demand for high-level technical competences and skills. Describing the model by layers of competencies categorized into three dimensions of main competencies, instead of five parallel skills. The layers should be considered in the whole gradual progress, by stepping forward in each of these layers, not necessarily at the same pace. The stage in the process is built from the overall selected level in each layer. Cultural competency has been added to the model. The lack of this dimension in the previous model emerged as a barrier to developing multicultural awareness among learners. Elaborating the technological dimensions to include the complexity and the availability of the used technological environments, which emerged in the experience as a factor affecting group collaboration and performance.

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The revised TEC model can be portrayed as:

The revised TEC model includes the following layers: Technology—Digital Environment: developing the skills and the use of digital tools gradually based on: complexity, media richness (text, audio, image, video to F2F), synchronicity (asynchronous communication to mixed synchronous and asynchronous one), and interactivity of these tools and environments. Education—Innovative Pedagogy: developing the learning experiences, skills, assignments from low to high collaboration, level of thinking, and from integrating digital environments in education to leading a change through these environments. Culture—Cultural competency: This layer emphasizes the need to develop cultural awareness and competency throughout the learning process in two directions; content and group diversity. The learning process should include exposure to other cultures’ content beginning with common issues and reaching different and richer cultural issues. In the diversity subdimension, it is about gradual working starting with self (individual) performance, to group work skills leading to multicultural teamwork. In addition, the required conditions have been expanded to include digital accessibility and stress a focus on the key elements described above. In a course-based TEC model, educators from different cultural groups collaboratively develop the learning units by transforming the required content into

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gradual stages of the different layers of the TEC model. Teachers facilitate building the small multicultural heterogeneous groups of learners (six per group) and moving them gradually from low levels in the different layers to higher ones, at an appropriate pace for the groups. For example, in an initial stage, each group member can share his/her task solution in an online forum and receive feedback, while in a more advanced stage, each group can develop a shared online game dealing with cultural issues and use synchronous meetings to discuss their work. The skills needed for the advanced stages are much higher than the skills needed in the initial stages, which gives the students the confidence in their abilities and accompanies their gradual development and sense of capability. Innovative Use of New Technology Part of the TEC group’s mission is to explore innovative ways of using technology. Recent projects in Israel and elsewhere show us how gaming can be used to help reduce prejudices and stigmas. This might seem strange in the face of claims that video games can cause more violence in children (Hollingdale & Greitemeyer, 2014). Surprisingly, playing violent videogames can also increase subsequent prosocial behavior, but only if the participants play cooperatively (Velez, Greitemeyer, Whitaker, Ewoldsen, & Bushman, 2016). A strong example of using gaming and virtual worlds to reduce prejudice is the Play2Talk project, part of Games for Peace, which brings together children in mega events in the familiar online environment Minecraft where they carry out collaborative assignments together (Driel, 2018). Gaming has been shown to be a way to reduce prejudice whether the person is really from another culture or just a robot or imagined contact (Stiff & Kedra, 2018; Stathi, Cameron, Hartley, & Bradford, 2014). Recently studies in virtual reality have given us impressive results as to how these environments can be used (Hoter & Yazbak Abu Ahmad, 2018; Shonfeld, Resta, & Yaniv, 2011). The main advantage of these environments is that people from different cultures and different geographical areas can hear each other’s voices in a safe friendly environment, can interact, and can and carry out joint assignments. These worlds have been used within the TEC4Schools program, allowing students to “meet” online and talk and learn about the other culture together. TEC Island: The TEC Center has developed a unique, multicultural virtual island, a dedicated, safe, virtual educational space that enables participation by means of avatars in collaborative activities to learn about other cultures. Students meet on the island, learn and play games together, join a drum circle, try to get out of an escape room, and take part in roleplays to learn the others’ language. An additional island has been developed where each intercultural small group receives a house and together they design and build the interior according to the chosen subject (Hoter & Yazbak Abu Ahmad, 2018).

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We can add to this the Proteus effect, a phenomenon in which embodying an avatar in VR changes self-perception and social behavior. The student identifies with the character and changes their attitudes to the other culture (Yee & Bailenson, 2007). Together this improves empathy and reduces prejudice. Although the impact until now has been on small groups, with modern technology large-sized groups can take part in virtual reality courses as shown by a massive open online course (MOOC) developed in Israel—introduction to multiculturalism in which the interaction takes place through a virtual world (Hoter & Nagar, 2019). In this course, the students discuss and learn about multiculturalism while working in small multicultural groups and through simulations and role plays, they enact and experience the phenomena they are studying. Whether added wearables are used or not, the virtual worlds stimulate the students to interact and be on task. The potential for using augmented and virtual reality to reduce prejudice has only just begun to be explored. TEC Impact Studies also show that online intercultural interaction leads to greater willingness to seek real future contact among group members, including between majority and minority groups (Cameron et al., 2007). In specific cases, a change in prejudice as a result of digital contact was made in relation to Muslims and Christians in Australia (White & Abu-Rayya, 2012) and Arabs and Jews in Israel (Walther et al., 2015). Here, we offer preliminary evidence about the impact of current work in the TEC center on those involved in initial teacher training and in schools. The analysis is based on data collected annually by final course evaluations questionnaires, assignment feedback, course feedback blogs, and interviews. Some of these analyses appear in previous papers, but most of the quotes were from the last two years’ feedback blogs and interviews from the different TEC courses. TEC Programs in Teacher Education

The courses following the TEC model have been offered annually since 2005 and are designed for the diverse teacher education colleges in Israel, each consisting of one course, three lecturers, and 40 students from three colleges (Kibbutzim, Al-Qasemi, and Talpiot). Participants, instructors, and students include secular Jews, religious Jews, and Arabs in Israel. Advanced Internet learning environments are used as the teaching and learning platforms—synchronous, asynchronous, virtual worlds, online collaborative whiteboard, cloud, social media, and others. The aim is to develop teacher education skills in multiculturalism and digital education through participating in a unique intercollege course that enables successful, challenging, online, and multicultural experiences in

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one specific course in their teacher education curricula. There are annual and semester-based courses, both for bachelor and master of education degrees. The courses were selected and developed based on the availability of at least three lecturers from three different colleges, who are prepared to go through the TEC journey. Each participating teacher education college assigns an instructor and registers students for the different TEC courses. Students are then grouped into small culturally diverse groups of about six members within the TEC course, and each group is assigned one instructor who facilitates and accompanies the group’s interaction and work in an online setting throughout the academic year. Lecturers develop the course setting and content in a collaborative way, which begins with two intensive study and work days about a month before the beginning of the academic year. The content is defined by the colleges’ curricula, by selecting the shared subjects for each college, and by widening them to incorporate innovative dimensions. It is agreed by the lecturers not to include controversial issues that may arise in cultural or political conflicts. Different subjects are taught online by the lecturers (instructors), and students are then required to work collaboratively in their small multicultural groups to perform the task in a selected online platform. The TEC model is in itself a unique generic pedagogical model that can be adapted to suit the various demands of the technological and cultural environments as well as the subject matter. Examples of the TEC courses are: 1. SVIVOT—Advanced learning environment course: An interdisciplinary course for undergraduate students, which focuses on digital pedagogy (computerized tools and online teaching methods including forums, blogs, wikis, film editing programs, virtual worlds, flipped class, social media, and more). This is the first TEC course, developed in 2005 by three colleges (Al-Qasemi—an Arab Muslim college, Talpiot—a Jewish religious college, and Kibbutzim—a secular Jewish college). Since then, this course has been implemented annually with new students from 6–8 other colleges. The content of this course is, for the most part, politically neutral, but several subjects do touch on controversial or tense situations, such as developing teaching units about Jerusalem. (Jerusalem is the most politically and religiously loaded issue, but it is also the most holy and popular place for all of Israel’s religions.) Some courses also focus on historical places about which the religious and cultural groups have different narratives. 2. Ecology—science disciplinary course: An annual course for teacher trainees specializing in science education in their undergraduate studies. It was developed in 2006 by three different colleges and expanded to include 5–8 colleges annually. Students learn various subjects related to ecology, such as the ecosystem, diversity, and sustainability. Students from different

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cultures and districts become aware of the power of learning in the TEC model when they study ecological factors in different parts of the country. These topics are mostly culturally neutral but some aspects of the study involve controversial elements like describing changes in an environmental area which might include a historical description that would almost inevitably include controversial land issues. For example, discussion of an abandoned or ruined village may be perceived as reflecting a political agenda. 3. English minority literature: An annual bachelor’s course on teaching English as a second language was developed in 2010 and expanded to include 4–8 colleges annually. Students study literature written by minority authors, mainly about cultural issues. This work is enriched in the TEC setting by the opportunity to discuss issues directly with people who belong to the same minorities as the authors and thus broaden the students’ knowledge in unexpected ways, including some that may be perceived as controversial, such as faith, immigration, Palestinian narrative, Jewish narrative, etc. 4. Graduate international courses: courses for master’s degree students from different colleges and universities in Israel and other countries. The first course was conducted in 2010 between the university of Texas in Austin and Kibutzim college in Tel-Aviv. Recently, the TEC led four international graduate courses involving 11 colleges and universities, 12 lecturers, and about 300 students. The diverse course subjects have included educational initiatives, online environments, and collaborative learning in virtual worlds. Course work includes interviews with other class members about their culture or about teaching methods in their schools. These international courses are very popular because they engage students in the essence of global education and help them to see the tensions in Israeli education in a broader international context. A cross-cultural team-teaching approach is used in all TEC courses. The instructors work in small groups and divide the tasks of developing and implementing the annual units among themselves and thus model the work of a synergetic collaborative team for the students. Weekly synchronous and asynchronous interactions take place in the Learning Management System (LMS) Moodle, which supports access to learning materials, tasks, and discussion forums. Students work in small multicultural groups and address a new unit every two to three weeks using platforms like Blackboard or Unicko. The students then continue with their small multicultural group working on assignments asynchronously in culturally separated group forums in Moodle. Recently, most of the students decided to adopt a variety of communication platforms to efficiently complete the assignment. This movement has increased significantly since the massive dissemination of the application WhatsApp in which group communication is

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not shared with the larger community (as is the case with Facebook). Keeping the course communication restricted to the learning community seems to make it more acceptable to students who are resistant to multiculturalism. Progress in learning and communication is based on the TEC model, in which the tasks are designed in ways that develop the interaction from text-based to face-to-face meetings, from low-level cognitive tasks to higher cognitive reasoning ones, and from low levels of collaboration to higher ones. Moreover, the use of ICT is necessary in each unit and increases in complexity and difficulty over time. Students’ work is assessed using clear structured rubrics that inform the students of how individual and group grades will take both cooperation and collaboration into consideration. Participants therefore understand the importance of collaborating and cooperating with their partners in order to achieve the maximum grade. Examples of assigned task outputs include the development of an educational game and the creation of an educational video clip. At the end of the first academic semester or in the middle of the academic year (based on logistical possibilities), students meet face-to-face in the Mofet institute (or in one of the participating colleges) where they socialize, jointly develop a group product (such as logo, digital document, etc.), and submit it as a group task. At that point, teamwork is part of the ideology and is modeled through team teaching by the culturally diverse course instructors. At this point, students have also experienced the added value and the challenges of collaboration and multiculturalism. The Uniqueness of TEC Teacher Education Courses

TEC courses are unique in teacher education in Israel, with their multidimensional setting in one course. We know of no similar teacher education program that has transformed college courses into multicultural, intercollegial, online collaborative learning experiences. The evidence of this transformation can be seen in student comments like the following. “innovative, interesting, challenging and necessary course, I’ve learned a lot of tools and pedagogical methods.” (course feedback blog, 2018)

NATALY (JEWISH STUDENT):

“first of all it should be clear that this course is unique, there is no other opportunity to have a such learning course . . .” (course feedback blog, 2018)

SAMAH (ARAB STUDENT):

TEC provides students with experience of online pedagogical methods and requires them to work in various collaborative ways to fulfil the assignments. Students have reported that collaboration has been the most challenging skill to

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master. Although multiculturalism is increasing among most students, it seems that there is much room for improvement. Have TEC courses achieved their goals? Are TEC students more multicultural? Are they more skilled in digital environments? Do they have better digital teaching/learning skills, more competency with collaboration, and/or higher order thinking (HoT) skills? Digital Skills: Complexity, Media Richness, Synchronicity, and Interactivity

Students expressed excitement about and reported skills development with the new digital tools and environments they have experienced. They did indicate that they had difficulties with some of the technologies used, especially virtual worlds and the first synchronous meetings in the LMS. As digital skills gaps emerged among group members, they quickly developed an environment of mutual support. Media richness was designed to increase gradually in order to build trust for self-exposure to group members. Initially, all students interacted in text only and less than a third of the students agreed to participate in synchronous voice interaction or in sharing their personal pictures in online activities. After experiencing TEC courses in the fully online mode, students continued to favor face-to-face and blended modes far more than full online learning. Ganayem and Zidan (2018) surveyed students in the TEC courses and found they preferred learning communication styles to be face-to-face (45%), blended method (43%), and fully online (11%) respectively. Most respondents preferred online learning that used a combination of synchronous and asynchronous methods (59%); smaller numbers preferred asynchronous (29%) or synchronous (12%). Students expressed logistical difficulties in regard to the synchronous meetings (e.g., problems relating to meeting time, home computer, Internet connection, family, etc.). Those who had fewer logistical difficulties expressed excitement about working from the comfort of their home and connecting with advanced technology to learn together with different people at a distance. Examples of the student comments were: “Virtual realities was complicated for me, I think it more appropriate for young children.” (course feedback blog, 2018)

ADI (JEWISH STUDENT):

NAJWA (ARAB STUDENT):

“Virtual realities was new for me and it was exciting.” (course feedback blog, 2018).

“. . . I’m really confused in regard to the technological complexity we need to use, my college students are with high skills and

AMINA (ARAB LECTURER):

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they feel bored with using technology they already know. . . . While they have members from other colleges in their group with only basic skills . . .” (TEC staff evaluation) In the first online synchronous meeting, and despite the preparation and support the students were offered, about a third had difficulties connecting, hearing, speaking, or handling the LMS in general. Working in virtual worlds demanded even higher technological skill levels which is why many students reported difficulty in this unit. The lesson learned here is that tools and environments intended to help students progress gradually from lower to higher levels of complexity, media richness, synchronicity, and interactivity must be very carefully managed and based on consideration of the students’ stage of personal development and on the nature of the group work they participate in. It is also important to provide both students and instructors with training in the use of the tools to be employed in the course. Lastly, it is important that the students’ home colleges provide ICT support in the early stages of the course since this allows them to step outside their comfort zone. Education: Collaboration, Higher Order Thinking (HoT), and Digital Pedagogy

The TEC courses have contributed various skills and widened the knowledge of students who were active in the learning process. The more students were active learners the more they reported high levels of development in their personal skills especially in online collaboration and digital pedagogy. The effect on HoT was less clear. Collaboration in general and online collaboration in particular emerged as one of the most challenging areas of skill development for students. These skills were integrated in assignments in a gradual way. In course feedback, students reported a range of group experiences from high group collaboration to very little group interaction. Some groups achieved a level of synergy while others finished the course disappointed about group collaboration. “Collaboration for me in work yes, but not in learning, that was a problem for me it is not appropriate to my personality.” (course feedback blog, 2018)

SAMAH (ARAB STUDENT):

“I learned about collaboration from what has not worked in my group, I had a very negative experience in my group, they didn’t react in time and didn’t take responsibility, I found myself mostly solving alone the assignments, and that was very disappointing.” (course feedback blog, 2018)

NATALI (JEWISH STUDENT):

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“The collaboration was surprising in my group, despite the fact that we are very different, but we have succeeded in WhatsApp to give different proposals and we tolerated each other until we agreed on a group decision and we succeeded to accomplish all the tasks in time.” (course feedback blog, 2018).

REEM (ARAB STUDENT):

“Collaboration is a hard skill to achieve, each year we face almost the same collaboration problems, and each year we add new ways to improve that, but the improvement is not enough, we have to continue searching more ways . . .” (TEC staff evaluation, 2018)

AMINA (ARAB LECTURER):

By modeling for synergistic collaboration through their team teaching, lecturers played an important role in students’ perceptions of the added value of multicultural online collaboration. “I felt that the lecturers are very united and worked great together . . . in my group at the beginning all the members worked great, while with the time and the increase of college tasks, only me and other two members continue working on the course tasks, and it was so hard to try all the time with the other members, to explain for them the task to help . . . they seem not trying to do their part, . . .” (course feedback blog, 2018)

ADI (JEWISH STUDENT):

Online learning is part of modern life, while students still prefer the classical face-to-face learning style (Ganayem & Zidan, 2018), not only because of logistical and skill constraints, but also because of social constraints like being home with the family yet needing to be disconnected from them. Face-to-face meetings added a lot to students’ group commitment and motivation to continue the following online meetings. “I think this meeting [face-to-face student study day] should have happened earlier, now I feel more able to understand the other students in my group, now I feel more motivated and committed to group work.” (course feedback blog, 2018)

HIBA (ARAB STUDENT):

The tasks of the course were developed to gradually increase the complexity in terms of the level of thinking. This was reflected and understood by the students. The easy starting task gave students confidence in their ability to succeed in this course, especially with all their fears of working in a novel learning environment. Both students and lecturers had conflicting views of HoT. Lecturers

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in the Ecology—Science course annually faced the challenge of developing the learning tasks, and they felt that students expressed more difficulty with the course in this mode than was expressed by students who took the same course in the traditional way. Their discussion suggested that HoT tasks might be perceived as overly difficult because of the skills and energy required by online collaboration and communication tools. In English courses, on the other hand, there was excitement about HoT, since having direct discussion with people from the other minority enabled students to use other thinking dimensions they had not experienced before. In the Svivot—Advanced learning environment course, students reported great difficulty in the advanced stages of the course when they were expected to collaboratively solve a HoT task. End-of-term pressures in other courses seemed to exacerbate this difficulty: “I think everyone is aware of the importance of higher order thinking in education, while the difficult question is how to do that? the course gave us a practical implementation to know how gradually to begin with simple tasks toward more complicated one.” (course feedback blog, 2018)

SHAHAR (JEWISH STUDENT):

The TEC courses are unique in modeling various digital pedagogies, independent online learning, online collaboration, flipped class, project-based learning, game-based learning, and others. These pedagogies are taught directly in the Svivot course and are an integral part of the setting of all TEC courses, with some variations. Students highly valued the TEC courses in regard to their digital pedagogy and they expressed passion about implementing them in their future classes. “I think everyone in the educational system should learn this course, because it is very meaningful, I learned a lot of new things that can make our teaching better to the children” (course feedback blog, 2018)

NARDIN (ARAB STUDENT):

“The course has contributed to me a lot of tools that I can use them in my class in the future” (course feedback blog, 2018)

NILI (JEWISH STUDENT):

Cultural Competency: Content and Diversity

Based on the TEC model, a basic goal is to increase cultural awareness and mutual respect and to change the mindset from diversity as a threat to diversity as enrichment. TEC seems to be having partial success with this goal. Positive attitude change has been witnessed by active learners, while only limited cultural

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enrichment and awareness has been reported. The TEC course Svivot and Ecology does not deal with the issue of culture directly; indeed, in the first version of the TEC model, it was designed to keep away from controversial issues. “my student Nili, built real friendship with arab students, and you know . . . she is a religious jewish student, she said to me ‘I had the opportunity to know great friends from other cultures’” (TEC staff evaluation, 2018)

MAGI (JEWISH LECTURER):

“I learned a lot of new things and also enjoyed the multicultural group, with students who differ from me in their college, mother tongue norms . . .” (course feedback blog, 2018)

HUDA (ARAB STUDENT):

On the other hand, the English TEC course deals with minority literature with issues of culture being integrated directly in the text being studied. This content seems to lead to more cultural enrichment and awareness, but when a perception of conflictual content was encountered, polarized attitudes emerged. my student Samah was shocked in the face to face meeting from Rina [religious Jewish student], she said “I can’t understand her reaction [angry talk in the f2f meeting] . . . it is furious because I define myself Palestinian,” (TEC staff evaluation, 2018)

WISAL (ARAB ENGLISH LECTURER):

“I was surprised how far some students changed the way they used to think about arab culture and Palestinians from the literature they were exposed to . . . the discussion with arab students also was something they didn’t meet before” (TEC staff evaluation)

LIORA (JEWISH ENGLISH LECTURER):

Prejudice was found to decrease among active learners who participated in TEC courses (Hoter & Yazbak Abu Ahmad, 2018; Walther et al., 2015; Nagar, Rozner, Zidan, Hoter, & Schonfield, 2015). At the beginning of the TEC courses, most students expressed their concerns about learning and working together with students from other cultures, traditionally perceived with enmity in their in-group. The apprehension is derived from political and historical reasons, fears of disagreements over religious topics, stereotyping, and ethnic and gender issues. Walther et al. (2015) reported that prejudice has decreased significantly between Arab and Jewish religious students, while among secular Jews and Arab students it has slightly decreased (not significantly), since it was relatively low

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from the beginning of the course. Walther et al. used pre and post questionnaire data (N = 71) collected in 2008\2009 that measured participants’ attitudes in regard to the other/different cultures/groups in TEC courses and compared them to data from a control group. This study provides evidence of achieving the important practical goal of reducing interethnic prejudice among traditionally polarized populations. The interaction effect on prejudice reduction yielded a modest effect size of 0.25 (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). Hoter and Yazbak Abu Ahmad (2018) examined attitude change among English teacher training students (N = 115) from three cultures who participated in a TEC English course called “Exploring Cultures through Minority Literature” and found that students’ initial apprehension about working with people from the other culture diminished at the end of the course. They identified three categories in student feedback: excitement, anxiety, and transformation. The following comments illustrate these attitude changes. “That was great to know great students (Jewish female), and we learned to consider each other, for example I have learnt not to text them in WhatsApp in Saturdays . . .” (course feedback blog, 2018)

SAMAH (ARAB STUDENT):

“. . . I’m surprised from myself, I’ve built great friendship with two groupmate one of them is Arab one, only the three of us worked hard in the tasks . . .” (course feedback blog, 2018)

ADI (JEWISH STUDENT):

TEC courses were perceived by students to improve multicultural communication awareness (M = 3.82 on a five-point Likert scale) (Ganayem & Zidan, 2018). Furthermore, in the face-to-face students’ study day, most of the students expressed high feelings and excitement about the positive environment and kindness they met and experienced in the face-to-face encounters with people from a different cultural group for the first time in their lives. This resulted in criticism that there was only one face-to-face meeting and that the cultural issues were not handled sufficiently in any depth in the courses. “Each year at least two or three students from my college tell me that they have not experienced the multiculturalism as they expected, we should think how to deepen this part.” (TEC staff evaluation)

MAGI (JEWISH LECTURER):

“. . . it is different in our course [English—minority literature] since the whole course content is related to cultures, in the feedback Jewish students have criticized the course in that it includes more

MAHA (ARAB LECTURER):

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Palestinian literature than religious Jewish one, so we should take that in consideration for next year.” (TEC staff evaluation) “such meetings should be more, not only once . . . the course was amazing I’ve learned a lot . . . But I wanted also to learn more about other cultures and this wasn’t in the course.” (course feedback, 2018)

MICHAL (JEWISH STUDENT):

“We found a lot of similarities . . . we chatted about spouses, families and norms . . . it was so interesting, we will continue to be friends even after the course.” (course feedback, 2018)

RACHEL (JEWISH STUDENT):

Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz’s (1998) Implicit Association Test (IAT) was used by TEC researchers (Nagar et al., 2015) to assess differences in evaluative associations between pairs of semantic or social categories, including those that comprise stereotypes and self-concept. Nagar et al. (2015) administered the IAT to students from ten colleges at three times: at the beginning of the course, in the middle, and before the face-to-face meeting at the end of the course. The IAT was administered by having a computer present different words, concepts, and traits related to Jewish and Arab religious and secular groups. The terms were pre-categorized as reflecting good or bad traits. Eighty-eight students completed the three stages of the questionnaire. Active students in the course were found to change their attitudes toward the other significantly, while no significant change was found among those who weren’t active in the course. Based on online communication rules developed by Walther and Bunz (2005), group members, with enough time interacting online, are able to develop interpersonal attraction, relationships, and impressions even more than in face-to-face meetings. Significant correlations between rule-following and trust in their group emerged in the study results and there was evidence that individuals changed their attitudes toward their respective out-groups over time (Walther et al., 2015). The three communication rules among group members with significant contribution to trust in the group were found to be: early engagement in the work, explicit feedback to groupmate messages, and organized and simultaneous multitasking (Shonfeld, Ganayem, Hoter, & Walther, 2015). Stigmas by Arab students of “not being good enough” relative to their online Jewish partners, have emerged as a common perception at the beginning of the courses, but by the end of the second learning unit, most students expressed higher self confidence in their ability to be among the best group members in their performance.

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“I had fears at the beginning to work with the other students, whether I’ll be able to succeed and do the course obligations, but I found the opposite I did great and we as a group worked wonderful together.” (course feedback blog, 2018)

DIAA (ARAB STUDENT—COURSE POST FEEDBACK):

The Hebrew language also emerged as a serious barrier for Arab students. The courses are held mainly in Hebrew, but Arab lecturers try to integrate and translate part of the main concepts into Arabic in order to make it easier for Arab students and to make the Arabic language present and familiar to Jewish students, most of whom have not learned or considered it, during their school and college life. Comparing Arab students’ writings in a forum in an internal college course (discussions in Arabic language) with their messages in TEC forum courses (discussions in Hebrew), wide differences were found: messages in Arabic were longer, with deeper expressions, using different fonts, colors and design, emojis, while in Hebrew they wrote short, simple direct messages. Language barriers emerged also in joining voice discussions in the synchronous meetings and avoiding voice calls with their Jewish group members, who expected and took for granted mastering of Hebrew language by Arabs. The barriers were reflected also in the tasks, which were completed in Hebrew as the course language. Arab students were asked to translate part of the content into Arabic, making their culture present. The effort required by Arab students was thus higher than what is required of their Jewish groupmates. “Why the lecturers are in Hebrew I don’t understand that well, can’t you just translate . . . can I solve the tasks in Arabic? It is so difficult for me to write in Hebrew.” (student email to his lecturer, 2018)

SAED (ARAB STUDENT):

Looking at chat messages in synchronous meetings, it was found that most Arab students wrote personal messages in Arabic and wrote content and general messages in Hebrew. Again, there was a difference between Arabic and Hebrew messages: short, simple, and direct Hebrew messages and longer, deeper ones with emojis in Arabic. “I was shocked that there are Arab students with difficulties in Hebrew, there was a student who (she) said that she prefers to communicate with me in text writing because she can’t understand me by talking . . . this was for me something new I never faced before, I remember.” (course feedback, 2018)

SHAHAR (JEWISH STUDENT):

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In short, while these student comments illustrate changes in prejudicial attitudes, at least with respect to those with whom they have had interaction, they also reveal that language barriers continued to limit the impact such contact may have. TEC4Schools

The program TEC4Schools, which is partially funded by the ministry of education, connects teachers and pupils from elementary and middle schools based on the TEC model. Students from all population sectors and cultures learn and work together online throughout the year in clusters of three schools, from the different sectors. Approximately 130 classes annually join Tec4Schools, with over 3,000 students from schools all over Israel, mostly from the fifth grade with some Junior high school classes. The content of the courses is selected jointly by school teachers; this includes projects in English and various subject areas including the environment in junior high schools. Each school cluster is assigned an instructor—a teacher who masters the skills required by the TEC model, usually teachers who experienced the model as college students or as teachers in TEC4Schools. The students in the program are also divided into groups of six (two from each culture) and come together to perform collaborative online assignments. Communication develops gradually: (1) text; (2) voice; (3) visual; (4) face-toface encounter. In accordance with the TEC model, connection and mutual trust are gradually established between students from the different cultures in preparation for an exciting, experiential face-to-face encounter at the conclusion of the program’s yearlong learning process. The program commences with a two- or three-day teacher group-building exercise at the TEC Center. Groups of three teachers, one from each culture, prepare the unique program and assignments for their students. The TEC4Schools instructors, under the supervision of the management staff, accompany the groups throughout the year, visit the schools, and hold synchronous instructional sessions The main platform for this program is a closed social network previously built on Moodle forms or the Facebook business platform, Workplace, and more recently using NEAR, a network developed by a nonprofit organization (see near.org.il), which uses synchronous and asynchronous communication, encounters in virtual worlds, online collaborative whiteboard, and more, to produce collaborative outcomes and perform online learning activities requiring high order thinking and cooperation. The Amirim-TEC program is part of the Tec4Schools program specifically for gifted children. Bachar-Shushani (2015) interviewed nine teachers and six children from the different cultures in the program and found that children

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changed their attitudes to other cultures and that they explained the program to their families and friends. We will present evidence of the impact of the program based on an analysis of the interviews with teachers and students. The TEC research discussed in this chapter shows: positive attitude change toward other members from a perceived conflictual culture/group, high digital skills and orientation, high online collaboration skills, and high HoT. In the following, we present evidence of TEC impact on teachers and pupils in the shared TEC4schools program, based on feedback from the teachers and pupils as well as on the results of previous TEC studies. Technology and Digital Environments

Digital gaps exist between Arab and Jewish schools’ ICT infrastructures and staff technological skills. These gaps were particularly problematic when TEC programs employed high-end technological resources, so teachers and program staff frequently struggled to find alternative technologies to match local capabilities. Hoter and Yazbak Abu Ahmad (2018) designed a new pedagogical working model in a virtual world called TEC Town, in which learners in small multicultural groups collaborated online to design the interior of a collaborative virtual apartment integrating games-related features with the course content. “The program should take in consideration the gaps in technological possibilities and skills in consideration.” (Teacher feedback, 2018)

RIAD (ARAB TEACHER):

“I learned wide range of new tools, programs and methods for collaboration.” (Teacher feedback, 2018)

TAMAR (JEWISH RELIGIOUS TEACHER):

Most of the teachers and pupils experienced personal technological development through learning and using a wide range of new digital tools, programs, and methods. However, only some of them thought this was having an effect across the whole school; this seemed to occur only in those schools in which ICT wasn’t widely integrated previously and the program pushed the school to support and enable the needed technology for the participants (Bachar-Shushani, 2015). More recently, Shonfeld, Aharoni, and Kritz (2020) reported that teachers who had participated in the TEC digital program had significantly higher levels of computer skills, digital skills, and perceptions of their information literacy in comparison to teachers who had not participated in the program.

86 Asmaa Ganayem et al. Cultural Competence

Most of the teachers did not experience a change in their multicultural attitude, since they already believed in educating for a shared society, while the children expressed much excitement about the online collaboration with people who were different from them. (Bachar-Shushani, 2015, p. 34) “At the beginning I had fears to be with children who I don’t know, while with the time I made great friends Arabs and religious, I learned to respect children who are unlike me . . .” (Bachar-Shushani, 2015, p. 30)

KEREN (JEWISH CHILD FROM A SECULAR SCHOOL):

“At the beginning I was against learning with Arabs, and then I found in the face-to-face meeting that they are like everyone, there is no need to prejudice them.” (Bachar-Shushani, 2015, p. 30)

RASSEL (JEWISH CHILD FROM A RELIGIOUS SCHOOL):

“I enjoy these meetings . . . we learn to know other people and work together,” (Bachar-Shushani, 2015, p. 30).

JACK (JEWISH CHILD):

Teachers expressed the need for additional face-to-face meetings with the children and for final face-to-face teacher meetings at the end of the year. In addition, they considered it important to have further contact with the same children in order to deepen the change: “for me each year it is again exciting but I think we have to meet more face to face” (TEC staff evaluation)

NOOR (ARAB TEACHER):

“This program should continue at least two years because at the end of the year we begin to see the changes for real and we want to continue to build on it further” (TEC staff evaluation)

NURIT (JEWISH TEACHER):

TEC staff observed that the Arabic language was found to be a serious barrier in the communication because Arab teachers were required to expend more effort in translating. However, we also heard Arab children express that they got added value in learning the Hebrew language. “my pupils are doing better nowadays in Hebrew . . . they feel more confident to speak in the Hebrew lesson” (TEC staff evaluation).

NOOR (ARAB TEACHER):

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“the translation takes a lot of effort from the Arab teachers and I’m concerned that this gives them the feeling of too much . . . some of the Arab schools have supported us with another Hebrew teacher to help their pupils in the synchronous meeting . . .” (TEC staff evaluation).

ORNA (JEWISH PROGRAM STAFF):

Glimpse of the Future Changing stigmas is not an easy mission. Negative behaviors from the out-group, even in small amounts, serve to strengthen the stigma much more than positive experiences may weaken them. However, a careful gradual setting, as the TEC model suggests, using the potential of the digital environment, computer mediated communication theories and contact hypothesis can make people’s attitudes more positive toward other groups. The TEC revised model should be the focus of more careful experimentation on a wider scale in order to study the results. Digital environments offer various logistical and psychological advantages over face-to-face interaction—individuals from different groups can meet online from the comfort of their own locales, transcending the visual cues, the institutional, geopolitical, and informal barriers and anxiety. Psychologically, individuals often experience anxiety in face-to-face meetings with out-group members (Amichai-Hamburger & McKenna, 2006; Stephan & Stephan, 1984). There are still few empirical studies which explore the potential of ICT to reduce stigmas and produce stronger intercultural bonds. Modest but robust face-to-face effects in reduction of prejudice based on the contact hypothesis have been documented (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008), yet in the few implementations of CMC among Israeli subgroups in conflict, for example, the results are contradictory (AmichaiHamburger, 2012). Some studies resulted in increased intergroup tension (Ellis & Maoz, 2007; Maoz & Ellis, 2008), while others have shown increased positive attitudes and more understanding (Mollow & Lavie, 2001). Experience with the TEC model has shown that building the right conditions for educators and learners (equal status, multicultural learning opportunities, institutional support, long-term interaction, gradual development) leads to a better multicultural understanding and develops needed competences for the 21st century. In a world full of intergroup tensions, Israel is but one example of a society whose people are torn apart by internecine conflict. Generations of diplomats have struggled to find paths to peace, but the old conflicts and biases are firmly grounded. It is our hope and our conviction that by building the right conditions we can achieve a world in which people understand that their neighbors do not have to be their enemies and that intercultural friendship is a real option. In doing so, we will help to shape a generation in which empathy surpasses enmity and peace can indeed be given a chance.

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Notes 1. Cooperative Programs of the Provinces.https://sites.education.gov.il/cloud/home/lmida_ shitupit/Pages/tochniot_shitufiot.aspx 2. First Israel. www.firstisrael.org.il. Accessed May 6, 2020

References Adalah, A. (2011). The inequality report:The Palestinian Arab minority in Israel. Retrieved from www. adalah.org/uploads/oldfiles/upfiles/2011/Adalah_The_Inequality_Report_March_2011. pdf Al-Haj, M. (2004). Israeli society: A background: Immigration and ethnic formation in deeply divided society: The case of the 1990 immigrants from the former Soviet Union in Israel. In T. Lumumba-Kasongo, R. Patterson, & M. Sasaki (Eds.), International studies in sociology and social anthropology (Vol. 14, pp. 35–67). Leiden: Brill. Ali, N. (2006). The unpredictable status of Palestinian woman in Israel:Actual versus desirable. Religion, gender and politics: An international dialogue, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, Jerusalem. Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books. Amichai-Hamburger, Y. (2012). Reducing intergroup conflict in the digital age. In H. Giles (Ed.), The handbook of intergroup communication (pp. 181–193). New York: Routledge. Amichai-Hamburger, Y., & McKenna, K. Y. (2006). The contact hypothesis reconsidered: Interacting via the Internet. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(3), 825–843. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.00037.x Amir, Y. (1969). Contact hypothesis in ethnic relations. Psychological Bulletin, 71, 319–341. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0027352 Ari, L. L., & Mula, W. (2017). “Us and them”: Towards intercultural competence among Jewish and Arab graduate students at Israeli colleges of education. Higher Education, 74(6), 979–996. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0088-7 Austin, R. (2006). The role of ICT in bridge-building and social inclusion: Theory, policy and practice issues. European Journal of Teacher Education, 29(2), 145–161. Bachar-Shushani, I. (2015). The contribution of Amirim-TEC Program in teachers and children point of view (Master’s thesis under the supervision of Shonfeld). Kibbutzim College of Education, Tel-Aviv. Bekerman, Z. (2004). Potential and limitations of multicultural education in conflict-ridden areas: Bilingual Palestinian-Jewish schools in Israel. Teachers College Record, 106(3), 574–610. Bekerman, Z., Gallagher, T., McGlynn, C., & Zembylas, M. (2009). Peace education in conflict and post-conflict societies. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Berger, R., Brenick, A., & Tarrasch, R. (2018). Reducing Israeli-Jewish pupils’ outgroup prejudice with a mindfulness and compassion-based social-emotional program. Mindfulness, 9(6), 1768–1778. Cameron, L., Rutland, A., & Brown, R. (2007). Promoting children’s positive intergroup attitudes towards stigmatized groups: Extended contact and multiple classification skills training. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 31(5), 454–466. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0165025407081474 CBS. (2010). Statistical abstract of Israel 2010 no. 61. Central Bureau of Statistics, Israel. Retrieved from http://www.cbs.gov.il/reader/shnaton/shnatone_new.htm?CYear=2010-@@Vol=61 CBS. (2018, September 4). Populations in Israel. Central Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved from https://old.cbs.gov.il/shnaton69/st02_02.pdf

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Cohen, A., & Susser, B. (2000). Israel and the politics of Jewish identity:The secular-religious impasse. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Driel, B. V. (2018). Intercultural innovation award 2017. Intercultural Education, 29(5–6), 651–666. https://doi.org/10.1080/14675986.2018.1507300 Ellis, D. G., & Maoz, I. (2007). Online argument between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Human Communication Research, 33(3), 291–309. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2007. 00300.x Ganayem, A. (2010). Internet adoption and cultural factors: Internet use within Arab society in Israel (A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy supervised by Sheizaf Rafaeli and Faisal Azaiza). University of Haifa, Haifa. Ganayem, A., & Zidan, W. (2018). 21st century skills: Student perception of online instructor role. Interdisciplinary Journal of e-Skills and Lifelong Learning, 14, 117–142. https://doi. org/10.28945/4090 Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The Implicit Association Test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(6), 1464–1480. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.74.6.1464 Hadad Haj-Yahya, N., & Rudnitzky, A. (2018). Non-formal education in Arab society in Israel:Vision and reality. Israeli Democracy Institute, Policy paper 122. Retrieved from www.idi.org.il/ media/10518/non-formal-education-in-arab-society-in-israel-vision-and-reality.pdf (Hebrew) Hollingdale, J., & Greitemeyer, T. (2014). The effect of online violent video games on levels of aggression. PLoS One, 9(11). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0111790 Hoter, E., & Nagar, I. (2019). An interactive MOOC in a virtual world. 11th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies conference proceedings (pp. 1270–1275). doi:10.21125/ edulearn.2019.0392 Hoter, E., Shonfeld, M., & Ganayem, A. (2009). Information and communication technology (ict) in the service of multiculturalism. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v10i2.601 Hoter, E., & Yazbak Abu Ahmad, M. (2018). Designing pedagogy for virtual worlds in multicultural environments. In E. Kapros & M. Koutsombogera (Eds.), Designing for the user experience in learning systems (pp. 65–80). Cham: Springer. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1999). Making cooperative learning work. Theory Into Practice, 38(2), 67–73. Kampf, R., & Cuhadar, E. (2015). Do computer games enhance learning about conflicts? A crossnational inquiry into proximate and distant scenarios in global conflicts. Computers in Human Behavior, 52, 541–549. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.08.008 Maoz, I. (2011). Does contact work in protracted asymmetrical conflict? Appraising 20 years of reconciliation-aimed encounters between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Journal of Peace Research, 48(1), 115–125. Maoz, I., & Ellis, D. G. (2008). Intergroup communication as a predictor of Jewish-Israeli agreement with integrative solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The mediating effects of out-group trust and guilt. Journal of Communication, 58(3), 490–507. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2008.00396.x MASHAV. (n.d.). Schools online—digital collaborative learning. Jerusalem: MASHAV Educational Training Center. Retrieved from https://sites.education.gov.il/cloud/home/lmida_shitupit/Documents/ Collaborative%D6%B9%D6%B9%D6%B9%D6%B9_Learning_2018_2019Welcome_ Letter_Program_structure.pdf Mollow, B., & Lavie, C. (2001). Culture, dialogue, and perception change in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. International Journal of Conflict Management, 12(1), 69–87. https://doi. org/10.1108/eb022850

90 Asmaa Ganayem et al. Nagar, I., Rozner, E., Zidan, W., Hoter, E., & Schonfield, M. (2015). Online learning in a cultural diverse environment. Mofet Institute, Tel-Aviv. Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2000). Does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? Recent meta-analytic findings. In S. Oskamp (Ed.), Reducing prejudice and discrimination (pp. 93–114). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 751–783. https://doi.org/10.1037/00223514.90.5.751 Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2008). How does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? Metaanalytic tests of three mediators. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38(6), 922–934. https:// doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.504 Rivlin, R. (2015, June 7). Address to the 15th annual Herzliya conference. Israeli hope: Towards a new Israeli order. Spokesperson’s Office, The President of the State of Israel. Retrieved from www.idc.ac.il/en/research/ips/Documents/4-Tribes/PresidentSPEECH2015.pdf Salomon, G. (2002). The nature of peace education: Not all programs are created equal. In B. Nevo & G. Salomon (Eds.), Peace education, the concept, principles, and practice around the world. London: Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Salomon, G. (2012). E-moderating: The key to online teaching and learning. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 49(2), 233–234. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2012.67 8665 Salomon, G., & Essawi, M. (2009). The public committee’s report for forming policy on education for shared living. Retrieved from http://commonground.cet.ac.il/UIGeneric/FileViewer.aspx? nFileID=694 Shapira, J. (2016). Education for a shared society and prevention of racism. State Comptroller of Israel. Retrieved from www.mevaker.gov.il/he/Reports/Report_546/SummaryReport/summarypdf_2.pdf Shonfeld, M., Ganayem, A., & Hoter, E. (2006). Constructing bridges between cultures in conflict through an online teacher education course. The role of ICT in bridge-building and social inclusion. Unpublished manuscript. University of Ulster, Northern Ireland. Shonfeld, M., Ganayem, A., Hoter, E., & Walther, J. B. (2015). Online teams trust and prejudice. Sugyot Bahevra Haisraelit, 19, 40–47. [Hebrew]. Shonfeld, M., & Gibson, D. (2018). Collaborative learning in a global world. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Shonfeld, M., Hoter, E., & Ganayem, A. (2013). Connecting cultures in conflict through ICT in Israel. In R. Austin & B. Hunter (Eds.), Linking schools: Online learning and community cohesion. New York: Routledge. Shonfeld, M., Resta, P., & Yaniv, H. (2011). Engagement and social presence in a virtual worlds (second life) learning environment. In M. Koehler & P. Mishra (Ed.), Proceedings of SITE 2011-Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education international conference (pp. 740–745). Chesapeake, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Slavin, R. E. (1989). Cooperative learning and student achievement: Six theoretical perspectives. Advances in Motivation and Achievement, 6, 161–177. Stathi, S., Cameron, L., Hartley, B., & Bradford, S. (2014). Imagined contact as a prejudice-reduction intervention in schools: The underlying role of similarity and attitudes. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 44(8), 536–546. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12245 Stephan, W. G., & Stephan, C. W. (1984). The role of ignorance in intergroup relations. In N. Miller & M. B. Brewer (Eds.), Groups in contact:The psychology of desegregation (pp. 229–255). New York: Academic Press. Stiff, C., & Kedra, P. (2018). Playing well with others: The role of opponent and intergroup anxiety in the reduction of prejudice through collaborative video game play. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 9(1), 105.

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Velez, J. A., Greitemeyer, T., Whitaker, J. L., Ewoldsen, D. R., & Bushman, B. J. (2016). Violent video games and reciprocity: The attenuating effects of cooperative game play on subsequent aggression. Communication Research, 43(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650214552519 Walther, J. B., & Bunz, U. (2005). The rules of virtual groups: Trust, liking, and performance in computer-mediated communication. Journal of Communication, 55(4), 828–846. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2005.tb03025.x Walther, J. B., Hoter, E., Ganayem, A., & Shonfeld, M. (2015). Computer-mediated communication and the reduction of prejudice: A controlled longitudinal field experiment among Jews and Arabs in Israel. Computers in Human Behavior, 550–558. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. chb.2014.08.004 White, F. A., & Abu-Rayya, H. M. (2012). A dual identity-electronic contact (DIEC) experiment promoting short-and long-term intergroup harmony. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(3), 597–608. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.01.007 Yee, N., & Bailenson, J. (2007). The proteus effect: The effect of transformed self-representation on behavior. Human Communication Research, 33(3), 271–290. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1468-2958.2007.00299.x

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Building Cultural Awareness and Understanding in Europe’s Schools Insights From the European Commission’s eTwinning Programme Conor Galvin, Roger Austin, Elena Revyakina, and Anne McMorrough

Introduction In our chapters on Northern Ireland, Israel, and Catalonia, we have focused on the use of blended learning for citizenship within countries and regions. In this chapter, we examine the European Union’s transnational eTwinning program and look at some of the key factors which have made this the biggest example of online school partnerships. In today’s ever-changing world, the demand for new knowledge at both the individual and societal level is continuous and unrelenting. In a bid to develop a more competitive and dynamic Europe, considerable attention has been paid over recent years to policy-action around the nature of schools and schooling with a particular focus on technology, creativity, and innovation with the latter in particular receiving considerable attention in both industry and education sectors (Cachia, Ferrari, Ala-Mutka, & Punie, 2010; Ferrari, Cachia, & Punie, 2009; Gibson, 2005). In the context of education, current European policies emphasize the fostering of school-level action on creativity and innovation as a means of strengthening the “innovative capacity and the development of a creative and knowledgeintensive economy and society” (Cachia et al., 2010, p. 9). Digital technologies are seen as an “inseparable part of today’s learning process” (EC, 2019, para. 1) and very much a taken-for-granted aspect of this broader project. To make sense of policy development within the European Union (EU), we need to underline the respective roles of the three pillars of the EU, the European Commission (EC), the European Parliament, and the European Council of Ministers. At the risk of oversimplification, the Commission has some civil service functions in that it implements policy but, crucially for this chapter, it also proposes action. The European Parliament, made up of directly elected representatives from all the member states, discusses proposed legislation and policy while the European Council is made up of Ministers from each of the member states. Its

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role is to consider policy and direct the Commission to carry through policy implementation. In the case of education, the EC has increasingly adopted the view that individuals are assumed to develop their creative potential according to their personality and in line with the options and constraints within which they are operating. Learners and workers are expected to “apply what they learn in new and creative ways, so as to ensure continued productivity, economic growth and social welfare” (Tanggaard, 2011, p. 219). The human capital formation premise upon which this project is built is unmistakable (Connell, 2013; Paine & Zeichner, 2012; Reid, 2003). Recently, the key dimensions of the EC’s social dimension of education and training have been extended to include a focus on global insight, inclusion, equality, and diversity. This reflects in part the extraordinary rise in migration globally between 2000 and 2017—the UN puts the figure at 49% (UN, 2017). With the related emergence of mass-migration to Europe and rising patterns in recent years of economic movement within Europe by citizens of member states, this interest has intensified. Policy action has arguably still much to do to catch up with the new realities of Europe as a transnational society (Rosser-Limiñana & de Juana-Espinosa, 2019; Kraal & Vertovec, 2017). Nonetheless, a characteristic of the contemporary context is the Commission’s rising confidence and increased willingness to lead on policy work that addresses this emerging reality in regards to education and training at the level of the school; eTwinning, which has taken on a leading role in this space in recent years, is a particularly interesting example of this much more direct-action type of policy work by elements within the EC. This chapter is in three parts and seeks to offer insights into the complex process that is reshaping European policy making in ways that allow the EC to influence pedagogical practices in schools across the member states at the deepest level—using a unique blend of pedagogy and technology embodied in the eTwinning initiative. We begin by situating the emergent EC policy context in a brief exploration of the historical evolution of European policy for education. We then examine more closely the nature of change affecting policy through a consideration of the continuing and highly successful eTwinning Programme 2005 to date which is now sited within the ERASMUS+ arm of EC activities. We conclude the chapter with a discussion on how education activities such as eTwinning may elucidate the complex challenges of policy work for a new kind of public space for education in the EU—the emerging European Education Area. Background and Context A Brief History of EU Policy for Education

Any account of eTwinning should be set within the wider, historical evolution of European policy for education and an acknowledgement of the structural

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complexity of EC policy action and, correspondingly, the increasing range of its constituencies and concerns. This helps place eTwinning in context and draws out a number of the unique features that have made eTwinning the program we know today. In a simplified and idealized reading, the EU has no legal competence (jurisdiction) in relation to the educational activities of its member states; education remains an acknowledged area of subsidiarity1 and as such is recognized as fundamentally a question for the member states. The reality is of course more complex. There is, as Lawn (2019, p. 6) notes, “a politics surrounding this policy area.” But this has not meant policy inaction at the EC level; on the contrary, it has led to some of the most interesting and creative policy work undertaken by the Commission through which the EU has pursued the idea of a European Education Policy Space—with an intended outcome of making education more governable in the European interest (Ozga, Dahler-Larsen, Segerholm, & Simola, 2011; Lawn & Grek, 2012). This policy context emerged as part of the political, economic, and historical context of education in Europe since late-1945, starting with the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951. ECSC marked the end of the economic rivalries at the root of the Second World War and foreshadowed the coming of the EU. Since then, a European identity and vision has been emerging as well as new approaches to dealing with increasing ethnic diversity and surrounding tensions. Thus, policy development since the war has been shaped by questions of identity—individual, national, and European—and by the desire to build an economically powerful and globally competitive Europe. In the process, European nation-states have struggled with issues of sovereignty as some sought to create the supranational organization they envisioned. Our necessarily brief consideration here draws heavily on the earlier work of Austin and Hunter (2013) and is directed at three time periods between 1945 and the present day and some of the hallmarks of policy work characterizing each. The Aftermath of the Second World War; 1945–1960

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War (1939–1945), Germany and France, two countries which were at the center of the conflict, started on a long road of rapprochement. This was an extraordinary story, not least because postwar Germany had been divided into East Germany, which was in the Soviet Union’s communist sphere of influence, and West Germany, which was later drawn into the democratic and military alliance with the United States of America and her wartime allies. West Germany, along with France and the neighboring countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Italy, began the process of postwar reconstruction by reducing the risk of any further

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outbreak of aggression through pooling the main tools of war—coal and steel— through the ECSC, which was formally created in 1951. This early example of ceding powers to a supranational organization and creating a common market gave the leaders of these nations the confidence to gradually expand the trade aspects of this community. Consequently, the European Economic Community (EEC) was formed in 1958. While European leaders at this time were primarily focused on economic issues, the broader question of emerging relations between Germany and France have had direct relevance for this chapter because those two countries signed a treaty in Paris in 1963 (Grosser, 1970) that not only set up extensive intergovernmental machinery for consultation but also initiated the hugely significant Franco-German youth exchange scheme. This scheme, which continues to operate to the present day, was formally launched by the French President de Gaulle for France and the West German Chancellor Adenauer for what was then West Germany. More than nine million young people have now taken part in Franco-German Youth Office exchanges (Federal Foreign Office, Germany, 2019). Given what we know about the importance of political will, we should see clearly the crucial role played by these political leaders in helping to heal the very deep wounds caused by the German occupation of France from 1940 to 1944 and the subsequent French occupation of part of West Germany in 1945. It is also important to underline that from the 1950s to the end of the Cold War in 1989 France and West Germany shared a common purpose in confronting the threat of Soviet-led communism, represented most immediately by West Germany’s eastern neighbor, East Germany. In other words, enabling young French and German nationals to have a better understanding of each other through “promoting and where necessary enforcing youth movement and youth exchange” served the dual purpose of reconciliation and strengthening the democratic ties between the two countries (Federal Foreign Office, Germany, 2019). This early example of a contact scheme may not have drawn explicitly on the contact hypothesis but was an early recognition of the importance of face-to-face contact. These bilateral agreements between France and Germany were not unique. Similar arrangements were put in place between a number of other European countries, including West Germany and Britain (Naumann, 2007). At the time when these protocols were established, the political elite and most of the population of France, Germany, and the rest of Europe were predominantly White and Caucasian. Public and private discourse was not yet marked by concerns about ethnic or religious diversity; however, according to Grosser (1970), interest in the “European idea,” the concept of each nation-state ceding some its powers for the greater good of a strong and united Europe, was growing in Germany and particularly among its young people. Rejection of the Nazi past led many to embrace an idealism they saw in breaking down old nationalistic rivalries.

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These early attempts to promote mutual understanding through education were developed within a wider European framework in the mid-1990s; before then, however, Europe would face a whole new set of challenges around identity. Immigration,Assimilation, and Multiculturalism; 1960–2000

To make full sense of the policy context for the emergence of educational initiatives that dealt with an increasingly diverse population in Europe, insights from the politics of immigration into Europe are needed (Geddes, 2003; Chin, 2019). Briefly, an overall shortage of labor, particularly to carry out jobs that were unattractive to local white employees, began to change the face of Europe from the 1960s. Labor shortages in West Germany in the early 1960s led to the arrival in steadily growing numbers of migrant workers from Turkey. Multiculturalism emerged as the dominant political narrative around which the new arrivals were to be included into German society (Chin, 2019). At around the same time, Britain and France were also experiencing immigration caused in part by decolonization and the right it gave to those in former colonies in North Africa, the Caribbean, and the Indian subcontinent to make what they believed would be a better life for themselves in the countries which had previously been their colonial rulers. The trickle of migrants between countries within Europe became a steady stream but was easily overshadowed by the numbers arriving from outside it. During the 30 years after 1945, France’s foreign population doubled from 1.7 million in 1946 to 3.4 million in 1975. (Cornelius, Martin, & Hollifield, 1994, p. 159) Unlike earlier generations of immigrants (e.g., Italians), the Maghrebis, immigrants from North Africa, were recognizably different in the color of their skin and their religion—they were Muslims, not Christians. Moreover, with their attachment to Arab culture (food, dress, music, etc.) and to Islam, the Maghrebian community was perceived by elements on the right and left of French politics as a threat to the integrity of French national identity. Many French citizens were concerned about what they saw as the unprecedented assault to their traditional values which they believed ethnic minorities posed, particularly in the economically deprived urban ghettoes around Marseilles and Paris. They saw this as a challenge for the very French principle of laïcité—the almost ideological separation of state and religion, and all their trappings (Chin, 2019). These views were further reflected in the emergence in French political discourse of the problematic concept of the seuil de tolérance (threshold of tolerance) described by Silverman (1992, p. 96). According to this idea, there is a point at which the numbers of a minority group could become too

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high for community cohesion to be maintained. So, for example, if the numbers in minority groups became too high in an urban housing estate, social unrest and conflict between different ethnic groups would become inevitable. Moreover, if the threshold of tolerance were surpassed by minority groups, this could lead to the exodus of the original members of the community, which would lead to polarized, mono-ethnic ghettos—such as the infamous banlieues of Paris and other major French cities, for example. While there has been no shortage of critics of Silverman’s seuil de tolérance, especially around how the threshold can be defined, during the period in question and most especially in the places in question, immigration moved from being a mainly economic issue to one which touched politics, culture, religion, and identity. A similar process was at work in Britain where concerns about the number of newly arrived immigrants led a conservative politician, Enoch Powell, to make his infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech in 1968 when he warned of the consequences of continued immigration from the British Commonwealth to Britain. In summary: while the numbers of migrants entering European countries from outside Europe had previously been small and could be relatively easily absorbed, growing numbers of newcomers in the 1970s and 1980s led to the view that tolerance and respect for ethnic diversity should be enshrined in policies that were described as multicultural. Multiculturalism was championed by political parties on the left but enjoyed some cross-party support in most European countries—particularly in Germany and Britain (Chin, 2019). At school and in public life, multiculturalism attempted to treat all religions with the same degree of tolerance; for example, school assemblies were no longer purely based around Christian acts of worship in England but also celebrated the festivals of Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on. Additionally, legislation facilitating faith schools in the UK, originally set up to promote Christianity, was now extended to allow the setting up of Islamic schools in places where there was sufficient parental and community demand. Like the Christian faith schools, the new Islamic schools were paid for by the state (Parker-Jenkins, Hartas, & Irving, 2005). By the turn of the millennium, there was widespread belief that multiculturalism was the politically preferred way to manage the challenges of ethnic diversity in Europe (Máiz & Requejo, 2004). However, a number of extraordinary events and happenings—both political and economic—dramatically reshaped the global social order over the decade that followed, and this included the EU. The global events included the Chinese economic miracle of the early century, the shock of 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that followed, the reemergence of a stable and increasingly strong Russia, and, of course, the global financial crash of 2007. Even greater shocks followed: the Arab Spring, the Syrian War, the emergence and suppression of ISIS, war and famine in subSaharan Africa—particularly South Sudan and the Central African Republic,

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were just some of the most important. Taken together, they all contributed to what the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees noted in 2017 was “the highest levels of displacement ever in history, with an unprecedented 65.3 million people forced from their homes by war, internal conflicts, drought or poor economies” (United Nations, 2017, para. 4). Given the extraordinary upsurge in migration to Europe that followed and the political shocks that resulted for Europe, it is not totally surprising that multiculturalism came to be challenged and questioned as Europe’s politicians and the EU struggled to respond appropriately to the emerging context. Challenges to Multiculturalism

While the shocks outlined briefly above may be understood as mainly external to the EU and its political and policy activity, a parallel series of internal shocks must also be noted. These included the race riots many countries experienced in the early years of this century and the largely unexpected and politically sobering emergence of Islamic terrorism in many European states over the same time frame. Many commentators attribute these events to the emergence and persistence of social separateness and a failure of economic opportunity among the young of Europe. Although schools in France, Germany, Britain, and the rest of the member states of the EU generally educate children together in a multiethnic setting, in practice the pattern of minority settlement across the EU has sometimes meant that schools were in fact quite monocultural. This separateness, often reinforced by differences in religious practice and appearance, is even suggested to have contributed to racial tensions such as the Bradford riots of 2001 in England (Bagguley & Hussain, 2016), the race riots around Paris in 2005, and even to more disturbing manifestations of hate like the readiness of disaffected young Muslims to take part in acts of terrorism such as the London bombings of 2005 and the London and Manchester attacks of 2017 (Pihlaja & Thompson, 2017). As the first decades of the century unfolded, such social separation was deeply compounded by what may be termed homegrown crisis events (Triandafyllidou, 2018) triggered by the type of politicized Islamic extremism which was behind the Paris attacks of 2015, the Brussels bombings of 2016 (Rathore, 2016), and other similar acts of terror. Predictably, these examples of extremist violence were used by parties on the far right, such as Le Front National in France or the English Defence League, aided by sections of the populist press, to demand stricter controls on immigration and tougher policing of ethnic minorities. They have also been used by some European countries to justify sealing their borders to migrants and refugees and to fuel the reemergence of discourses of nationalism and xenophobia unlike anything seen in Europe since the 1930s.

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This shift in public perceptions of Europe and its hard-won identity as a place of peace and human rights along with the related sharp erosion in what were until recently seen as defining European virtues of tolerance and acceptance is both remarkable and disconcerting. Behind these perceptions, we see traces of the profoundly damaging societal impacts that such crisis events have had and how they gained wider transnational resonance and provoked shifts in media coverage and/or political arguments (Triandafyllidou, 2018). Education policy is far from immune to such shifts. By 2010, conservative political leaders in France, Britain, and Germany were calling into question multiculturalism as a policy for handling ethnic diversity. The British prime minister of the time David Cameron argued that multiculturalism had encouraged “different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream” (Cameron, 2011, para. 68). German chancellor Angela Merkel went on record to say that a multicultural society in Germany had “utterly failed” (Weaver, 2012, para. 4). France’s then president, Nicolas Sarkozy, suggesting a few days later on television that “we’ve been too concerned about the identity of new arrivals and not enough about the identity of the country receiving them” (Ruthven, 2017). While it might be tempting to dismiss these views as those of conservative politicians who needed to appease elements within their own parties, extensive evidence gathered by the widely respected Council of Europe2 also called the effectiveness of multiculturalism into question. This critique was presented in a white paper on intercultural dialog which made a number of sober observations on multiculturalism and its shortcomings in regards to accommodating cultural diversity: Managing Europe’s increasing cultural diversity—rooted in the history of our continent and enhanced by globalisation—in a democratic manner has become a priority in recent years. How shall we respond to diversity? What is our vision of the society of the future? Is it a society of segregated communities, marked at best by the coexistence of majorities and minorities with differentiated rights and responsibilities, loosely bound together by mutual ignorance and stereotypes? Or is it a vibrant and open society without discrimination, benefiting us all, marked by the inclusion of all residents in full respect of their human rights? (Council of Europe, 2008, para. 1) We might note here the implied criticism of multiculturalism, with the implication that one of the consequences of this model has been the segregation of communities, with relatively little contact and resulting “mutual ignorance and stereotypes.” The report went on to comment “that the intercultural approach offers a forward-looking model for managing cultural diversity” (Council of Europe, 2008, para. 2; emphasis added) and that it “responds to an increasing

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demand to clarify how intercultural dialogue may help appreciate diversity while sustaining social cohesion” (para. 6). In this context, “intercultural dialogue” was taken to mean “an open and respectful exchange of views between individuals, groups with different ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic backgrounds and heritage on the basis of mutual understanding and respect” (para. 22). Further: It is an essential feature of inclusive societies, which leave no one marginalized or defined as outsiders. It is a powerful instrument of mediation and reconciliation: through critical and constructive engagement across cultural fault-lines, it addresses real concerns about social fragmentation and insecurity while fostering integration and community cohesion. Freedom of choice, freedom of expression, equality, tolerance and mutual respect for human dignity are among the guiding principles in this context. Successful intercultural dialogue requires many of the attitudes fostered by a democratic culture—including open-mindedness, willingness to engage in dialogue and allow others to express their point, a capacity to resolve conflicts by peaceful means and a recognition of the well-founded arguments of others. (Council of Europe, 2008, para. 47) More measured academic treatments of cultural pluralism in Europe and the rush from multiculturalism noted above have been articulated more recently. For example, Chin’s (2019) nuanced and comprehensive treatment of nonoccidental immigration to Europe makes the point that the multiculturalism debate—once politicized—loses much of the subtlety necessary to appreciate just how much “liberal conceptions of individual freedom and pluralistic communitarianism” (p. 303) can and should act as checks on one another. Similarly, Mason (2018) argued that multiculturalism as practiced in most contexts represented key shortcomings inherent in the approach—including an “essentialist conception of culture” “that treats cultures as static, homogeneous, and bounded, with the result that multicultural policies tend to entrench traditional practices and promote the interests of established elites within cultural communities” (p. 22); that it gives “unfair advantages to minority cultural and religious groups through additional funding and special provisions such as exemptions from laws and policies” (p. 22); that it is “bad for women” (p. 23); and that it “discourages cultural communities from integrating and encourages them to form separate parallel societies”(p. 23). Mason discusses the cultural and intercultural implications of this last point in particular and concludes that multiculturalism is likely to be seen as problematic when perceived as a “state-supported normative approach that gives public recognition to minority cultures or seeks to accommodate them” (2017, p. 39). Essentially, what we saw from the EU over this time period mirrored the experience of its various nation-states; at its best this represented a retreat from

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multiculturalism and a gradual move toward a more intercultural approach which emphasized dialog, diversity, and cohesion through better opportunities for engagement and mutual understanding. The European Policy Context 1951 to Date:An Overview

The preceding brief discussion affords appreciation of three important points relating to EU policy perspectives and policy making. First, policy work in the early stages of the newly formed ECSC and subsequent EEC was necessarily grand in scale and epic in vision. The movement from a nascent coal and steel community to a common market with European reach focused attention on the legislative basis, necessary administrative arrangements, and governance of what was then the growing EEC project. While the economics of this early union dominated, cultural rapprochement and building better understanding across borders were also addressed but only in a very limited manner—as we saw in the early Youth Exchange schemes. Second, policy making and policy work are the product of societal values and modalities of its time and milieu. Concepts like multiculturalism and more recently intercultural dialog and understanding lend themselves in interesting ways to EU policy work mainly because of their portmanteau nature—which policymakers at both the EU and nation-states level can creatively employ. It was precisely this expansive quality that gave eTwinning the opportunity to emerge in 2005 as an agreed response to the specific policy challenges involved in providing an EU-wide response to the educational need for more meaningful occasions for learning dialog, the celebration of diversity, and opportunities to engage in cultural understanding by school children. Third, the Lisbon/EU 2020 Strategy and the European Policy Cooperation Education and Training framework (ET, 2020) enabled the Commission to focus attention on education and training practices and policy across Europe (Galgóczi & Leschke, 2016; Lawn, 2019) and indeed beyond (Gudkov, 2012). This has seen increased confidence and action by elements within the Commission who work to build best practices in education policy, gather and disseminate knowledge, and advance educational policy reforms at the national and regional levels. The result has been a steady growth in policy work and an increasing reach for the ET2020 tools and instruments including: • •

Working Groups, composed of experts nominated by Member States and key stakeholders; Peer Learning Activities (PLAs), hosted by a Member State to showcase existing good practice at the national level or to explore a particular issue with other Member States;

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Peer Reviews, involving a group of Member States providing guidance to another Member State on a specific national challenge; and, The annual Education and Training Monitor Reports on Member States’ progress toward ET2020 objectives and benchmarks. (European Commission)3

What has happened since the seminal Lisbon Agreements on Education and Training has also profoundly affected the nature of the action supported by the long-standing EU ERASMUS program. Initiated in 1987 as an exchange program for higher education students, over 30 million participants have since benefitted from the program. Post-Lisbon, and particularly since the designation in 2014 of the program as ERASMUS+ and the reorientation of this much-enhanced program toward the so-called Europe Grand Challenges, the program has changed radically. Its direct reach into schools means that eTwinning is now positioned officially as one of the main means through which the EC makes meaningful contributions to help tackle socioeconomic changes, the key challenges that Europe will be facing until the end of the decade. This has seen the incorporation into ERASMUS+ of previously stand-alone initiatives such as COMENIUS and GRUNTVIG and, interestingly, eTwinning as actions of the new program. The preceding discussion has helped show how the current EU policymaking context emerged. We can therefore now turn to a consideration of the nature and development of the flagship EC eTwinning Programme with a better sense of how it relates to the EC policy agenda and the significance of this. The eTwinning Programme and EU Policy Interests In this section we consider what might be learned about the importance of issues such as intercultural awareness/cultural understanding in European education policy making from a study of the nature and development of the eTwinning Programme. The EC eTwinning Programme:A Unique Education Initiative

The eTwinning Programme is an action for schools in Europe funded by the EC and now sited within ERASMUS+.4 The annual running costs for eTwinning are €13m with a further €28.2m for national support services. This does not include the costs in setting up the online platform. By any reckoning, this is a significant commitment and a measure of the importance attached to the program.5 Established in 2005 as a digital collaborative platform for teachers and students from different schools, eTwinning currently involves more than 600,000

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teachers and 4,500,000 students in almost 200,000 schools across the continent according to a report of the Directorate General for Education and Culture (DG EAC, 2019). The eTwinning Programme and its related services continue to center on a digital platform, available in 28 languages, providing a range of activities from joint projects for schools at national and international levels to collaborative spaces and professional development programs for teachers (Scimeca, 2012; Blazic & Verswijvel, 2017; Pateraki, 2018). It remains, as noted in Austin and Hunter (2013), one of the world’s largest programs using ICT to connect schools. What has changed since that publication—and quite markedly—is the expansion of the eTwinning program into ancillary services and initiatives that have deepened its collaborative spaces into discernible communities for teachers and its increasing portfolio of professional development activities for teachers as well as other educators. This would include an upsurge of eTwinning-related activity in the European Schoolnet Academy, the emergence of eTwinning Learning Events and other more blended professional development offerings including Online Seminars and online labs, the ongoing growth in eTwinning Professional Development Workshops, deepening relations with other European Schoolnet (EUN) projects/initiatives such as The Future Classroom Lab, and, notably, the recently launched eTwinning Teacher Training Initiative with its own Learning Events such as the recent one on Intercultural Learning and eTwinning.6 For the purposes of this chapter, and in the context of the book as a whole, it is worth underlining that eTwinning is essentially a safe and secure online means for staff (teachers, head teachers, librarians, etc.) working in a school in one of the European countries involved to find partners, communicate, collaborate, develop projects, share, and learn. It does not involve funding for pupils to travel and meet each other—apart from exceptionally when a European eTwinning Award is presented to teacher/student delegates to the annual eTwinning Conference—nor is it a requirement that partner teachers meet face-to-face to plan their work. Notwithstanding this, eTwinners have always creatively leveraged opportunities to meet and plan face-to-face through participating in events such as international eTwinning Professional Development Workshops and thematic “brokerage” events organized by National Support Services or by registering as delegates to the annual eTwinning Conferences and meeting in the fringes of these events. All of these are cost-neutral to the individual teacher with either the National Support Service (NSS) or Central Support Service (CSS) funding the teachers’ participation. In practical terms, eTwinning—taken here to include the initiative itself, the project platform, and all ancillary activities and services—is managed on behalf of the EC by EUN, a not-for-profit organization described on its home page as comprising “a network of 34 Ministries of Education in Europe and beyond” which “aims to bring innovation in teaching and learning to our key stakeholders:

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Ministries of Education, schools, teachers, researchers, and industry partners” (European Schoolnet, 2017, p. 7). According to its mission statement, EUN’s activities are divided across three areas of work: • • •

Providing concrete evidence and data in the area of innovation in education on which to base policy recommendations; Supporting schools and teachers in their teaching practices; and Developing and sustaining a network of schools engaged in innovative teaching and learning approaches. (European Schoolnet, 2017, p. 2)

eTwinning is the largest and arguably most successful EUN activity, with EUN having successfully bid twice over the life of the initiative to retain stewardship of the program and its spin-outs. There are a number of features and qualities that make the eTwinning Programme interesting and significant in EC policy action terms. Most importantly for the present purposes, eTwinning has its origins in a moment within the development of the EU when school education moved firmly into the priority reference frame of both the EU Council of Ministers and the Commission, and represents a first coupling, formally, of school education and the European economic agenda. In his speech to the launch conference for the eTwinning Programme in January 2005, Ján Figel’ acknowledged this when he noted a direct line from eTwinning to the Lisbon Declaration and particularly to the Barcelona European Council of March 2002 (Figel’, 2005). Interestingly, Figel’ also went to considerable lengths to emphasize that Europe was founded on common values and constructed through dialog that maintained respect for different cultures and languages. School twinning would, he believed, “reinforce this dialogue, offering a voice for the youth of today, in a Europe without borders” (para. 2). Perhaps to emphasize this, Figel’ noted that school twinning would not only take “full advantage of the new opportunities for school co-operation and networking provided by ICT and the Internet” but that it would also “reinforce the European dimension in school education, promoting intercultural dialogue and raising awareness among pupils of the cultural and linguistic diversity of Europe” (para. 17). Significantly, he also acknowledged the reality that school twinning or eTwinning (as it would in future be known) depended on teachers’ professional skills in the pedagogical use of ICT. Addressing his remarks directly to the 300+ teachers and educators in attendance at the launch event, he observed that “without your involvement and your support, this initiative will never work” (para. 17). This was a defining moment in the tone and direction the EC would take toward eTwinning as a policy action.

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Support Structures and Functions: Servicing and Maintaining eTwinning

Each of the participating EUN countries has a nominated NSS or a Partner Support Agency (PSA) that promotes the eTwinning action, provides advice and guidance for schools and other users, and organizes a range of activities and professional development opportunities at national and/or regional level. At the European level, eTwinning is coordinated by a CSS which is managed by EUN. The CSS liaises with the NSS and PSAs and is responsible for the main eTwinning platform7 as well as offering a range of professional development opportunities and other activities such as an annual European Conference and a European eTwinning Prize Event, which recognizes teachers and students for their involvement in outstanding projects (Pateraki, 2018). It may be helpful here to observe that eTwinning as a digital platform has both public and private aspects; that is, there are areas of the main online site that are easily discovered/openly visible and others which are tightly secured and controlled in terms of access and visibility. In the public part of eTwinning, visitors can access a range of information. This includes information about how to become involved in eTwinning, the benefits the action offers, the possibility of viewing some selected highlights from recent projects—all with the intention of inspiring visitors to consider becoming involved in collaborative project work, ideally within eTwinning. The much larger eTwinning Live area of the site is restricted to registered users called eTwinners who are mainly teachers. Registration is vetted and validated at the NSS and CSS /PSA level before full access is provided to this area of the platform. Once registered, teachers can find partners to work together on eTwinning projects during which they and their pupils have access to a TwinSpace—a private collaborative space, which is unique to each project. In addition, eTwinning Live provides registered users with the opportunity to find and interact with other members of the eTwinning community, to take part in professional development activities such as Online Courses (lasting six weeks), Learning Events (lasting two weeks), and Online Seminars (one-hour webinars), to collaborate and exchange practice in Thematic Groups, and, significantly, to find potential partners for their projects through the eTwinners’ Partner Forums (Pateraki, 2018). Finally, it is worth noting that recognition for work done by teachers and pupils plays an important role in eTwinning. Since the beginning of the program, eTwinning projects can be awarded a National Quality Label and/ or a European Quality label and can enter National and European competitions. In order to recognize eTwinning work done at the school level, the eTwinning School Label was introduced in 2018 (European Schoolnet, 2019). This marks a small but significant shift in perspective for the program; it acknowledges the local, on-site value of much eTwinning activity.

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Continuity and Change in eTwinning; 2005–2020

The Commission’s mandate was quickly reflected in the early eTwinning activities of EUN. Work on the infrastructure—both digital and personnel—to support the tone and direction of the initiative accelerated rapidly. This resulted in the establishment of the NSS and CSS structures mentioned earlier. The major thrust on the technical side involved the design and development of the initial TwinSpace and set in motion the cycle of constant revisioning resulting from feedback by project partners within eTwinning and others. Much of the challenge and the resulting learning from this period is captured by Kampylis, Bocconi, and Punie (2012) and by Vuorikari, Kampylis, Scimeca, and Punie (2015). Essentially, a safe and secure digital space was developed within the eTwinning Live area of the main eTwinning site and scaled from the original approximately 500 initial participants to the 600,000 that it has today. Although eTwinning has interesting technical features and pedagogical possibilities, our focus will be on the optimistic attitudes about better intercultural understanding that resulted among those involved in the initial launch and the subsequent steady emergence of this optimism over time as the initiative grew and developed. The Commission’s mandate from the launch also resulted in the establishment of an eTwinning Pedagogical Advisory Group (PAG) which helped guide and steer the initiative through its early years. This group comprised representatives from ministries of education, industry, and academia and was chaired by a schools’ inspector known for innovative thinking and advice on using ICT in education.8 This group and a small core of colleagues working at EUN produced some of the earliest published work on the aspirations and direction of eTwinning. One of the principal architects of the initiative and both a PAG member and EUN staff member, Gilleran (2006) observed: eTwinning is about people; teachers, pupils, head teachers, parents, support agency staff, webmasters, teacher trainers, pedagogical experts from the 25 member states of the European Union, Norway, Iceland and Bulgaria, all united in a common purpose; to bring the teachers and students of Europe closer together through working together, building a common identity and appreciation of what it is to be European. It is also about experimenting with new methods of teaching, new technologies and new ways of doing old tasks. (2006, p. 2) A similar message in relation to the central eTwinning principle of building for a common European identity was conveyed by Galvin et al. when writing on behalf of the eTwinning PAG: European countries have a shared history, a common set of norms and values . . . as well as a rich diversity in language and cultures especially as

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membership grows. European countries face substantial challenges both economically and socially, and the call for innovation and creativity is enormous. An eTwinning project can by its very nature address the European dimension; implicitly by bringing pupils and teachers in mutual contact and explicitly by choosing topics that are important for the broadening of mutual understanding. (Galvin et al., 2006, p. 21) This was echoed by Zeidler (2007)—the PAG’s acknowledged expert on Intercultural Understanding and Cross Cultural Dialogue—when she wrote: The main objective is to put in place a European cultural area that unites all Europeans while preserving their national and regional diversity. Mutual understanding, respect and recognized common values, history and culture will help in forming a European identity. This European identity could mean, for instance, to preserve European values such as peace, democracy, tolerance, freedom, solidarity and equality. (Zeidler, 2007, p7) From the outset, eTwinning was an ambitious initiative and had at its core a mission to build digital connections across European schools with a supporting Technology Enhanced Professional Learning community in the mode described by Littlejohn and Margaryan (2013) that would be collaborative, innovative, creative, and effective. As noted in Austin and Hunter’s (2013) analysis of EC work in this field, it has succeeded in this to a formidable degree. eTwinning as a pedagogical movement has facilitated a very large number of teachers and pupils in using ICT to work together across the Community—which is no mean achievement given the very different curricula, learning technology structures, teaching culture, languages, and school ethos within the member states. Additionally, the foregrounding of the European social pillar9 with its strong emphasis on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) as an EU policy priority in recent years has benefitted eTwinning, which has always sought in practical and direct ways to address such issues in its activities (cf. Kearney & Gras-Velázquez, 2015; Gilleran, Pateraki, Scimeca, & Morvan, 2017). Less progress has been made, arguably, on what some might see as the essentially political rationale that has also underpinned eTwinning from the outset, the building of a “cultural area” that both unites Europeans and preserves national and regional diversity as discussed by Zeidler (2007) and promoting a superordinate identity for teachers and students, in this case a “European identity.” For reasons that will be discussed in the next section of the chapter, this proved more intractable and less central to the changing policy interests of the EC than initially assumed. However, in the Commission’s view, eTwinning—with its

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original positioning as a central element of COMENIUS under the proposed Lifelong Learning Programme—was primarily (and logically) a follow-out onto aspects of several earlier European research and educational programs such as the Information Society Technology program, Minerva, eLearning and Leonardo da Vinci. So, while there was certainly a strong focus on the potential for identity building, cultural understanding, and language work in the existing EU project tradition of “building bridges between its citizens whilst reinforcing its cultural and linguistic diversity” (Figel’, 2005), there was also a less overt but profoundly important focus on teacher support and professional development in order to transform the way teaching is done at the level of the school. Arguably, while the core eTwinning attention would rest for the duration of the Lifelong Learning Programme on supporting and scaling eTwinning project work—with the explosion of interest and activity that resulted across much of Europe—the quiet, steady development of two interrelated policy interests proceeded in parallel. These were: the fostering of teachers’ professional capability in and through eTwinning (particularly their competence in the uses of ICT and other technologies); and the concomitant development among student participants in eTwinning of the capability to learn through collaborative problem-solving, enhanced creativity, and more motivation and resilience in the face of language and learning challenges. In short, eTwinning fostered what Papadakis (2016) would see as life skills and the capability to exchange and collaborate, as well as to learn new ICT skills, communication skills, and other “interdisciplinary working skills” (p. 280) and what Kearney and Gras-Velázquez later described as a meaningful increase in “student’s learning practices as a result of involvement in eTwinning” (2018, p, 50). It can be further argued that these concerns for better and more frequent exposure to learning environments with “pedagogical, technological, and organizational characteristics that favor innovation” (Bocconi, Kampylis, & Punie, 2012, p. 8)— rather than building interschool contacts and intercultural understanding and identity, per se—now comprise the driving policy rationale for eTwinning. eTwinning is about the transformation of the European learning and teaching experience in and through appropriate intervention at the school level, underpinned by a view of education that is invested in the reconstruction of dominant pedagogical traditions coupled with an investment in digital technologies as an inseparable part of today’s learning process. This aligns fully with the principal frame and focus of the COMENIUS subprogram within which eTwinning was positioned and equally so for the subsequent ERASMUS+ Programme where it now sits. The Impacts of eTwinning;Teacher Participant Perspectives

The EUN as part of its work in eTwinning has assembled an interesting and informative series of technical and reference studies of eTwinning which are

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available at its website.10 These can be grouped loosely into three categories: monitoring reports, case studies of eTwinning and eTwinning Projects, and thematic and conceptual guidance for eTwinning activity. Some straddle the categories and offer an interesting mix of comment and reportage from participant perspectives such as Cassells, Gilleran, Morvan, and Scimeca (2015) eTwinning Generation: Celebrating TenYears of eTwinning, Crawley, Gilleran, Nucci, and Scimeca (2010) Voices of eTwinning, or Kearney and Gras-Velázquez (2018) eTwinningTwelveYears On:Impact on teachers’practice,skills,and professional development opportunities. This subsection draws in particular on these three publications to offer a picture of participant benefits and the opportunities of eTwinning. The ability to teach cross-curricular and transversal skills (such as teamwork, creativity, problem-solving, and decision-making), is regarded as both essential and problematic in Commission policy terms (EC, 2016). An interesting positive picture emerges from studies into this aspect of eTwinning. As early as 2010 Maria Doria, an Italian eTwinner, commented that in her view “eTwinning could be a transversal subject” and that, “eTwinning [has been] the most flexible tool of my teaching that allows my pupils and me to learn, improve, have fun and make friends” (cited by Crawley et al., 2010, p. 21). Subsequently, Kearney and Gras-Velázquez (2018, p. 22) reported cross-curricular and transversal work as the area of pedagogy most positively impacted as a direct consequence of participation in eTwinning. They also noted eTwinners reported confidence in their ability to teach and assess complex transversal skills such as collaborative problem-solving. Further, they suggested that this confidence aligned well with descriptions of such activity from organizations like OECD/PISA, which suggested that eTwinners were engaging the idea in ways that emphasized the specific elements that make collaborative problem-solving much more complex and sophisticated than what is commonly understood as simple group work (2018, p. 23). Considering that the difficulty of developing and implementing “new assessment tools for transversal skills” emerged as “one of the top 3 barriers to the effective implementation of competence-based teaching and learning in the classroom” in the KeyCoNet11 Consultation of 2014, it is heartening to note that according to Kearney and Gras-Velázquez, “89% of respondents of the eTwinning monitoring survey, eTwinning has positively contributed to teachers’ development of this skill” (2018, p. 23). As noted earlier, the social focus taken by the EU since the early part of this century has resulted in an increasing interest and focus on equality, diversity, and inclusion issues right across the Commission’s sphere of interest. eTwinning has reflected this in a number of ways. For instance, Digital Citizenship became a major focus of work within both the eTwinning program and its supporting structures in 2016. Learning events, specific project kits, and a keynote publication by Cassells, Gilleran, Morvan, and Scimeca (2016) which saw “fundamental values such as freedom, democracy, human dignity and respect for others” were

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foregrounded in the eTwinning lexicon that year. Specific attention was paid to the teaching of such values through eTwinning projects in ways that would “help equip [students] for a lifetime of safe, appropriate and responsible behaviour” (2016, p. 5). More tellingly, perhaps, the concept of socially inclusive teaching was put directly at the heart of eTwinning activity for 2017 and beyond. Again, a keynote publication anchored this work—Building a Culture of Inclusion through eTwinning (Gilleran et al., 2017). This took as its central point of reference the UNESCO definition from the same year: “inclusive education is the process of strengthening the capacity of the education system to reach out (to) all learners and the central message is simple: every learner matters and matters equally” (2017, p. 9, emphasis in original, parenthetical added). Learning Events and Online seminars with titles like “Inclusive and Accessible Classroom,” “The Integration of Newly Arrived Migrant Pupils in Daily School Life,” and “Global Education & Interculturality in eTwinning,” added value to the program work.12 Kearney and Gras-Velázquez (2018) followed up on this issue of engaging with the civic/social and other aspects of diversity in the classroom through eTwinning. They investigated a wide range of phenomena including acquisition of social/civic and intercultural competences: opportunities to learn about and practise democratic values, social inclusion and active citizenship; enhancing critical thinking and media literacy; promoting intercultural dialogue through collaborative work; tailor-made teaching strategies; and enhancing the education of disadvantaged learners. (2018, p. 36) Again, the claims for eTwinning in regards to these aspects of inclusion and diversity made in the report are positive. Eighty-three percent of the eTwinner respondents believed eTwinning to have had a marked effect on their ability to “promote intercultural dialogue through collaborative work among and between colleagues and learners at different levels and with various stakeholders” (p. 37). Almost seven in ten also reported their eTwinning involvement as having an important effect on their “competence in enhancing the learning of disadvantaged learners” (p. 37). These observations were usefully nuanced by subsequent comments around an interesting age and experience factor which came through in the findings. Kearney and Gras-Velázquez (2018) go on to observe that the more years of teaching experience respondents have and the more advanced they are in terms of using eTwinning as a platform, the more they report that the program has had “a positive effect on their competences related to dealing with diversity in an educational context” (p. 39) and similarly there is a school-effect that needs to be noted also. They report that eTwinners in innovative schools systematically stated that “in all dimensions related to dealing with diversity in

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the classroom, they find eTwinning to have had a positive effect compared to their counterparts in less innovative schools” (p. 39). To close this section, we turn to the words of participants in the eTwinning program who have each contributed to the continually growing EUN series of technical and reference studies of eTwinning. Alessandra Rebecchi, a technical school teacher in Bologna, Italy, was already an experienced eTwinner when she wrote the following for inclusion in Crawley et al.’s Voices of eTwinning: It is amazing to have the possibility to test and share all the opportunities eTwinning offers, and it is an excellent model for the delivery of 21st century learning: encouraging young people to link with young people overseas to develop their citizenship and curricular skills. My pupils are always eager to join European projects and learn through eTwinning, they enjoy being an active part of a shared community, which brings learning to life and celebrates success, gives them a purpose for their studies and offers new possibilities for interaction using current technologies. Thanks to eTwinning . . . I entered a new world, took part in international workshops, gathered funding to enable me to work-shadow colleagues in my eTwinning Austrian partner school and in the UK, developed curriculum work, being awarded the European Quality Label . . . , joined several projects, gained more visibility for the school I teach in and involved sceptical colleagues. (2010a, p. 92) In contrast, Viola Barbisotti and Linda Bruschi were secondary students and once-off eTwinning project participants at a Liceo Statale /high school institute in Cremona, also in Italy. One is now a journalist and the other a social worker. Their reaction was documented by Cassells et al.: In 2008 our teacher asked us to participate in an intercultural project. It involved us and students our own age from Catalonia and Slovakia. We started exchanging emails about ourselves, our lives, our cities and our traditions. We found out new information about the other countries . . . and learned to accept others [sic] traditions and thoughts. We improved our English and our communication skills. eTwinning is an interesting project that lets you learn new things from different countries and different cultures. You meet new people and get to know all kinds of new information about a lot of different European countries. (2015, p. 11) And finally, the reasons that many would argue at a policy and a very practical level for eTwinning to continue to engage with what has come to be termed the

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European Pillar of Social Rights (EC, 2017a) are well articulated by Cassells et al. (2015) when they observed: The future Europe will need the capacity of these young people to maintain the culture of understanding and tolerance, to continue to value the diversity of language and culture; to teach their children that a peaceful continent whose citizens have the right to freedom of many types, freedom to work, to travel, to be cared for is an ideal worth striving for and preserving. eTwinning will continue to support that vision of Europe. (2015, p. 48) The above are of course little more than vignettes—snapshots in time—but they do aptly direct us to a number of key features and aspects of eTwinning and to how eTwinners integrated certain aspects of technology-enhanced teaching and learning into their daily work more, perhaps, than previously. Kearney and Gras-Velázquez (2018) noted that the digital teaching and learning practices rated the highest by their eTwinner respondents included “teachers participating in online courses (81%), teachers and students collaboratively creating new materials and resources (81%), teachers using social networks as a teaching and learning tool with their students (78%) and teachers using ICT/multimedia/the Internet during (78%) and to prepare (78%) lessons” (2018, p. 29). This represents an eclectic but interesting mix of synchronous and asynchronous usages and while far from comprehensive as a listing, if taken together with the points made by the others immediately preceding, the emerging picture suggests a rich and growing set of digital usages with an increasingly complex pedagogical and thematic range of foci. Some are clearly on the more technical unchallenging end, others as multimodal, intercultural, and pedagogically sophisticated as technology integration can probably be at this point in time. Discussion Having addressed the history of education policy and policy work in postwar Europe and in light of some understandings drawn from our consideration of eTwinning as a policy action, what can we say now regarding the complex challenges of EU education policy work in a contemporary Europe? We suggest that two observations stand out. First, there is the pivotal nature in policy terms of the times in which we live—times during which the EC is taking a more direct and more active role in matters of education. Second, we note the impact that shifting policy interests can have on a long-enduring policy like eTwinning. We will now address each in turn. Our study of eTwinning as it emerged and developed as a policy action suggests some of the ways that policy making and the centrality of political purpose

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to this has changed over time. We suggest this reflects a significant movement by the EC in relation to education policy and policy work that has seen much more direct action on education and training at the level of the school. As Lawn (2019) has noted, it is through the construction of European policy spaces that the EU makes Europe governable. Education is being constructed as such a space. Politically, the gradual drawing together of mandate and instruments that can help EC policy makers align education systems more closely across the Union has progressed from the Lisbon Declaration to the point where the Commission can state in its contribution to the Leaders’ Meeting in Gothenburg, November 2017 that: At the heart of this shared agenda is the idea to work jointly towards a European Education Area based on trust, mutual recognition, cooperation and exchange of best practices, mobility and growth, to be established by 2025. (EC, 2017b, p. 11, emphasis in original) While acknowledging that education remains primarily driven by policies in the hands of member states and of their regional and local authorities, the Commission goes on to note that the European level plays “an important complementary role, in particular, when it comes to cross-border activities (the most prominent examples of EU action being the Erasmus+ and the Media program)” and argues that it is in the shared interest of all member states to harness the potential of education and culture in full as a collective effort would “enable Europe as a whole to deal better with the challenges it is facing” (EC, 2017b, p. 12). It is interesting that eTwinning—and its related EUN Teacher Academy—is named explicitly within the communication and related documentation as part of the Commission interest in fostering this European Education Area. No other subprogram gets such specific mention. Regardless of the fine detail of the communique, however, the very idea that the Commission would position itself so centrally in the intended policy agenda around the construction of the European Education Area is notable. This arguably represents taking on an unusually agentic role (Richardson, 2015) in agendasetting, formulation, and implementation of policy. We see this in how the EU’s Joint Research Centre, Seville (JRC-Seville) has been involved in a steady and systematic process of building policy-work capability for such an eventuality. The JRC is essentially the EC’s science and knowledge service—an in-house think tank, with a specialist staff working at seven locations across the EU on issues relating to policy and program monitoring.13 We would contend that the quality of policy science emerging from the Research Centre has been greatly assisted by ongoing access to the learning possible through research observation of the

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eTwinning initiative as it has evolved, particularly since 2012. Considerable interaction and attention mark relations between EUN and JRC-Seville, resulting for example in JRC publications forensically analyzing and supporting aspects of eTwinning—such as Kampylis et al. (2012) and Vuorikari et al. (2015). This is particularly interesting given that it is coauthored by core eTwinning staff and JRC policy researchers. We see similar collaboration in the ongoing sharing of practice such as the EUN’s hosting of a major preview of the JRC/DG-EAC SELFIE schools’ digital self-assessment initiative (EC, 2017c) at its EMINENT 2017 Conference, two months before the official launch of the initiative. This raises interesting and exciting possibilities for the nature and direction of policy work the Commission intends toward the European Education Area. Following from this, it is easier to consider that the métier of EU education policy interest as it plays out through initiatives such as eTwinning is an intriguing one politically. It’s a measure of how important eTwinning is to the EU that it has weathered five changes in EC since its inception, rested under the authority of six different DG—EAC Commissioners, and been associated in some way with five different education programs and subprograms of the EU; eLearning, Lifelong Learning/COMENIUS, ERASMUS, and ERASMUS+. Each of these brought changes in focus and priorities—sometimes considerable—to the program and meant adjusting and realigning to new realities and expectations. Commissioners value being associated with high-profile progress and undoubtedly with its reach into almost every member state and popularity among teachers and others involved; eTwinning was clearly seen as a valuable asset (EC, 2013; Camilleri, 2016). But EC policy work for education, as we noted earlier, remained highly dependent on the prerogatives of member states—hence the considerable degree of often tentative open method of coordination type policy work that the Union engages in. We suggest that this more than any other factor or element was the root cause of Commission hesitancy to push a stronger line in relation to its original policy binary view of education and culture. Consequently, as observed by Austin and Hunter (2013), early enthusiasm for and foregrounding of intercultural learning and European identity in eTwinning—Zeidler’s “cultural area” fostering mutual understanding, respect, and recognized common values, history, and culture—drifted to the background somewhat. It became overlaid by a more overt focus on the practicalities of growing the eTwinning presence with a related prioritization on fostering innovative ICT-assisted pedagogies, and supporting a Technology Enhanced Professional Learning community. As Heindl (2018) observed, eTwinning projects provide: an invaluable tool for teachers to gain management competencies such as endurance, flexibility, time management and evaluation skills. They learn how to integrate new media and ideas into their inquiry-based learning

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lessons. Furthermore, they also need to self-evaluate and gain from their colleagues, the headmaster or headmistress and their pedagogical surroundings. (p. 138) Of course, as Bozdağ (2018) noted, this does not lessen any the challenges that limit the experience of intercultural learning in tele-collaboration project settings, particularly those relating to overly strong teacher-centered project design or the need to engage beyond a rather simplistic and superficial understanding of culture. The one really sobering note in all of this is that it took a deep and damaging series of political shocks—as discussed previously—to alert EC policy makers to the true depth and potential of eTwinning as an action in support of a more intercultural approach to school education which emphasized dialog, diversity, and cohesion through better opportunities for engagement and mutual understanding (see EC, 2019). In summary: important characteristics of a changed European education policy-making protocol can be read from the actions and activities associated with the eTwinning program, 2005–date. These represent continuity with certain of the traditions and arrangements we have seen in our initial discussion of the history of such policy making. In particular, recent moves to configure a European Education Area through policy action resonate with the idea that policy work can be on a grand scale if the political and social will exists to support this. Europeanled education policy can be both transnational and acceptable to member states in such circumstances. This would also affirm the sense that policy is intimately connected with the political priorities of the times. Europe is arguably open, in ways unmatched since the early postwar years, to a social and cultural realignment and to persuasion that the time is ripe for the type of innovative, inclusive, and values-based education proposed by DG-EAC Commissioner Navracsics at the Inaugural ERA European Education Summit in Brussels on January 25, 2018. eTwinning is different. It is not just a policy action anymore; it has become a vast, multinational pedagogical community, if not a movement. As stated earlier, eTwinning has at its core a mission to build digital connections among and across European schools and a supporting Professional Learning community sustained, primarily, in and through technology. The EC saw and continues to see eTwinning as a policy vehicle to shape pedagogical practices in schools across the member states’ schools at the deepest level—using a unique blend of project/ task-centered pedagogy and supportive technology. Teachers see opportunities to engage and motivate their students, to lift the technology experience of their schools, and to grow professionally and personally through unprecedented access to an open and welcoming European wide, learning community. Consequently, eTwinning as it is realized within the experience of individual teachers and other commentators is open to multiple readings and alternative theorizing in terms of its intentions, impacts, and deep nature. For instance,

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Maurice (2008) suggested that eTwinning allows learners to find themselves and engage in knowledge production and skills acquisition while increasing the “cultural capital” of themselves and their partners. She believes that communications technologies as used in eTwinning projects foster “creativity and interaction with different ways of using language in a totally new way” via blogs, wikis, and online publishing tools within eTwinning (2008, p. 12). For Maurice, the eTwinning value-add is principally in communication. However, in his foreword to the same publication, Van de Craen sees the principal value of eTwinning in terms of successfully shifting language learning paradigms (Crawley, Gerhard, Gilleran, & Joyce, 2008). His reading is equally tenable in a different way. He suggested eTwinning can be considered as “a major contribution to European education, particularly in the field of languages and culture” and that it is primarily “an example of how to cooperate in a field that before was thought difficult to penetrate, let alone change” (2008, p. 5). Subsequent work by Kearney and Gras-Velázquez (2018) would go some way toward substantiating this observation. They noted that up to 42% of the eTwinner respondents to their survey were in fact teachers of foreign or other languages (p. 18). Unfortunately, the granularity of how this played out in terms of languages used in projects and related support events remains under-explored. In the context of the overall focus of the book, we should note that although there are relatively few explicit references to citizenship as a goal for eTwinning—with the exception perhaps of the interest and activity relating to Growing Digital Citizens in regards the 2016 eTwinning thematic actions—the attention given to equality, diversity, and inclusion clearly relate to citizenship. The point here would be that eTwinning has been read and can be theorized usefully from multiple perspectives: both the above readings are valid from their given perspectives. Similarly, policy study is only one perspective that can be adopted to consider the deeper nature and intentions of eTwinning and to claim otherwise would be disingenuous. This chapter has taken a policy study stance because we believe this adds usefully to the direction and intentions of the present book. The policy study stance also provided a systematic way of exploring a rather sizable gap that we found existed in the eTwinning narrative and that of the related European Education policy work, more generally. Yet despite our best efforts, we still cannot fully and definitively answer the question of why eTwinning has proven so resilient. We could argue that the EC appreciates the ability and agility of the EUN as the current central support service in adjusting eTwinning priorities to align with changing EC policy priorities and thematic interests (such as for example The European Year of Cultural Heritage, 2018). We acknowledge, however, that the actualization of eTwinning as a continuing, ever-shifting, ever-evolving, living-policy initiative remains far from fully understood—particularly the role teachers, school leaders, and school sponsors play in seeding and developing deep and sustainable transformation in school

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learning. Additionally, we would be of the view that there is a cohort of EC policy makers and policy workers—such as those driving eTwinning—who have done extraordinary work shaping and shepherding eTwinning to its current state. Their interest, we suspect, is now moving toward the shaping and supporting of Europe’s schools more comprehensively as they enter a new stage in mediating European and global citizenship. This is likely to include advocating an openness to cultural nuances and to understandings emerging through experiencing what it is to be and think as a European. We believe this present chapter represents a substantive first step in addressing that gap. Notes 1. Essentially, this means nation-states retain full policy control in this area. Subsidiarity has its origins in Article 5(3) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and Protocol (No 2) of the Lisbon Treaty which deals with the application of the principles governing subsidiarity and proportionality in the work of the European Commission. 2. The Council of Europe is not part of the European Union; it includes 47 countries, a far larger number compared to the European Union’s 28, and is quite separate from the EU. 3. See European policy cooperation (ET 2020 framework) at https://ec.europa.eu/education/ policies/european-policy-cooperation/et2020-framework_en for details on the ET2020 Initiative and its interconnections with the ERASMUS+ Programme. 4. Costings and budget lines for eTwinning are complex and bound up with multiple strands of major Commission Programmes and Actions, over time. Currently, eTwinning sits with ERASMUS+ and its budget is drawn from this program. Unbundling costs goes beyond what is possible here, but according to a DG EAC source a good working figure would be in the region of €13m annually. 5. Budgetary data taken from https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/sites/ erasmusplus/files/factsheet-etwinning_en.pdf and https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/ erasmus-plus/sites/erasmusplus2/files/c-2018-6572_en.pdf 6. See www.etwinning.net/en/pub/benefits/learning-opportunities/learning-events.htm 7. eTwinning website. www.eTwinning.net. Accessed May 6, 2020. 8. The original eTwinning PAG comprised Conor Galvin, Anne Gilleran, Pieter Hogenbirk (Chair), Martha Hunya, Michelle Selinger, and Bettina Zeidler. Santi Scimeca and Christina Crawley advised on technical and administrative issues. 9. Jean-Claude Juncker, then President of the European Commission, announced the establishment of a “European Pillar of Social Rights” (“socle européen des droits sociaux”) in his State of the Union address in the European Parliament on September 9, 2015. The idea of a European Pillar of Social Rights has since been embraced across EU / EC institutions and functions as what has been described as a self-standing reference document, of a legal nature, setting out key principles and values shared at the EU level—based on the Juncker’s initiative. For more see: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/ en/MEMO_16_64 10. European Commission, Departments and executive agencies, Joint Research Centre. eTwinning Publications page. www.etwinning.net/en/pub/publications.htm. Accessed May 6, 2020. 11. KeyCoNet—the European Policy Network on Key Competences in School Education—was funded by the European Commission from 2012 to 2014 and coordinated by European Schoolnet. There is a materials and publications archive here; http://keyconet.eun.org. 12. For more information, see www.etwinning.net/en/pub/benefits/learning-opportunities/ learning-events.htm 13. See: https://ec.europa.eu/info/departments/joint-research-centre_en

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5

International Links and Global Citizenship William J. Hunter and Roger Austin

Introduction One of the most striking features of our examination of the use of blended and online links between schools as a way of promoting intercultural learning and global citizenship is the scope and scale of international partnerships. In this chapter, we examine the driving forces behind the huge number of global school links and how the distances between schools have shaped their use of blended contact. In Chapter 1, we noted the extent to which the nations of the world are either troubled by internal conflict or are in conflict with one another, and we indicated some of the ways in which these conflicts endanger many children’s lives, create physical hardships for others, and deprive great numbers of the opportunity to get the benefits of education. Most of these conflicts arise within states or between neighboring states and it might well seem as if they are a consequence of close contact that creates and reinforces negative feelings toward “the other.” In that chapter, however, we also described the intergroup contact theory which, through nearly 70 years of research and application, has served to define positive contact—contact between members of culturally different groups which is structured to ensure that interactions between members of the two groups are characterized by equal status, cooperation, common goals, and institutional support. We portrayed intergroup contact as part of a process of intercultural education that could promote understanding, and we described some projects that used telecommunications tools to implement contact through either blended or online learning. Subsequent chapters provided more detailed examination of projects that use such tools to increase contact between competing groups within several different countries. In this chapter, we will examine projects that cross international boundaries with specific aims like promoting intercultural understanding, advancing educational development, or building peace. Such projects may not specifically acknowledge intergroup contact theory, but they often are nonetheless acting within the principles that make positive contact possible. Indeed, from the earliest days

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of school access to the Internet, visionaries sought to bring students together across great distances: For example, in the spring of 1988, a fifth-grade class in Charlottesville, Virginia was paired with a class of native Alaskan children. During the semester the two classes exchanged scientific data and sociologic information. A field trip to Alaska is not feasible, but an on-going electronic conversation produces many of the same benefits. (Harris & Bull, 1989, p. 297) The early innovations were not limited to contacts on this planet—NASA ran a school link project that intended to connect teachers and school children with Christa McAuliffe on board an orbiting satellite: Satellite videoconferencing with elementary and secondary schools was to play a large part in the Teacher-in-Space (51L) mission. Classroom Earth, an organization of elementary and secondary school satellite users coordinated the school effort. The American Public Broadcasting System (PBS) was scheduled to carry two live lessons from space. The backup Teacherin-Space candidate, Barbara Morgan, was designated as host and would give a 15-minute program and interact daily with Christa McAuliffe the teacher in orbit. Two overview videoconference programs were conducted from the Johnson Space Center and Kennedy Space Center one day before the accident. Classroom Earth estimated that two million students and teachers observed these programs. (Nixon, 1989, p. 335) Back on planet earth, school curricula are generally mandated by governments and thus tend to focus on what are perceived as national needs, goals, and objectives, but international projects like those discussed here must be understood in terms of how national and international political and cultural environments are changing. At the time this chapter was written, the international order was facing tensions over international trade and tariffs, the membership of the United Kingdom in the European Union, territorial conflict between Russia and Ukraine, conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan, responses to climate change, and a host of local and regional conflicts. Ikenberry (2018) put this situation into historical perspective. For the past 70 years, liberal internationalism has been embedded in the postwar American hegemonic order. It is an order that has been marked by economic openness and security cooperation as well as collective efforts to keep the peace, promote the rule of law, and sustain an array of international

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institutions organized to manage the modern problems of interdependence. This expansive version of liberal order emerged in fits and starts during the twentieth century as the United States and Europe struggled with the great dangers and catastrophes that shocked and shook the world—world war, economic depression, trade wars, fascism, totalitarianism and vast social injustices. Today this American-led era of liberal internationalism looks increasingly beleaguered. . . . The liberal international project has travelled from the eighteenth century to our own time through repeated crises, upheavals, disasters and breakdowns—almost all of them worse than those appearing today. Indeed, it might be useful to think about liberal international order the way John Dewey thought about democracy—as a framework for coping with the inevitable problems of modern society. It is not a blueprint for an ideal world order; it is a methodology or machinery for responding to the opportunities and dangers of modernity. (Conclusions, para. 1) In the midst of the current tensions, Ikenberry’s perspective can set the stage for some optimistic thinking about the international order and its capacity to respond to difficult times. In Chapter 1, we discussed specific elements of the international order related to the impact of conflict on the welfare and education of children and we found considerable inspiration in the work of the United Nations. Mahmoud (2018) noted a changing direction in the work of the UN, a growing focus on what he characterized as people-centered activities (as opposed to state-centered activities) in keeping with the opening words of the UN charter, “We the peoples” Whether stemming from Security Council mandates or conceived by field missions, community engagement activities appeared as mission-centric (e.g. winning hearts and minds of local populations) or as appendices to various state-centric goals that were judged to be far more critical to stability, such as sustaining a fragile peace agreement, holding elections, or restoring and extending state authority. (Mahmoud, 2018, p. 95) These UN community engagement activities, then, occur within nations to promote pro-social goals. Tawil (2013), in a UNESCO document, provided a clear rationale for this kind of engagement when he argued that global citizenship education is intended to prepare children for the demands of an increasingly interconnected world: “Education for global citizenship” then is clearly a framing concept or paradigm that expresses a collective purpose of education. It highlights an

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essential function of education related to the formation of citizenship in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world spurred on by the multiple processes associated with globalization. It is a concern with the relevance of knowledge, skills, and values for the participation of citizens in, and their contribution to, dimensions of societal development which are linked at local and global levels. It is directly related to the civic, social and political socialisation function of education, and ultimately, to the contribution of education in preparing children and young people to deal with the challenges of today’s increasingly interconnected and interdependent world. (Tawil, 2013, p. 15) We have made the case that school-based projects that use online communication technologies to bring children together across cultural and religious boundaries have served to enhance community cohesion in Europe and Israel (Austin & Hunter, 2013) and we have made the case in Chapter 1 of this work that the underlying rationale for that work, the intergroup contact theory, has continued to be shown efficacious in research since that time. It is reasonable, as we seek to further explore possible ways that school-based blended and online learning can enhance intercultural education in the larger international environment, to explore whether there is reason to believe that the intergroup contact theory might have something to offer. In what they regarded as the first study “to systematically test cultural affordances of intergroup contact” (p. 2), Kende, Phalet, Van den Noortgate, Kara, and Fischer (2018) examined the question of whether the effects of intergroup contact, described here in Chapter 1, are different in different cultural settings. Specifically, they sought to replicate the Pettigrew and Tropp (2006) metaanalysis of intergroup contact research which established strong evidence that higher levels of intergroup contact are associated with lower levels of group prejudice, especially when the contact occurs under conditions that recognize the equality of the groups. Kende et al. (2018) hypothesized that this relationship would be stronger in cultures that value egalitarianism than in hierarchically structured cultures. Though the research they reviewed spanned 36 different countries, the vast majority of the research (75%) was done in the United States. Their analysis of those studies led them to conclude, in part, that Whereas intergroup contact predicted weaker prejudice in most countries, contact–prejudice associations evinced significant and meaningful cultural variability. As expected, contact predicted low prejudice better in more egalitarian cultures and less well in more hierarchical cultural contexts. Moreover, cultural values made a difference over and above equal status in the contact situation. Also in hierarchical cultures, however, equally

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structured contact predicted less prejudice better than contact that was not equally structured. (Kende et al., p. 6) In short, they reinforced Pettigrew and Tropp’s (2006) conclusions about the association between increased intergroup contact and decreased prejudice with the caveat that this association is stronger in more egalitarian cultures. To us, this means that while contact-based projects might have greater efficacy in some cultures, it has demonstrable value in at least the 36 nations (Kende et al., 2018) studied; however, the world’s educators have not waited for this research support. The people-centered emphasis that Mahmoud (2018) said underlies the UN’s community engagement activities seems to us to also lie behind many school-based initiatives designed and delivered by educators who seek to bring children together online to expand children’s intercultural awareness and to prepare them for a world that will depend on people working cooperatively and with good will across political, cultural, and religious boundaries. As noted above, teachers and schools that embark on intercultural education projects may not explicitly recognize the influence that contact theory has had on their thinking. Nevertheless, as we examine some of the international projects that use communications technologies to engage students and teachers in collaborative work with peers in other countries, it seems clear to us that those projects have generally sought to create the conditions of equal status, cooperation, common goals, and institutional support that characterize positive contact environments. However, in the following analysis of projects, we will see that there are significant challenges in attempting to create equal status between schools in the developed and developing worlds. Projects There are a great many international projects that link schools, particularly between what we might call the Global North with the Global South. For example, the website Global Education WA1 lists 33 major examples of projects that might be of interest to Washington state teachers. We will discuss one of those projects, the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN), in this section and will also report on a project that Global Education WA missed—Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning (CCGL). We also encountered smaller projects that were not part of the Global Education WA list and we are sure that we also missed many more. The projects following illustrate different ways that blended learning may be adopted in support of international school links aimed at fostering intercultural learning and global citizenship.

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iEARN

Beginning in 1988, iEARN was committed to fostering intercultural understanding through the use of online technologies, originally accompanied by exchange visits, a classic example of blended learning. The first project linked children from 12 schools in Soviet Moscow with children from 12 schools in New York state where the Russian language was being taught. According to the iEARN website (iEARN History, n.d.), teachers designed the iEARN curriculum-based telecommunications projects in accordance with “the New York State Education Department and the Soviet Academy of Sciences.” This simple description belies the years of personal development that led the iEARN founder, philanthropist Peter Copen, into another years-long saga of negotiation with Soviet bureaucrats to set the stage for a project that would see him using 12 desktop computers along with printers and communications tools in negotiating to get the Soviet Academy of Science to support the project. (Anderson, 1995). Funding

iEARN has been sustained by funding from a diverse collection of sources. The World Economic Forum (2020), in recognizing iEARN as one of its “Schools of the Future,” indicated: “iEARN partnered with a number of private sector and philanthropic organizations, including Intel, Microsoft Partners in Learning, the National Wildlife Federation and the Oracle Education Foundation, among others, to deliver their programmes worldwide” (World Economic Forum, 2020, p. 19). It is important to realize that iEARN is not so much a project as an elaborate network of projects that rely on considerable volunteer work by teachers and “country coordinators” in the countries participating. As far as we can tell, because of the distributed nature of iEARN’s organization, a full account of all of this funding does not exist and may not even be possible. Further, because iEARN has no large central structure to support, the network is extremely inexpensive to operate globally. National iEARN entities have only their local expenses to cover, which may be negligible because many are volunteer-run. Expenses for the iEARN global technology (its platform is called the Collaboration Centre) are borne solely by iEARN-US. Nevertheless, we think it is worth cataloging some of the funding since continued funding has been a necessary element of iEARN’s longevity. iEARN works with national governments on a variety of projects, including the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) program2 which is largely funded by the US State Department. YES provides opportunities for secondary school students from 38 participating countries with “significant” Muslim populations to study in the US for one year. Project participants often express gratitude for the involvement of iEARN, sometimes specifically mentioning the Stevens Initiative3 which, like iEARN, is committed to using communications

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technologies to bridge cultural differences, in this case, specifically between students in the U.S. and students in the Middle East and North Africa. The Stevens Initiative is funded by the US State Department but it also gets support from The Bezos Family Foundation and other governments. Another state department iEARN partner, the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y), provides “merit-based scholarships for eligible US high school aged students to learn critical languages” in overseas immersion programs administered by the iEARN organization in the host country (iEARN, 2019). iEARN also provides logistical support and assists the students with adaptation to their new environment as described here by Simone, one of the scholars, writing about her “NSLI-Y family:” A part of that family were the implementing organizations Better World and iEARN-USA. Program staff from both organizations met with me several times in person, on Skype, or on the phone at all hours of the night to provide support, and work with me to find solutions to my challenges. (iEARN, 2019, para. 4) While YES and the Stevens Initiative have clear foci in the Middle East, and the NSLI-Y focuses on the learning of strategically important languages, iEARN also received support for work with schools in former Soviet countries from the Soros Open Society Foundations4 (OSF) in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Ed Gragert, the founding director of iEARN, summarized this support: Soros funded all operation costs for iEARN in over 30 countries (former republics of the USSR) from about 1996–2001. This included office space (often in the OSF offices), staff, professional development, Internet and other technology costs. OSF also helped fund the iEARN annual international conference in Budapest, Hungary in 1996, as well as enabling teachers to participate in other annual conferences from national budgets. (E. Gragert, personal communication, February 28, 2020) iEARN was also one of five not-for-profit organizations to partner with Adobe in the creation of the Adobe Youth Voices project5 which now provides software and technical support to enable school children in 29 countries to engage in digital creativity activities. Some of the student productions are highlighted in a publication called TakingITGlobal,6 a Canadian non-governmental organization that has collaborated with iEARN and Adobe. This pattern of diverse funding is characteristic of successful non-profit organizations but it depends on two key components: demonstrably successful programs and a constant quest for additional funding sources.

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Evaluations

An external evaluation of iEARN (Evaluation of the New York State/Moscow Schools Telecommunications Project, 1992) reported that 83% of the New York projects collaborated with their Soviet counterparts in selecting projects and that 2/3 of them worked jointly with Soviet teachers to define project objectives. The evaluators noted that both teachers and students reported increased interest in international events, and this was evident in self-reported increases in activities like reading news stories about other countries and discussing cultural differences with their Soviet partners. Indeed, 70% of the New York students reported that increased appreciation of other cultures was a result of their participation in project activities. It should be noted that while e-mail exchanges were a major element of the project activities, many students from both countries had the opportunity to visit the other country and these exchange visits were what the students reported to be the most effective part of the projects. The iEARN network, therefore, was an early demonstration of the effectiveness of blended learning approaches in intercultural awareness projects. Another external evaluation, Wagner, Bush, Chung, Holton, and Kokozos (2007), involved gathering of data nearly 20 years after the project had begun. Teachers in both New York and Moscow strongly agreed that the iEARN experience was valuable for professional development and that they had continued to be involved in “cooperative student learning projects” (p. 31) after completion of the project. Wagner et al. also report on interviews regarding student, teacher, and administrator physical exchanges and report that many of the American visitors to Moscow were surprised by the living conditions of their Russian counterparts, but others focused on the value of learning about Russian culture through direct experience. One of the more interesting observations of these authors was that the exchange program seemed to increase feelings of empathy: Exposure to a different culture provided those involved with the proper tools to humanize those who are foreign. Social attitudes underwent shifts and became modified and people developed an empathetic relationship for the other. Mr. Smith noticed that the negative name-calling of Russians (i.e. “Nuke the Russians,” “Red devils”) and the other discriminations towards other foreigners subsided at the high school. (Wagner et al., 2007. P. 38) They further noted that the individuals involved in the project continued to work together during the nearly 10 years since the project ended. They also noted challenges the project encountered, including access to appropriate technology and learning to deal with culture shock, but the quote above seems not

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only to outweigh such concerns but also to make the early iEARN experience a clear demonstration of the effects of intergroup contact. In his history of iEARN, Anderson (1995) went on to describe some of the early network projects. One compelling example was Baby Quilts: In the Baby Quilts Project, elementary students from around the world created patches for quilts that would later be mailed to a common location for assembly, and then distributed back to participating schools, who would then deliver them to adult caregivers of babies dying of AIDS. The students coordinated designs, shapes, and sizes online, and shared what they were learning about the disease. The activity integrated art, math, health, writing, geography, and technology around a single project theme. (p. 72) Since those initial projects, iEARN has grown to involve more than 30,000 schools and youth organizations in over 140 countries. The iEARN website claims that “Over 2,000,000 students each day are engaged in collaborative project work worldwide” (iEARN About, n.d.). It is clear that iEARN has grown far beyond its original efforts to reduce tensions between the superpowers. According to the website, In 2015, iEARN (International Education and Resource Network), now with organizations in 140 countries and linking millions of young people daily in online collaboration and engagement, launched a major effort to mobilize its global network and other global education partners to realize the world’s new 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of targets relating to future international development. (iEARN Sustainable Development Goals, n.d., para 2) As an example of what this means, the project Machinto—Hiroshima for Peace aims to address UN SDG #16, Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. Five to 18-year-old student participants from 34 different countries, using one or more of the four project languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, and English), worked in their home classrooms in a variety of subject areas (e.g., social studies, languages, or art) to understand and respond to the Japanese picture book, Machinto by Miyoko Matsutani, a story about the little birds (souls of dead children) that flee Hiroshima. The project site suggests activities like the following: 1. Read three books individually or groups, and watch the video “My Hiroshima” by Junko Morimoto 2. After reading/watching, post each comment on “Room for students” forum, and interact each other

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3. Skype/ZOOM meetings between participants if they can 4. Research where Machinto birds are crying today, discuss on/off lines 5. Create your picture books, videos, any other medias to share your peace, friendships, and the safe world, post them on “Room for Machinto Gallery.” Share them at iEARN Conference, Machinto workshop or Machinto poster session. (iEARN, n.d.b. Machinto—Hiroshima for Peace, English as in original) The basic grassroots iEARN model still consists of promoting and supporting teacher-initiated curriculum-based online educational projects, but many nations have country coordinators who assist with the process of getting projects started. Interested teachers use an online template to propose projects which are vetted by a country coordinator. At the time of writing, there were more than 150 active iEARN projects. New iEARN teachers are encouraged to work first in one of the active projects (E. Gragert, personal communication, February 20, 2020). The iEARN network is clearly one of the largest online intercultural understanding projects in the world and the projects it supports offer insights into key challenges regarding the use of technology, the role of language, and the growing importance of the UN’s sustainable goals agenda. To give some sense of typical iEARN activities, we will describe a sample of their other projects. 360 VR CULTURAL EXCHANGE7

This project also involves students from all grade levels and many countries. The activity consists of sharing images (often 360° photos) and videos that illustrate important elements of local culture, like temples or food bazaars. Many different platforms are used and many students involved in the project say that improving their English language skills is an important reason for participating. ABC CULTURAL8

In this smaller scale Spanish language project, schools at all levels in Guatemala partnered with schools in Puerto Rico, Peru, or Uruguay to create print and digital books about local culture. They gathered and shared information in the process and also created poster images. This project was part of global citizenship education. AMIGOS ALREDEDOR DEL MUNDO—FRIENDS AROUND THE WORLD9

In this primary school project, children from various countries read and discuss a (Spanish or English) book about geometric shapes that overcome their isolation from one another because of two adventurous circles. Friends Around the World has the children engaged in exchanging writing about this book with

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other primary students in other countries so that they too can become less isolated from one another. DICCIONARIO AFECTIVO10

Children from 15 countries, working in Spanish, English, Catalan, or Castellano, carry out activities in their communities related to the UN’s sustainable development goals (United Nations, n.d.). The participants engage in dialog with their international partners to build a dictionary of affective terminology related to the UN’s 17 goals. Their writing and images are shared using a variety of media including blogs and Padlet walls. GIRL RISING-EDUCATION FOR ALL11

In this project, primary and middle school children view all or parts of the video Girl Rising which tells the stories of girls growing up around the world in challenging conditions and without access to education. The activities in the project include related readings, discussions about the need for universal access to schooling, research on the status of girls in their own country, participation in local action projects, and sharing of their work with international partners with various media, including Skype. HANDS FOR PEACE12

In this project, conducted in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, teachers from 33 countries on five continents engage students at all grade levels in discussions of peace-related issues and in the writing of biographies of major national and international peace activists as well as in the creation of images related to peace topics. Student creations are shared with international partners using e-mail, and each school holds a culminating “Peace Day” to display and celebrate student works. VIRTUAL PEACE EDUCATION CAMP13

Twelve to 18-year-old students in 12 countries engage in activities designed to foster discussions of peace and conflict and to encourage them to think about positive actions they can take in their own lives that will promote peace and tolerance. THE TEDDY BEAR PROJECT14

One of iEARN’s longer running projects engages teddy bears as representatives of participating schools. Country coordinators pair participating schools (from about

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60 countries) with distant partners and classes in each school send a teddy bear (or other soft toy) by regular mail to their international partner. Each bear or other toy takes with it a journal in which students write about daily activities from the perspective of the bear (“Today I went to the dentist . . .”) When the bear arrives, it starts sending back e-mail or other web-based communications (PowerPoints, web pages, etc.) to the class back home (with the help of the students in the new location who create the messages on behalf of the bear). The bears often visit cultural sites, enjoy the cuisine of their new cultures, try on local outfits, etc. For an example of what this is like, readers may take the opportunity to see one American teddy bear meeting a live koala and kangaroo in Australia.15 At the end of the project, the bears return home with their completed journals and often with some cultural artifacts. The project serves the full range of school ages. ONE DAY IN THE LIFE16

Many iEARN projects operate in multiple languages. In some, participating teachers make extensive use of Google Translate to make it possible for each project partner to write in their own language. One Day in the Life operates in 74 countries and goes a step further by making the exchange of images a key element in communications between partner schools. The images may portray ordinary life events like meals, classroom activities, local travel, etc. or they may focus on special holiday events. Pictures are generally sent with short captions. The project aims to address ten different UN SDGs. Coordination of iEARN

As noted earlier, iEARN operates as a network of over 150 ongoing international projects that teachers may have their classes join. Although originally situated in New York, the early staff decided that the “center” of operations ought to rotate among participating countries, but this model quickly proved unworkable and the network’s virtual center has been legally registered internationally in Spain since 1998. In reality, day-to-day decision-making rests with individual teachers and country coordinators and broader policy matters are managed by a council of three coordinators elected by the international decision-making body, the “Assembly” (E. Gragert, personal communication, February 20, 2020). While teachers may propose new projects, a small team of global education volunteers decides if those projects will be enacted. iEARN Conferences

iEARN holds annual international conferences to bring together educators and area/country coordinators. The conferences also include a youth summit, coordinated by an international student planning group, that brings student voices

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to the conference. The 2018 conference site included the following testimonial from Saloni Sabatino, a Youth Summit attendee from the United States: The Youth Summit has fed my interest to pursue International Affairs in college and perhaps address issues of global poverty. I will be piloting a project in which peer tutors from my school are matched with students in Turkey who need tutoring in math and English. I learned about many helpful platforms and will use these to facilitate online tutoring. (iEARN Conference, 2019, home page) While the conference capitalizes on the opportunity to bring people together in one location, the above quote serves to illustrate that the affordances of online communication are a constant theme of iEARN activity. Teacher Education

A possible key to iEARN’s longevity is the fact that, since 1999, it has included not only professional development for participating teachers but also preparation for teacher candidates in preservice teacher education programs. The teacher education project seeks to change the way teachers are prepared by providing future teachers with experiences in global learning networks, where they engage in activities like: • • • • • •

exchanging “We Are From” poems to introduce themselves discussing readings of thinkers like Paulo Freire chatting online exchanging ideas about using global learning networks in schools observing/participating/helping to facilitate iEARN’s project-based learning activities discussing promotional strategies related to diversity and equity (iEARN, 2019–2020, p. 16)

In sum, iEARN has, from the outset, aimed to use communications technologies to bring young people together across international boundaries. Since 2015, it has been committed to acting in accord with the UN’s sustainable development goals (iEARN, n.d.a.)—the UN icons for the goals are effusively displayed on may iEARN web pages. Since its launch in 1988 and continuing to the present, the question each proposed new project must address is “how will this project improve the quality of life on the planet?” iEARN has developed an enormous international network based on good will and noble intentions and it has created and implemented more than 100 global projects and a framework to

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sustain further development. That seems to hold promise for a sustained effort at improving the quality of life on the planet. Connecting Classrooms Through Global Learning (CCGL)

The second project using blended learning in international links that we will review is Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning (CCGL). This UKbased initiative is based on school partnerships between economically highly developed countries and those whose economies are still developing. Analysis of this project helps us to understand how funding sources and previous experiences of international school partnerships (ISP) can have influence on both the main focus of the links and the relative weight attached to face-to-face and online contact. CCGL is a large-scale project funded by the British Council and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) that links schools in the United Kingdom to schools in developing countries. It brings together the British Council’s Connecting Classrooms program with the DFID-funded Global Learning Program (GLP). There have been four iterations of the Connecting Classrooms program, the first three ran from 2009 to 2018; the current iteration, called Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning, has been in operation since 2018. In the current model, professional development training aimed at UK teachers is centered around the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and development education and global learning, while overseas, teacher professional development focuses on core skills development, leadership, and inclusion. In the context of analysis about the relative role of face-to-face and online work, reciprocal visits to the UK by overseas partner teachers were removed in the previous version of the program that ran from 2015 to 2018 and then reinstated following feedback and consultation. According to the British Council, “since we began the current Connecting Classrooms programme in 2015, we have reached over 750 policy makers, 13,000 school leaders, 30,000 teachers, and over five million learners in more than 40 countries worldwide, including the UK.” (British Council Connecting Classrooms: Concise report, n.d., p. 5) Like many of the other projects studied in this volume, it’s important to uncover earlier roots to understand both the philosophy behind the project and the relationship between face-to-face and online contact. Bourn (2014) has shown how the desire by UK governments from the 1970s to provide aid for developing countries began to evolve from an unquestioning assumption about the benefits to both parties. Through the critical lens of ideas about development education, Bourn argued that educators took the view “that we live in an interdependent world, but one that is unequal; and that

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through a critical approach to learning, different worldviews can be promoted and included within education” (p. 8). Because CCGL aspires to make sustainable, long-term change, it was designed to target four groups: learners, teachers, leaders, and policy makers in activities designed “to help young people worldwide develop the knowledge, skills and values they need for life and work in a global economy” (British Council, n.d., Connecting classrooms: Broadening horizons, enriching teaching and learning, p. 4). They identify six core skills they are working toward to achieve these ends: • • • • • •

critical thinking and problem-solving, collaboration and communication, creativity and imagination, citizenship, digital literacy, and student leadership and personal development. (British Council, n.d., Connecting classrooms: Broadening horizons, enriching teaching and learning, p. 4)

A principal in a U.K. school participating in CCGL with linkages to schools in Nepal explained the importance of international links for achieving these core skills as follows: in a school like mine there are very few international children, so our children are insular. They don’t see themselves naturally, as global citizens, they would never have heard of Nepal, they may have heard of Mount Everest, but they wouldn’t know where Mount Everest was, and that’s about the height of their knowledge. (interview, June 2019) That is, one of the key drivers behind the push to create international links in CCGL is the frank acknowledgment that in monocultural school settings, helping children develop broad, global horizons can be assisted by direct school-toschool links. The principal went on to say how important the direct link between the children in the two schools was. I was in Nepal and when I tell them about Nepal, they will get a little bit of information and they’ll soon get bored. But if they’re working with children, from the other school, through the technologies that we intend to use, if they are collaborating through learning, or if they are listening to staff that have come from that school it brings it to life, and suddenly they

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don’t see the insular, Northern Ireland, this is where I come from, they see themselves as part of a bigger picture. (interview, June 2019) This quotation illustrates the potential value of the combined impact of blended learning to bring about new levels of global awareness. It resonates with earlier research by Edge and Khamsi (2012) who had evaluated the impact of links between schools in the UK and sub-Saharan Africa and noted that “international school partnerships (ISPs) have been identified as a key vehicle for harnessing the potential of the global dimension in schools” (p. 455). For the purposes of this chapter, we should note, however, that this earlier work on linking schools was based almost entirely on face-to-face visits, mainly by teachers. Edge and Khamsi reported that “74% of students never participate in a webcam/Skype/chatroom or other forms of online communication with partners” (p. 464) and that the greatest challenge for many projects was “access to internet or phone (48.9%),” followed by “cultural challenges (34.0%), funding for communication (33.9%), language (28.4%), commitment (20.4%) and personal challenges (14.8%)” (p. 464). Edge and Khamsi further concluded that “Technology complicates temporal and spatial dimensions by transcending distance and time. While our findings indicate minimal student engagement with digitally meditated partner communication, this does not appear to negatively influence student learning” (p. 467). Similarly, Bourn (2014) noted that the interest in linking was helped by the increased use of information technology, although it needs to be noted that this was disproportionate, with many communities in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia being at a disadvantage in terms of access to the Internet, use of computers and constant electricity supply. (p. 17) At around the same time, an external evaluation of an early Connecting Classrooms project in Europe, also funded by the British Council, reported that 66% of respondents to the questionnaire who identified international cooperation as a challenge went on to mention specific issues with their chosen methods of communication. This theme was also followed up in the majority of interviews where international work was singled out as a problem for the cluster. Technical issues rarely ended school links but instead limited them so that some schools could not be equally involved and the content of the work remained fairly basic. Cluster coordinators worked hard to find suitable communication platforms and some tried and abandoned

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technologies as they failed to meet the needs of the clusters: “Difficult sometimes to communicate with our partners, the communication platforms have changed several times (Live@Edu, eTwinning, Edmodo), some participants just gave up.” (Kirtley & Ritchie, 2013. p. 56) In addition to noting difficulties with the use of technology, Bourn (2014) described the impact of the face-to-face meetings between teachers and pupils saying “the visits in the past by teachers were very important because they gave the teachers real world experiences that could inform their teaching” (p. 32) and direct personal experience and contact with teachers and pupils from the partner school have brought global issues to life, made them real and relevant to their everyday lives. The quality of teaching and learning has therefore increased. Pupils appear to have been more motivated towards learning as a result of having a link. (p. 34) These prior experiences of international contact helped to provide insights into the framing of Connecting Classrooms policy and practice in terms of the balance between face-to-face and online work. In the version of the program operating since 2018, and with the title of Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning, a partnership emerged between the British Council and DFID. Funding and project management. CCGL is managed by a joint board set up by its funding agencies, the British Council and the UK DFID. Funding for CCGL from 2018 to 2021 was set at £38m (£21m DFID contribution and £17m British Council contribution). The British Council, though itself funded by the UK government, was established as an independent agency with responsibilities to • • • • •

promote cultural relationships and the understanding of different cultures between people and peoples of the United Kingdom and other countries; promote a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom; develop a wider knowledge of the English language; encourage cultural, scientific, technological, and other educational cooperation between the United Kingdom and other countries; and otherwise promote the advancement of education. (British Council, 2020b)

As we shall see, this remit, and in particular the focus on developing knowledge of the English language, has helped to shape many of the projects it supports, including the Connecting Classrooms initiative.

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In an internal briefing paper, the DFID explained the international context for CCGL, the reasons why the project was launched, and what it hoped to achieve: In 2015, the United Nations published the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) outlining a vision for 2030 that would end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. Within this, a clear commitment was made to ensure that every country in the world developed a high-quality, inclusive and equitable education system that supported young people to live and work in a globalised economy, and to use their knowledge, skills and values to contribute responsibly both locally and globally. It is clear that in order to achieve this, education systems will need not only to provide the essential knowledge and mastery that young people require in reading, writing and mathematics, but also to deliver this in a manner that develops key transferable skills (such as critical thinking, entrepreneurial and communication skills, and language skills, where applicable) and attitudes (such as resilience, mutual respect and tolerance). Development education and global learning (DEGL) plays a vital role in creating such a system, and has been part of the UK’s education landscape for over 30 years, with DFID itself funding development education programmes in the UK since 1999. (Department for International Development, 2018, p. 2) The paper maintained that a successful school partnership would be “most effective when it is mutually beneficial and equitable” (p. 2). Still it acknowledged a learning crisis in developing countries with over 90% of primary age children in low income countries and 75% of children in middle income countries (more than 330,000,000 children in total) unlikely to learn to read or do basic mathematics by the end of primary school. The cause of the problem was “a huge shortfall in skilled and motivated teachers, a focus on rote learning, violence in schools and a failure to cater for marginalised children.” (Department for International Development, 2018, p. 2) The concerns that DFID expressed in this evaluation echo the UNICEF concerns that we cited in the first pages of this book (UNICEF, 2018b) regarding the desperate conditions in which millions of the world’s children now live. The DFID evaluation went on to comment that one way to address this problem was to improve pedagogy and practice through professional development so

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that “they can enter into partnership arrangements on an equal footing” (Department for International Development, 2018, p. 2). In contrast to the aims of many other projects we discuss in this book, the CCGL’s aspirations are more strongly driven by development education perspectives of government and by the broad strategic mission of the British Council which includes the promotion of the English language. We turn now to how the aims of CCGL are translated into classroom practice through the use of online curricular resources. Curricular Focus

CCGL offers opportunities for pupils in the UK and in their partner schools in the developing world to learn about and take action on global issues. In the work we described in Chapter 2 on Northern Ireland and in iEARN projects, we have seen how collaborating teachers from different jurisdictions were free to choose the content they believed suitable for the collaborative projects, but in the CCGL project, teachers are given access to a website which contains resources that focus attention on sustainable development goals such as zero hunger; responsible production and consumption; gender equality; quality education; peace, justice, and strong institutions; zero waste; decent work and economic growth; affordable clean energy for all; and life below water (British Council, 2020a). The CCGL partnership between schools in Nepal and in Northern Ireland illustrates how this plays out in practice. A Northern Ireland teacher noted that from the 17 SDGs, the teachers chose one which seemed to work for both parties; So you need to find a goal that works for both . . . something that is of interest in both schools, and for us then we look and see, right? Which of our topics lend themselves to the development goals, because you don’t want to add more workload to already very busy teachers, you try to make it fit with what you already do but it enhances it. (teacher interview 2019) In this case, the schools chose to focus on water. So for us, we’re going to look at the River Lagan. And then . . . our children are particularly interested in the earthquake that happened in Nepal in 2015, and the earthquake significantly damaged their water infrastructure. So, their sewage system contaminated the drinking water, and that had a devastating effect in Nepal, so we’re very interested to learn about that. And then we’ve linked that disaster to our existing theme of “disasters” which includes the sinking of the Titanic which interests the class in Nepal. (teacher interview 2019)

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Table 5.1 Countries involved in Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning Sub-Saharan Africa

Asia

Middle East/North Africa

Democratic Republic of Congo Ethiopia Ghana Kenya Liberia Malawi Mozambique Nigeria Rwanda Sierra Leone South Africa South Sudan Sudan Tanzania Uganda Zambia

Afghanistan Bangladesh Nepal Myanmar Pakistan India Sri Lanka

Lebanon Jordan Palestine Morocco Tunisia Egypt Iraq Yemen

The CCGL goals and the ways CCGL uses blended learning require teachers to focus on teaching SDGs, a curricular focus that also serves as a vehicle for teacher professional learning. Consequently, the project offers a wide range of online and face-to-face professional development courses for teachers including, for example, “Developing Ambitious Learners and Global Citizens” and “Global Learning: Education for a Fair and Sustainable World.” Distance, Contact, and Cost

CCGL has participating schools in all parts of the UK and in other countries as listed in Table 5.1. According to Liz Neil, a senior consultant with the British Council, the rationale for the selection of countries invited to participate is based on countries categorised by the international Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as being eligible for Official Development Assistance (ODA) funding. Priority under the programme is given to those countries classified as “least developed” and “low-lower middle income” as per the list of countries found [in a list maintained by the OECD17]. Particular priority amongst those countries is also given to those where British Council and DFID believe it can achieve the greatest impact for the

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funding available, as well as those locations where British Council has a reasonable presence to support delivery of the programme. (L. Neil, personal communication, January 8, 2020, endnote added) In effect, this often means the eligible countries are those where there are historic ties between the United Kingdom and countries in the British Commonwealth or countries where there is an interest in developing the use of English in schools. In the same interview, Neil (2020) responded to a question about whether private schools in developing countries participate, saying: Our priority is to work with government schools in the countries where CCGL operates. However, in a number of overseas countries, non-government funded schools are involved in the program, especially if they are nominated to do so by local/national education authorities and/or where such schools form a substantial part of the education landscape in that country (e.g., in Lebanon over 50% of all schools are “private” schools in that they are nongovernment funded). In such scenarios, our priority is to work with government and low-cost non-government funded private schools, which often have a remit to provide free/subsidized places to children from low socioeconomic backgrounds and to work with local government-funded schools. In the UK, private schools cannot receive funding to participate in CCGL, but are encouraged to work alongside state-funded schools as part of local clusters, in terms of sharing and benefitting from experience of international partnerships and global learning/development education. (L. Neil, personal communication, January 8, 2020) Blended Learning

The CCGL website portal, Schools Online, offers teachers the means to find suitable partners and to get access to online resources. Following approval, CCGL then provides funds for both sets of teachers to make a face-to-face visit to their partner school. It’s important to note the reasons why these reciprocal visits were reinstated. A 2017 report on the previous iteration of the program had noted that UK teachers regarded the removal of visits as a retrograde move. They felt that reciprocal visits underlined the partnership between the schools on an equal basis and claimed that removing the chance for overseas teachers to visit the UK ran the risk of perpetuating a “donor recipient” relationship in which UK teachers were cast in the role of “advisers” (France et al., 2017). The evaluation further noted two important consequences of ending the visits; the first was that it meant the program had struggled to recruit the target number of schools it had hoped to and second, that there had been a boost in virtual

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partnerships with over 4,000 schools in the UK and overseas involved. It added that these virtual partnerships had much less impact on the schools and their wider communities than face-to-face visits by partner teachers. (France et al., 2017) In our analysis of the relative contribution of face-to-face and online contact, it’s worth noting that in this instance face-to-face contact was being replaced by “virtual partnerships.” Furthermore, we need to understand exactly what ‘virtual partnerships” means in this context. The report cited above noted in its analysis of risks that there was a challenge in teachers using the Schools Online platform as a tool for collaboration given their unfamiliarity with online learning and problems related to online access using mobile technology. The report advised that the British Council should continue to monitor the functionality and benefits of the online platform (France et al., 2017). Just as there can be huge variation in the impact of face-to-face contact, the same is true for online engagement. In one of its conclusions about the future role of online interaction, the 2018 report noted that a blended online learning version of the core skills courses had been developed (France et al., 2017). It is not clear to us whether this course included opportunities for pupils to interact either in groups or individually. This same report highlighted that the number of schools using the Schools Online portal reached 6,936, 139% of the target of 5,000 school collaborations to be achieved by June 2018 (France et al., 2017). These statistics suggest that initial connectivity issues had been overcome, but it’s difficult to ascertain whether the platform was being used regularly for teacher–teacher or pupil–pupil interaction. CCGL provides advice on making projects sustainable, including the use of tools like Skype, Zoom Cloud meetings, Padlet, WeTransfer, Kahoot, Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, FaceTime, Periscope, Viber, and WhatsApp (British Council, n.d., Connecting classrooms: Using social media). For each tool, a short summary of benefits and costs is provided along with suggestions on how they could be used; for example, Periscope can be used to do a live video stream of a field trip or a tour of the school. Neil (2020) summarized the complexity of using online work to supplement face-to-face visits: We have lots of different models taking into account the various levels of connectivity and rurality of schools in developing nations. We encourage virtual partnerships where schools can access programme support, resources and funding without the reciprocal visit. Teachers may not wish to or be able to undertake a reciprocal visit. This could be for many reasons including ecological/ethical considerations, security, issues of staff cover etc. In this case, we can provide project funding and support to help them develop a partnership virtually. Tools that schools use regularly include more typical exchange of emails and files; mobile phone apps such as WhatsApp are

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incredibly popular and mobile technology is more accessible to many overseas partners. This allows for free sharing of text, images and facetime conversations. Skype for the Classroom and Google Hangouts is also popular. (L. Neil, personal communication, February 3, 2020) There is, however, no overall blueprint on how to use blended learning. The process of developing a blended learning model is more organic and emerges from consultation and discussion between the partner schools. As one teacher put it in response to a question about whether blended learning had gradually assumed more importance: Yes, as the group started working together we started to share experiences and online platforms were used by schools in other projects so the progression for the groups was Google Apps. In our previous project we focused on IT; sharing of training and expertise is an objective of the project and so Coding and Google suite were two areas which our school has been trained in . . . so we shared our newly acquired skills with the Connecting Classrooms group. Nepalese schools do have IT and are keen to update their resources—but they are privately funded which may be easier for them. (C. Crawley, personal communication, January 9, 2020) Crawley’s note captured part of what we can call a key undercurrent in the project; on the one hand, as we noted, DFID would like partnerships to be based on equality, but this is not always easy to achieve, partly because private schools in developing countries may have better ICT facilities than state schools. Matters of equality have also been addressed by reinstating reciprocal visits but at considerable cost both financially and in terms of environmental impact. The overall direction of travel toward blended learning as a model seems clear. By May 2019, it was being reported that 96 Afghan schools were involved in virtual partnerships (Department for International Development, 2020) Later that year, there had been a significant increase in the number of virtual partnerships. It was noted that a total of 1187 virtual partnerships have been formed including 896 schools from developing countries (including 5 partnerships in Iraq) and 318 schools in the UK. A key focus for Year 2 will be using CCGL to support DFID’s wider education policy objectives such as increasing the number of virtual partnerships to support education in emergencies and learning on the move. (Department for International Development, 2020, p. 4) To summarize, the CCGL case helps us to understand the difficulties of blended learning as a tool for the development of global citizenship and we can

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see how the origin of funding has shaped the need for the focus on knowledge of SDGs. Where other projects, like Shared Education in Northern Ireland have placed an emphasis on pupil–pupil interaction, whether online or face-to-face, this has been less of a priority in CCGL partly because of distance, costs of faceto-face meetings, and uncertainties about the extent to which online learning could be used effectively. It would also appear that, in its early stages, there was a conviction that face-to-face teacher contact was necessarily more reliable than online interaction. In the long run, we suggest that sustainability of links at a time of uncertain future funding will place a greater emphasis on blended learning. This may require a more explicit strategic focus to ensure that online collaborative learning between pupils and between teachers is made possible on an equitable basis. However, as Lall noted in an earlier evaluation of Connecting Classrooms links between the UK and Pakistan, “when it came to global citizenship, the term was understood in a limited manner and seemed to encompass only ‘being in touch and sharing ideas and experience through e-mails or skype’” (Lall, 2012, p. 17). If it ever needed to be said, this is a good reminder that blended learning is only a means to an end and that teachers as well as policy makers need to think clearly about the extent to which online contact can help to provide more than superficial links. Education Is Not Enough Our focus here has been on international projects that have children using communications technologies to work collaboratively on curriculum content. It is easy to think that such efforts have invariably positive impacts on children’s learning and on their intercultural awareness. After quoting a series of optimistic 1990s predictions about the wonders of the digital world ahead, Bartlett (2017) put it this way: “It was all based on the incorrect, arrogant, and professorial assumption that more information and more connectedness would somehow banish all misunderstanding and bigotry, rather than fuel it by playing to base instincts” (para. 10). To a large degree, the projects described here were initiated by teachers eager to have their students learn with and about children from other cultures, and our assumptions about beneficent impacts may well be warranted. But Bush and Saltarelli (2000) pointed out that the outcomes of education are not always positive, perhaps especially in the case of societies in conflict. Specifically, Bush and Saltarelli (2000) noted the following problem areas, citing specific historic examples from many countries: •

The uneven distribution of education •

Children of privileged parents are at a competitive advantage

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• • •

Education as a weapon in cultural repression • •

• • • •

Dominant social groups ensure their children have access to better schools Dominant ethnic groups may control funding processes to favor their children Colonial powers may impose their own cultural practices (and/or religion) The majority may impose its language on minorities

Denial of education as a weapon of war (through closure or destruction of schools) Manipulating history for political purposes Manipulating textbooks Self-worth and hating others • • •

Lack of tolerance Minorities taught that they are inferior Segregated education to ensure inequality, lowered esteem, and stereotyping (adapted from pp. 9–14)

While the examples provided by Bush and Santarelli predate widespread use of communications technologies, their work is an important caution and a call to vigilance. The digital divide is itself an example of uneven distribution of resources and the control of Internet-based media like web pages, social media, and blog sites provides powerful means of determining the content available to learners and to citizens in general. The powerful online presence of white nationalist groups is a reminder of the dangers to young people as they work together across continents (Counter Extremism Project, n.d.; Bartlett, 2017). Conclusion In this chapter, we have focused on large scale international programs that have had some “staying power.” What lessons have we learned from these projects that might have the possibility of informing others interested in developing international online programs focused on improving intercultural understanding? Funding

The funding models for these projects differ markedly. CCGL has substantial government funding intended to advance the interests of a particular government. For CCGL, the British Council’s interest in the promotion of the English language, improving cultural relations, and educational opportunities have

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been key elements in the success of the project. Likewise, eTwinning, described in Chapter 4, has benefited from the EU’s interest in developing a common approach to education (as a conflict prevention strategy as well as to develop a stronger economy with greater impact on the global scene). It is striking then, that iEARN has had relatively little government financing. However, while iEARN depends heavily on the voluntary work of teachers, in most instances those teachers work in government-funded schools. The fact that iEARN does not serve the interests of any particular government but seeks instead to promote the UN’s SDGs has led it to rely on a network of non-governmental coordinating centers. While most of these centers are identified by their national location, they operate independently of government. When we asked Ed Gragert, iEARN’s director from 1990 to 2012, why there was so little iEARN activity in Europe and the U.K., he pointed to the competitive advantage that government funding offered other projects, especially with respect to teacher training. (E. Gragert, personal communication, February 20, 2020) It seems reasonable to conclude that while government funding is an asset, it may not be the sine qua non we might have thought it could be. Blended Learning and Face-to-Face Contact

Both iEARN and CCGL started with a strong element of visitor exchange. The CCGL has managed to sustain the reciprocal teacher visits despite the cost and an awareness that flights may be detrimental to the environment. There is, however, a growing interest in the use of ICT to extend this work for achieving project outcomes. Face-to-face visits were a feature of iEARN with student and faculty exchanges between Moscow and New York, but these were not scalable to the global level of activity it later enjoyed. iEARN’s annual International Teachers Conference and Youth Summit, held in a different country each year, provide opportunities for face-to-face interaction and global professional development. It is also tempting to think that participants sometimes find creative ways to approximate visitor exchanges—for example, the bears in iEARN’s Teddy Bear Project might be seen as a kind of visitor substitute or avatar. In spite of the difficulties these projects have faced in getting the balance right between face-to-face and online contact, we see both as making a significant contribution to the use of blended learning for global citizenship. While we do not underestimate the technical and teacher professional development elements in making greater use of online communication, improvements in technology for both real-time and asynchronous interaction are likely to become more widely available at competitive prices. The COVID-19 pandemic which emerged in early 2020 is almost certain to lead to an acceleration of the move toward greater use of online learning.

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Notes 1. Global Education WA is at: https://sites.google.com/site/globaledwa/internationalproject-based-learning-opportunities. 2. Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) program. www.yesprograms.org/. Accessed May 6, 2020. 3. The Stevens Initiative. www.stevensinitiative.org/. Accessed May 6, 2020 4. Soros Open Society Foundations (OSF). www.opensocietyfoundations.org/. Accessed May 6, 2020. 5. Adobe Youth Voices iEARN project. http://adobeyouthvoices.tigweb.org/. Accessed May 6, 2020. 6. TakingITGlobal. Perspectives: Youth Insights on Global Issues, TIG Magazine (Issue 5) www.tigweb.org/. Accessed May 6, 2020. 7. 360 VR Cultural Exchange iEARN project. https://iearn.org/cc/space-2/group-555. Accessed May 6, 2020. 8. ABC Cultural iEARN project. https://iearn.org/cc/space-2/group-679. Accessed May 6, 2020. 9. Amigos Alrededor del Mundo—Friends Around the World iEARN project. https://iearn. org/cc/space-2/group-517. Accessed May 6, 2020. 10. Diccionario Affectivo iEARN project. https://iearn.org/cc/space-2/group-553. Accessed May 6, 2020 11. Girl Rising-Education for All iEARN project. https://iearn.org/cc/space-2/group-315. Accessed May 6, 2020. 12. Hands for Peace iEARN project. https://iearn.org/cc/space-2/group-484. Accessed May 6, 2020. 13. Virtual Peace Education Camp iEARN project. https://iearn.org/cc/space-2/group-641. Accessed May 6, 2020. 14. Teddy Bear iEARN project. https://iearn.org/cc/space-2/group-94. Accessed May 6, 2020. 15. Australia. New York Teddy Bear Exchange (Kids’ PowerPoint). www.iearn.org.au/tbear/ Teddy.ppt. Accessed May 6, 2020. 16. One Day in the Life iEARN project. https://iearn.org/cc/space-2/group-6/about. Accessed May 6, 2020. 17. OECD list of countries ordered by degree of development and qualified for Official Development Assistance: www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/ development-finance-standards/DAC_List_ODA_Recipients2018to2020_flows_En.pdf.

References Anderson, J. D. (1995). The international education and resource network: Building a sustainable virtual school (Order No. 9616564). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (304244563). Austin, R., & Hunter, B. (2013). Online learning and community cohesion: Linking schools. London and New York: Routledge. Bartlett, J. (2017, August 31). From hope to hate: How the early internet fed the far right. New York Times. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/31/far-right-alt-rightwhite-supremacists-rise-online Bourn, D. (2014). School linking and global learning: Teachers’ reflections. Development Education Research Centre, Research paper No.12. Retrieved from https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/ eprint/1489786/1/school%20linking%20and%20global%20learning%20DERC%20 Research%20Report.pdf British Council. (2020a). Connecting classrooms: Global learning resources. Retrieved from https:// connecting-classrooms.britishcouncil.org/resources/global-learning-resources

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British Council. (2020b). How we work. Retrieved from www.britishcouncil.org/about-us/ how-we-work British Council. (n.d.). Connecting classrooms: Broadening horizons, enriching teaching and learning. Retrieved from www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/connecting_classrooms_concise_ report.pdf British Council. (n.d.). Connecting classrooms: Concise report. Retrieved from www.britishcouncil. org/sites/default/files/connecting_classrooms_concise_report.pdf British Council. (n.d.). Connecting classrooms:Using social media. Retrieved from https://connectingclassrooms.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/online_tools.pdf Bush, K. D., & Saltarelli, D. (2000). The two faces of education in ethnic conflict:Towards a peacebuilding education for children. UNICEF. Retrieved from http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/80473/1/ Bush_2000_Two_Faces_of_Education_.pdf Counter Extremism Project. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.counterextremism.com/content/ us-white-supremacy-groups Department for International Development. (2018). Business case for connecting classrooms through global learning. Retrieved from https://devtracker.dfid.gov.uk/projects/GB-GOV-1-300502/ documents Department for International Development. (2020). Review in Sept 2019. Retrieved from https:// devtracker.dfid.gov.uk/projects/GB-GOV-1-300502/documents Edge, K., & Khamsi, K. (2012). International school partnerships as a vehicle for global education: Student perspectives. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 32(4), 455–472. doi:10.1080/021 88791.2012.739964 Evaluation of the New York State/Moscow Schools Telecommunications Project, 1988–1991. Commissioned by the New York State Education Department, Division of Elementary and Secondary Education. (1992, February). MAGI Educational Services, Inc. France, J., Schweisfurth, M., Bishop, B., Odena, O., Spence, C., Emeke, A., . . . & Diep, M. (2017). Impact evaluation of connecting classrooms programme. Interim Report to British Council, United Kingdom. Harris, J., & Bull, G. (1989, August 21–24). The electronic academical village: Creating proximity electronically for culture building. In B. Feinstein & B. Kurshan (Eds.), Telecommunications in education: Learners and the global village. Proceedings of the international symposium on telecommunications in education, Jerusalem, Israel. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ ED328233.pdf iEARN. (2019, August 5). Studying abroad changed the direction of my life. Retrieved from https://us.iearn.org/news/studying-abroad-changed-the-direction-of-my-life-simone-nsli-yalumna iEARN. (2019–2020). iEARN project book 2019–2020. Retrieved from https://iearn.org/assets/ country/2019-2020-Project-Book-Updated.pdf iEARN. (n.d.a). iEARN projects align to the UN sustainable development goals. Retrieved from https:// iearn.org/news/iearn-projects-align-to-the-un-sustainable-development-goals iEARN. (n.d.b). Machinto-Hiroshima for peace. Retrieved from https://iearn.org/cc/space-2/ group-11/about iEARN About. (n.d.). International education and resource network. Retrieved from https://iearn. org/about iEARN Conference. (2019, July 8–14). iEARN international conference & youth summit. Winchester, VA, USA. Retrieved from https://iearn2018.org/ iEARN History. (n.d.). International education and resource network. Retrieved from https://iearn. org/about/history iEARN Sustainable Development Goals. (n.d.). International education and resource network. Retrieved from https://iearn.org/pages/un-sustainable-development-goals

150 William J. Hunter and Roger Austin Ikenberry, G. J. (2018). The end of liberal international order? International Affairs, 94(1), 7–23. Kende, J., Phalet, K., Van den Noortgate, W., Kara, A., & Fischer, R. (2018). Equality revisited: A cultural meta-analysis of intergroup contact and prejudice. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9(8), 887–895. Kirtley, R., & Ritchie, J. (2013). Connecting classrooms (Europe): External evaluation (2012-2013). Retrieved from www.dge.mec.pt/sites/default/files/Programas_Projetos_Escola/Documentos/connecting_classrooms_final_evaluation_report.pdf Lall, M. (2012). Connecting classrooms in Pakistan:A review. British Council-Pakistan. Retrieved from http://marielall.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/Connecting_Classrooms-in-Pakistan-_ report-final-final-november-2012-with-photos.pdf Mahmoud, Y. (2018). People-centred approaches to peace: At cross roads between geopolitics, norms, and practice. In United Nations peace operations in a changing global order (pp. 91–109). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Nixon, D. (1989, August 21–24). NASA distance learning projects for education. In B. Feinstein & B. Kurshan (Eds.), Telecommunications in education: Learners and the global village. Proceedings of the international symposium on telecommunications in education, Jerusalem, Israel. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED328233.pdf Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 751–783. doi:https://doi.org/10.1037/ 0022-3514.90.5.751 Tawil, S. (2013). Education for “global citizenship”:A framework for discussion. Education research and foresight-working papers. UNESCO. Retrieved from www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/ MULTIMEDIA/HQ/ED/pdf/PaperN7EducforGlobalCitizenship.pdf UNICEF. (2018b). Displacement. Retrieved from https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-migrationand-displacement/displacement/ United Nations. (n.d.). Sustainable development goals. Retrieved from www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ Wagner, R., Bush, A., Chung, S., Holton, W., & Kokozos, M. (2007). The NewYork state-Moscow schools telecommunications project:The founding project of iEARN. Retrieved from https://iearn. org/assets/general/iEARN_NY-Moscow_Evaluation.pdf World Economic Forum. (2020). Schools of the future: Defining new models of education for the fourth industrial revolution. Retrieved from http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Schools_of_ the_Future_Report_2019.pdf

6

Blended and Online Collaborative Learning for Citizenship in Catalonia, Spain Andrés Besolí, Roger Austin, and William J. Hunter

Introduction Previous chapters in this book have analyzed situations in which online and blended learning have been important elements in addressing community division, linking schools within countries, across Europe, and internationally. We have noted the central role played by political will, access to technology, and the commitment of teachers. Our purpose in this chapter is to examine the Catalan region of Spain where issues of language and cultural identity have been at the heart of recent political tensions concerning Catalan independence and consider the views and experiences of a sample of primary education teachers about the links between schools within Catalonia and the viability of working with counterparts outside the region by using ICT. The 21st century is a time of ongoing profound change in education. The impact of economic globalization in society, the technological revolution in communication and information systems, and the challenge of multiculturalism and multilingualism involve a new way of understanding and practicing teaching from the early stages onwards to respond to the needs of a complex world. In broad terms, modern classrooms are dynamic environments where teaching practice is often adapting to new paradigms that involve new technologies for interaction within and beyond the school community (John & Sutherland, 2004). In this regard, technology-enhanced learning has become a multifaceted field of study in which new emerging trends such as interactive video and immersive digital storytelling (Vaughan-Lee, 2019), mLearning (mobile learning) and uLearning (ubiquitous learning) (Shepherd & Vardiman, 2014), and augmented reality (Holden, 2015; Frandy, 2015) are gradually reshaping how teachers and students interact with each other and with knowledge. Our focus in this chapter is on teachers’ perceptions of technology, how they use it in the classroom, and whether they see value in using it to connect students and to link with colleagues in other schools by using blended and online learning tools. The research interest is on primary education in Catalonia, which is

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compulsory and consists of six one-year courses distributed over three two-year stages (Lower, Medium, and Upper) between the ages of six and 12 (Departament d’Ensenyament, 2015). The curriculum in force includes the teaching of ICT and digital skills as a basic transversal competence. Global citizenship and social learning through civic values such as democracy, peacebuilding, and living together within the community are also taught across each course throughout the primary level. In both ICT and citizenship, the model is one of permeation across the curriculum (Departament d’Ensenyament, 2017, pp. 24–25). In addition, technology and citizenship education have their respective areas of knowledge in which specific content is defined in more detail. In the case of ICT, the focus is set on tools, applications, information processing, communication and collaborative work, and digital identity (Departament d’Ensenyament, 2017, pp. 162–164). With respect to citizenship, the focus is on both an individual and a collective perspective in teaching how to think independently, how to live together, and how to be a responsible citizen in a global world (Departament d’Ensenyament, 2017, pp. 153–161). This chapter is divided into three main parts. The first offers a brief analysis of the historical and political relationship between Catalonia and the government of Spain and how the role of language has been at the center of issues related to local identity. The second examines the Catalan model of primary education and the educational strategies and initiatives undertaken during the last three decades to encourage the presence of new technologies in the classroom. Alongside the drive for digital capability, we draw attention to the Generalitat de Catalunya regional government’s policy on the immersion model for the Catalan language since 1983, and its role as the medium of instruction at all levels of education (Departament de Cultura, 1983; Vila, 2008, 2011; Arnau & Vila, 2013; Subdirecció General de Llengua i Plurilingüisme, 2018). The third part of the chapter focuses on a study carried out with a sample of teachers and classroom assistants that use blended and online learning methods and resources on a regular basis who agreed to join this research. They were surveyed on topics concerning their training, practice, views, and outcomes in regard to technology-enhanced eLearning management systems, such as Moodle, and other widespread similar tools, such as the package of cloud-based programs Google Suite (GSuite) for Education, mobile applications, social media, and video games, among others. They were also asked about their use of technology to link classrooms and schools together, especially in the context of citizenship education, by using online tools such as Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), weblogs, forums, chats, and videoconferencing. The question items included in the questionnaire are discussed later in this chapter.

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History, Politics, and Language in Catalonia and Spain Catalonia is home to around 7.5 million inhabitants in total, with some 3.2 million living in the thriving metropolitan area of Barcelona (Institut d’Estadística de Catalunya, 2019a; Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona, 2019). Many of the inhabitants are families with children who have settled in the Catalan territory, having come originally from other cultural and linguistic backgrounds from around the world. According to official figures, approximately 1,080,000 foreigners lived in Catalonia in January 2018, roughly 14% of the total (Institut d’Estadística de Catalunya, 2019b). In this regard, the Moroccan community is the largest, with around 211,000 inhabitants (19% of the foreigners living in the region), followed by Romanians with some 89,000 citizens (8% out of the total foreign population), Chinese with around 59,000 (5.4%), and Italians with roughly 55,800 (5%) (Institut d’Estadística de Catalunya, 2019b). These figures give an idea of the present-day diverse and multiculturally enriched Catalan society and the educational challenges for primary school teachers to manage issues on intercultural education and integration in the classroom, especially in those areas with greater numbers of newcomer families (Servei d’Immersió i Acolliment Lingüístics, 2016). Spain has had a complex history from Roman times onwards that has given rise to a rich and culturally diverse country where a variety of traditions and languages coexist across its territory. In contemporary times, after the long period of Franco’s military dictatorship (1939–1975) and a short period of political transition to a democratic system (1975–1978), the 1978 Spanish Constitution established the state as a parliamentary monarchy with a pluri-national framework based on respect for historical, cultural, and linguistic differences within the country’s peoples (Constitución Española, 1978). As a result, the Kingdom of Spain consists of 17 political and administrative divisions called autonomous communities, Catalonia being one of them, with significant local decisionmaking powers, including education. In addition, Spain is a multilingual state in which Spanish is the official language throughout the territory; Spanish also shares equal official status in regions with historical local languages such as Catalan, Galician, and Basque. Catalan is currently spoken in the communities of Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands, and Galician is spoken in the community of Galicia; more importantly, both are derived from Latin, like Spanish, so they share many similarities. On the other hand, Basque, spoken in the Basque autonomous community and in parts of the chartered community of Navarre, is considered to be one of the oldest tongues in Europe and does not derive from Latin (Tovar, 1957). The Spanish Empire achieved a great worldwide political prominence during the 16th to 18th centuries and linguistic dominance in South America. At present, under the Constitution of Spain, Spanish is the only official language of the

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country for foreign affairs. Nevertheless, and more importantly, the aforementioned six autonomous communities have a special linguistic educational status because of their social and cultural bilingualism (Vila, Lasagabaster, & Ramallo, 2017; Guadamillas & Alcaraz, 2017). Accordingly, local languages are taught along with Spanish or even prioritized as media of instruction, as in the case of Catalan since 1983 (Arnau & Vila, 2013). The importance of Catalan increased during the decades of the 1980s and 1990s (Siguan, 1991), and it is now wellestablished and has become the main language at school ahead of Spanish in schools in the region. It is also the hallmark of Catalan cultural identity (Boix & Sanz, 2008). The autonomous community of Catalonia, located in northeast Spain, is formed by four provinces: Barcelona, Tarragona, Girona, and Lleida. It has evolved over the 20th century into an increasingly prosperous and diverse society, being one of the wealthiest and most highly industrialized Spanish regions, proud of its own heritage, culture, and vernacular language, Catalan. It has been argued elsewhere that the success of the 1992 Olympic Games held in Barcelona, the Catalan historical and political capital, represented a turning point for the city and the region in recent times. The Olympics coincided with great economic growth and involved a remarkable transformation of Barcelona into an internationally well-reputed hub for business and global events (Taylor, 2012). This investigation was mostly conducted during 2019, a year of significant political tension and social division in Catalonia. The turmoil in the streets of Catalonia was particularly extreme and a series of protests took place across the region, with episodes of rioting in the streets of downtown Barcelona, in the days that followed a judicial verdict on October 14 by the Supreme Court of Spain. The sentence condemned to prison for sedition nine members of Generalitat de Catalunya government and political activists following their role in the chain of events that led to the unilateral declaration of independence of October 10, 2017. They were part of the secessionist movement that had resurfaced during 2010–2012, in the context of the severe economic recession that hit Spain and Catalonia after the 2008 financial crisis and has since been escalating (Clua, 2014; Calzada, 2019). In 2017, the president of the Generalitat de Catalunya formally proclaimed the self-determination of Catalonia from Spain, although it was immediately revoked. In response to this declaration, the Spanish government suspended Catalonia’s autonomy, an unprecedented decision since the return of democracy to Spain in 1978 (Jones, 2017a, 2017b). This situation went beyond the institutional confrontation between the Catalan and Spanish administrations and has had a very pronounced effect on Catalan society by dividing it between those in favor of independence, or at least greater self-government, and those against the political separation of the region from Spain. It is important to note that although there are radical stances in both groups, the majority of Catalan citizens want a peaceful solution, claiming the

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right to vote in a democratic referendum (Calzada, 2019). Nevertheless, any binding referendum would have to be agreed by the regional and the Spanish governments, since there is no provision for this in either the 1978 Spanish Constitution or the 2006 Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, the newest reform of the basic institutional regulations for the Catalan territory under the Constitution of Spain approved in 1979 (Constitución Española, 1978; Organic Act, 2006; Parlament de Catalunya, 2016). While it is not the purpose of this chapter to offer a detailed analysis of this very sensitive matter and the complex political scenario in which agreement remains elusive at the time of writing, it is particularly important to stress how it has had and continues to have profound consequences in terms of social cohesion and cultural identity within the Catalan territory. In this regard, based on the results of the 2015 and 2017 elections to the Parliament of Catalonia, society is literally divided in half on the issue of independence (Calzada, 2019). This unparalleled situation raises questions about coexistence between two communities living together in Catalonia who share cognate cultural and linguistic backgrounds and use Spanish and Catalan on a daily basis. The political debate about the prospective independence of Catalonia has politicized the issue of language and identity, and this has had an impact on education. The subject has received considerable attention in both the national Spanish press and in international media. To cite but one example, Wong (2017) reported on the ongoing tensions in Catalonia with specific attention to the interplay of politics, language, and education, and claimed that language identity had become the cornerstone of schooling in the region. Thus, teachers in primary school find themselves at the very center of a controversy in which the medium of instruction, whether Catalan or Spanish, can be loaded with cultural and political significance beyond classroom teaching methodology (Clua, 2017). An Approach to Language and Cultural Identity Issues

Catalan is considered to be the largest minority language in Europe, with an estimated figure of around 7 million active speakers or persons able to understand it to some extent (Sendra & Vila, 2019). Apart from Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, and the eastern strip of Aragon, which borders Catalan territory, it is also spoken across other Western Mediterranean territories such as the Principality of Andorra (a microstate enclave in the Pyrenees between Spain and France), the French department of Pyrénées-Orientales, and the Italian commune of Alghero (Sardinia). Nevertheless, like all of Spain’s other regional tongues, Catalan is not an official European Union language. This situation is commonly seen as a paradox in comparison with other continental languages like Irish and Slovene with fewer users. Irish is spoken by about 1.7 million people in the Republic of Ireland

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and Northern Ireland and Slovene is spoken by about 2.5 million people in Slovenia. Both were formally recognized by the European Parliament as official languages in 2007 and 2004, respectively (European Parliament, 2020). It is also worth mentioning that although Catalan does not have official status in European governmental institutions, there are bilateral agreements to grant a limited use of it for citizens in writing to communicate with them and the right to receive an answer in Catalan (Generalitat de Catalunya, 2019). The Principality of Andorra, where Catalan is the only official language, is not at present part of the European Union. Language Policy Under Franco

The vernacular language has traditionally played a distinctive role in contemporary Catalan political thought and culture because during Franco’s dictatorship it was forbidden, prosecuted, and penalized when used in public (Boix & Sanz, 2008). Before the Franco regime, the use and teaching of Catalan at school had been reinstated by the democratic government of the Spanish Republic from 1931 to 1936 (Pérez Galán, 1975, 2000, pp. 320–321). But Franco introduced a singular political ideology known as National Catholicism and developed a new nationalist vision of Spanish history (Manzano, 2000; Pérez Garzón, 2000). As a result of this patriotic bias, all regional cultural expressions, traditions, and tongues were disregarded while Spanish was adopted as the only means of instruction across the country’s schools (Guereña, Ruiz, & Tiana, 1994). In this respect, after having been confined to family use for 30 years, Catalan was only allowed to be taught again in school for a few hours a week in 1970–1971, toward the end of Franco’s dictatorship (Escobar & Unamuno, 2008). At present, many Catalans consider their language to be the most valuable immaterial heritage of Catalan identity and believe it must be protected through education and passed on to future generations (Boix & Sanz, 2008; Arnau & Vila, 2013). Language Policy Post-Franco

After Franco’s death in 1975, the 1978 Spanish Constitution restored public recognition of vernacular languages and established that they were co-official in their respective regions together with Spanish (Constitución Española, 1978), with widespread use in administration, education, mass media, and in public, such as street signage (Clua, 2017). In the case of Catalonia, according to data collected in 2018, the most used language spoken by those aged 15 and over was Spanish (48.6%), followed by Catalan (36.1%), but 7.4% use both Catalan and Spanish equally (Institut d’Estadística de Catalunya, 2019c). Since the 1983 Linguistic Normalisation Law in Catalonia (Departament de Cultura, 1983), the study and dissemination of Catalan has been a priority

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for the Generalitat de Catalunya government and, for this reason, a “linguistic immersion model” was introduced (Hoffmann, 2000; Departament d’Educació, 2009, p. 39; Clua, 2017). This policy is based on intensive exposure to a second language in order to gradually achieve social and educational bilingualism. Education and Digital Strategy in the Catalan Primary School The Spanish educational system is regulated by the Ministry of Education but, under the administratively decentralized model granted by the 1978 Constitution and the 17 Statutes of Autonomy, every regional government has the power to manage education in their territory through the enactment of organic laws (Clua, 2017). Following this, the immersion model remains in force under the 2009 Catalonia Educational Law (Departament d’Educació, 2009), and the 2006 Reform of the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, which reads in Article 6 that Catalan is the native language of Catalonia, to be used in preference by the Catalan public administration and public media. The act also establishes that Catalan is the language of instruction in public education, with Spanish as co-official, and that citizens have the right to use and the responsibility to know both of them (Organic Act, 2006). In this context, schools have become a key means to ensure the teaching and social normalization of the Catalan language (Escobar & Unamuno, 2008; Departament d’Educació, 2009). ICT is widely used as a resource for its learning (Subdirecció General de Llengua i Plurilingüisme, 2018). Currently, Catalan is taught in almost every primary school and used as a priority language with around 75% of teaching hours, and Spanish with around 25%, following the aforementioned 2009 Educational Law (Arnau & Vila, 2013; Clua, 2017; M. Albert & P. Saura, personal communication, November 27, 2019). However, these percentages are averages and there are variations depending on the sociodemographic reality of each school and individual teacher’s criteria. For instance, although there are no official figures, in rural areas of Catalonia where Catalan is widely spoken, it is common for the use of Catalan in primary schools to exceed 75% of the time; in some cases almost all subjects are taught through Catalan (M. Albert & P. Saura, personal communication, November 27, 2019). Bilingual proficiency in both Catalan and Spanish has become a required outcome for compulsory education (Siguan, 1991; Escobar & Unamuno, 2008; Vila, 2008, 2011). Although it is a fact that learners coming from non-Catalan speaking regions within Spain or from abroad may find this particularly challenging (Pujolar, 2010), daily practice shows that students in Catalonia are quite naturally adept in bilingual teaching and learning settings (Hoffmann, 2000). Her research indicates that the majority of the population of Catalonia, whether Catalan-speaking or of non-Catalan origin, were in favor of the immersion model in education considering that it enriched the students’ linguistic background.

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More recently, González-Riaño, Fernández-Costales, Lapresta-Rey, and Huguet (2019) studied attitudes of indigenous and immigrant families toward Spanish and Catalan and reported that students showed more positive attitudes toward Catalan than parents, though this effect was less evident in the case of immigrant families (2019). Although the relationship between language and education in Catalonia has traditionally been a central issue at the very heart of cultural and political debate since 1983 (Departament de Cultura, 1983), children attending primary school are not segregated for reasons of language or nationality (Clua, 2017). Catalan schooling promotes an integrative model in which students arriving from other autonomous communities or abroad receive assistance in a multicultural and inclusive educational context (Pujolar, 2010; Servei d’Immersió i Acolliment Lingüístics, 2016). Schools assess their pupils’ ability both in Catalan and Spanish and if they require help with either, they can take extra lessons in multilingual classrooms until they improve their communication skills and achieve linguistic fluency. This happens especially with foreign students unable to speak Catalan or Spanish and in need of personalized attention to progress in mastering the school’s languages, while also taking into account their emotional and social inclusion needs (Boix-Fuster & Paradís, 2015; Huguet, 2013; Pujolar, 2010). Nevertheless, with respect to language, the latest reform of Spain’s educational law approved in 2013 introduced a policy to strengthen Spanish as the medium of instruction in all autonomous communities (Organic Act, 2013). This law was not well received by the Catalan government at the time as it was seen as a potential threat to the well-established immersion model (Vallespín, 2013). In fact, with the gradual rise of secessionist demands, the Catalan executive did not implement it and in December 2019, the Parliament of Catalonia ratified and voted to defend this model and the prior legislation which had established it (Parlament de Catalunya, 2019). The linguistic model in which Catalan is the main medium of instruction applies to all primary schools in the autonomous community, whether public or private, that follow the Department of Education’s approved curriculum, although private schools tend to apply it more freely because of their greater self-management regime (Clua, 2017; M. Albert & P. Saura, personal communication, November 27, 2019). In the academic year 2018–2019 there were 483,712 primary students distributed over 2,321 schools throughout Catalonia. Of these, a total of 1,711 (73.7%) were escoles públiques (state schools) hosting 327,438 pupils, and 573 (24.7%) were escoles privades concertades (state-assisted private schools) with 149,563 children enrolled, and 37 (1.6%) were escoles privades no concertades (purely private schools) with 6,711 learners (Departament d’Educació, 2020). State schools are managed and publicly financed by the Catalan government and tuition is free. The difference between state-assisted and purely private centers is

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that the former are privately managed but partly government financed while the latter are managed and financed exclusively with private capital (Departament d’Educació, 2009, p. 84). Most private schools, either partially funded by the state or self-funded, are administered by the Catholic Church or a Catholic-oriented private educational foundation (Fernández, 2008; Guereña et al., 1994). In general, state and state-assisted schools have traditionally been associated with students from low-income backgrounds and the middle classes, while private schools tend to be where the more privileged children are educated. Citizenship and Religion in the Curriculum

Despite the official secular nature of the Spanish state, established by the 1978 Constitution (Constitución Española, 1978), Religion (Catholic ethos) has continued to be part of the official curriculum as it was during Franco’s regime. The act for the Improvement of Educational Quality of 2013 required all primary students in all autonomous communities to choose at each stage between content related to society and content related to civics, or religion, within the wider Area of Values Education, at the choice of the parents or legal guardians (Organic Act, 2013). Prior to the 2013 law, citizenship education was included in the primary school curriculum as an alternative to religious teaching. This subject, called Educació per a la Ciutadania (Education for Citizenship) has been one of the ideological battle grounds between the different conservative and progressive governments that have taken turns in the central administration of Madrid in the last 15 years. The repercussions of this have been experienced across Spain including Catalonia (Palma, 2011). Currently, citizenship education does not exist in the Catalan primary curriculum as a specific subject. Instead, there is a whole knowledge domain called Educació enValors Socials i Cívics (Education in Social and Civic Values), anchored in a competence-based approach (Departament d’Ensenyament, 2017). The purpose is to ensure that school learning during the six courses of primary is aimed at training pupils to become critical citizens with their own opinion, who are autonomous and who are able to solve problems in cooperation with others. This knowledge domain is structured in blocks, moving from an individual (Lower stage of primary) to a collective dimension (Middle and Upper stages). The first one, “Learning to be and to think independently,” deals with working strategies of reasoning and recognition of emotions and feelings. The second, “Learning to act autonomously and coherently,” contributes to the acquisition of personal attitudes of motivation and effort designed to overcome obstacles and act in a resilient manner. The third block, “Learning to live together,” prepares students for a harmonious relationship with others. Finally, the fourth one, “Learning to be responsible citizens in a global world,” provides the necessary elements

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for pupils to have a responsible relationship with a wider and diverse world, including both urban and natural environments (Departament d’Ensenyament, 2017, pp. 157–159). The Catalan primary school curriculum also promotes intercultural education by preparing children for life in a diverse and multilinguistic society by encouraging the understanding of oneself and others. This includes appreciation of one’s own cultural background, respect for different traditions, practices, and points of view, and intercultural dialog. Intercultural education includes a consideration of a range of categories such as age, gender, language, appearance, physical abilities and handicaps, social and economic standing, sexual orientation, and religion as markers for identifying people. It encourages students to understand the wider implications of each of these categories, to discuss them and learn about their role in contemporary society in light of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, which states that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights (Article 1), that everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion (Article 18), and that education must aim at the full development of the human personality and the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms (Article 26). In line with the Declaration of Human Rights, Catalonia’s decree regarding the organization of Catalan primary education established that schooling shall contribute to respecting the right of persons to be different and to critically debate cultural and religious differences from an intercultural perspective (Departament d’Ensenyament, 2015). In short, the curriculum provides multiple opportunities for the development of citizenship since relevant content and values permeate the entire program. Infrastructure, Projects, and Public Policy on Digital Education

After three decades of building capacity, nearly all of Catalonia’s 2,321 primary schools currently have broadband and Wi-Fi Internet access. About half of them have the consistent high-speed connections required to support multiple concurrent sessions (M. Albert & P. Saura, personal communication, November 27, 2019). Since 1986, the Catalan government has also supported training and continuing professional development for teachers in digital skills (Vivancos, 1996; Castells & Ruiz, 2004). For example, in 1989, it created the Xarxa Telemàtica Educativa de Catalunya (XTEC), a public network to link Catalan primary and secondary schools and to provide members of the educational community with access to electronic mail and an electronic bulletin board system (Ruiz, Vivancos, & Baldrich, 1990). This network became more sophisticated in 1995 with a new online platform that has been evolving ever since to support school websites, teachers’ personal

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sites, and a continuing professional development resource database. In the early 2000s, the network added new digital platforms, like Edu365, aimed at the entire educational community with an extensive repository of videos, activities, games, links to thematic websites, and other teaching and learning resources. It also promoted the development of school intranets and provided access to Moodle (Amiguet, 2005; Castells & Ruiz, 2004), which is used more extensively in secondary than in primary schools (M. Albert & P. Saura, personal communication, November 27, 2019). Further developments in 2007 provided access to Moodle and Nodes through the server Àgora, which extended the capabilities of the system (Fornell & Vivancos, 2010; Martínez et al., 2010). Any state primary school in Catalonia can use the Àgora platform. For example, Nodes enables schools to create WordPress websites and a school intranet. It also provides a teacher forum for technological assistance and discussion of their digital-related experiences. The Department of Education is also responsible for the deployment and support of the Tecnologies per a l’Aprenentatge i el Coneixement (TAC) Plan (Departament d’Educació, 2009). TAC encourages primary schools to manage selftailored ICT-based teaching strategies and resources, like those based on the Moodle VLE, for example. It also provides school staff with access to schooloriented online resources, social media tools, private weblogs, and intranets (Fornell & Vivancos, 2010). In about 2010, Catalan primary schools began to adopt Google Suite’s package of cloud-based collaboration tools such as Gmail and Classroom, which were seen as easier to use than Moodle (M. Albert & P. Saura, personal communication, November 27, 2019). Despite its widespread use internationally, Google Suite has caused concerns in Catalonia about its handling of student information. For example, Márquez (2019) reported on a campaign by parents who were concerned that the authorization they must sign for their children to use Google Suite lacks transparency about how Google manages sensitive student information. Also in 2010, a partnership between Mobile World Capital Barcelona, the Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona City Hall, and the Global System for Mobile communications Association (GSMA), introduced the mSchools program, a public/private project aimed at having technology companies fund mobile learning tools in primary and secondary schools (M. Albert & P. Saura, personal communication, November 27, 2019). Since it promotes both online and mobile learning, mSchools is one of Catalonia’s most ambitious school-based digital technology initiatives (School Education Council of Catalonia, 2015). For example, within this program, the Mobile History Map project is based on the use of portable devices and georeferencing technology that allow pupils to collectively create content about historical landmarks near their schools and share it through a website1 that is accessible in Catalan, Spanish, and English.

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Finally, the link between technology and language learning in Catalonia’s primary schools is based on an integrated teaching model, with Catalan the main medium of instruction not only for knowledge but for digital tools and competences, and ICT used for delivering and studying curricular and linguistic content. This applies to state schools and those in the private sector (be it stateassisted or purely private) (M. Albert & P. Saura, personal communication, November 27, 2019). In summary, the investment in the ICT infrastructure and the creation of platforms for professional and student dialog have made it possible for all Catalan schools to use online interaction for global citizenship activities. Teachers’ Perspectives and Experiences of Blended and Online Learning In this section, we examine the attitudes of a sample of Catalan primary school teachers toward the use of ICT in the classroom and its potential to link with other student groups within the school and with other schools, whether local or from other towns, regions, or countries. It is appropriate to emphasize that this is a modest investigation across schools from the city of Barcelona and its surrounding area, which means that the results cannot be extrapolated to the whole Catalan territory. Nevertheless, it is estimated that the study offers unprecedented insights into the implementation of blended and online learning methods and tools within primary schools and their role in collaborative learning. Study Methodology

The research was carried out in two stages in 2019. In the first stage, research was conducted based on a review of the literature, from both academic and administrative sources, mainly in Catalan, Spanish, and English. Previous research produced in Spain, and particularly in Catalonia, showed that educational technology, including the use of online and blended learning methods in primary school, has been a widely investigated topic during the last decade. Research has considered technology use, digital skills, ICT applied to the teaching and learning of specific subjects within the curriculum, students’ experience and degree of satisfaction with ICT, and other cognate themes. As far as we can tell, however, there has not yet been a study of the experiences and perceptions of primary school teachers in Catalonia regarding the use of blended and online technology for collaborative learning. The second stage, based on field work methodology, consisted of two phases. The first phase was an in-depth semi-structured interview on November 27, 2019, with two highly experienced and qualified educational technology advisers from the Department of Education of Generalitat de Catalunya. This interview

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served two purposes: first, it provided an extensive insider overview of the current state of the art with respect to the information and communication technologies in Catalan primary schools and policy-making; second, it assisted in the conceptualization and design of a teacher questionnaire and, more importantly, helped to identify a sample of schools with some experience in blended and online learning methods. The principals of the schools were free to choose the participating teachers, educational technologists, and/or trainees who might be interested in completing the survey. Finally, in the second phase of this stage, a digital questionnaire was designed and created using an online application. Before running the definitive survey, a pilot version was prepared and delivered to a small sample of student teachers at the University of Barcelona to test the comprehensibility of the questions and answers given and to establish the completion time and refine other aspects. Based on this trial survey, the final questionnaire was enhanced and delivered by e-mail to the schools/teachers. The data collected were analyzed during the month of January 2020. Findings

This study was carried out on a sample of teachers, educational technologists, and students on their training school placement, in a selection of primary schools in Catalonia, mainly in Barcelona and a few towns in the metropolitan area. A total of 36 valid responses were received from 12 schools, 32 (89%) from teachers working in state schools (escoles públiques) and four (11%) from staff in state-assisted schools (escoles privades concertades). Although a number of purely private schools were invited to take part, none were willing to do so. Twenty-six of the 36 participants (72%) were female and ten (28%) were male, with an average age of 30 years and six months. Thirty-five (97%) of those surveyed were born in Catalonia, the one remaining was from another autonomous community of Spain. This implies that all had a sound knowledge and mastery of the two co-official languages used in the Catalan primary school, Catalan and Spanish. In their current professional situation, eight (22%) had tenured posts as civil servants in primary state schools; three (8%) had fixedterm contracts; 20 (56%) were trainee teachers; two (6%) claimed to have a permanent non-tenured contract; and only three of them (8%) replied that they were in other situations different from those aforementioned. The high participation of young trainees in this study is noteworthy probably because of their high motivation and involvement in their first contact with educational practice in the classroom and also their knowledge and skill in using new technologies on a daily basis. With respect to the years of experience in teaching, those with five years or less of experience were the largest group with 24 responses (67%), a figure that

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correlates to the high participation of teacher education students; they were followed by the group with more than 20 years of teaching experience, represented by eight individuals (28%). Two respondents (6%) answered between six and ten years, another two (6%) between 11 and 15, and no one had between 16 and 20 years of educational experience. In regard to the number of years working for the current school, 28 (78%) answered five years or less; three (8%) between six and ten years; three more (8%) between 16 and 20; one (3%) between 11 and 15 years; and finally only one (3%) had been teaching in the current school for more than 20 years. Again, the high percentage of those in schools for 5 years or less corresponds with the high participation of teacher students in their school placement. The respondents had a wide range of subject expertise and had been trained to work in primary education. Given the importance of teacher confidence in the use of ICT, questions were asked about their self-perceived command of digital skills and technological knowledge before going into teaching and also in their current role. With regard to the first one, two individuals (6%) stated that they had no digital competences nor technological command, and two others (6%) declared that they had extensive experience before their career in education. Eleven (31%) claimed to have had significant experience; ten (28%) said average experience, and 11 (31%) said little experience before going into the teaching profession. Of the total of 36 respondents, only nine (25%) stated that they had received specific technology training during their primary school teacher instruction. On the other hand, 24 (67%) stated that they had no training in this area. Finally, three (8%) said that they did not remember accurately. Compared with this data, responses to a question about the teachers’ knowledge and use of technology in their current positions varied considerably. While everyone reported some level of expertise and only five (14%) claimed little experience, a total of 13 (36%) perceived their skills to be about average, 12 (33%) reported that they had significant experience, and six (17%) indicated extensive experience. When asked about “Work with Virtual Learning Environments (Moodle and Others),” 26 (72%) of the teachers reported that they used these tools very much or quite a lot; only one (3%) respondent had never used them. Nineteen teachers (53%) used “Cloud-based Applications (GSuite and Others)” very much or quite a lot but a total of 13 (36%) reported using them little or not at all. Nearly all of the teachers said that they used e-mail for communication for work with other technologies being used by a few. About a third of the teachers expressed a preference for face-to-face contact with colleagues. When asked about “Browsing and Consultation of Online Educational Sources (XTEC, Edu365 and Others),” 67% of the respondents said that they use them very much or quite a lot and about one fifth said they use them to some extent. About 42% of the teachers used “Social Media” (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook,

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and Others) quite a lot or very much but another 44% said they used them very little or not at all. We also wanted to know about teachers’ interests in learning more about educational technology. When they were asked about how they went about improving their digital skills and knowledge, with more than one answer per teacher accepted as valid, 26 of them said “self-training on my own” followed by 21 who said “through daily practice in school.” There were fewer responses for online training courses or on-site training. Many of the respondents indicated that they had used multiple methods for developing their knowledge and skills. When asked about their participation in training activities and resources promoted by the Department of Education of Generalitat de Catalunya, 15 respondents (42%) said that they had taken a training activity (face-to-face or online) organized by the regional ICT network, Xarxa Telemàtica Educativa de Catalunya (XTEC); 21 (58%) said they had not. Nevertheless, only nine of the teachers (25%) indicated that they were currently users of the EduCAT 2.0 network while 27 (75%) said they were not. Several questions addressed the respondents’ interest in learning more about aspects of using information technologies in education. For example, 21 respondents (58%) said they were either quite interested or very interested in learning about the “Use and Management of Virtual Learning Environments (Moodle and Others).” Twenty-one (58%) indicated that they were quite or very interested in learning about “Use of Cloud-based Applications (GSuite and Others)” and, again, 21 (58%) reported themselves to be quite interested or very interested in learning about the “Creation of Blogs and Educational Websites.” Creating blogs and educational websites was the only item in which none of the respondents indicated a total lack of interest. Twenty respondents (56%) expressed a sound interest in the “Creation of Educational Mobile Applications (Apps)” and 26 (72%) indicated those levels of interest in “Gamification Techniques (Use of Video Games for Educational Purposes).” In the section “New Technologies in the Primary Classroom,” teachers were asked to state their view of the importance of ICT. The three most frequent responses ranked from highest to lowest were “It is a game-changing resource that facilitates the learning of the students” (25), “It is a resource that facilitates group work, collaborative learning and the inclusion of students” (21), “It is a solution that promotes the interest and motivation of students” (20). On the other hand, the three least frequent were: “It is a totally expendable resource” (2), “It is a fashion of the technological era in which we live” (1), and no one thought that “It is a resource that does not necessarily influence student learning.” Moreover, 16 (44%) of surveyed teachers agreed that they used ICT “to some extent” in the classroom, six (17%) used it a lot, six (17%) claimed it was essential, and eight (22%) made little use of it.

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We asked about the languages used in ICT-based work in the classroom and found that teachers often reported using more than one. Catalan was cited 34 times, Spanish 24, and English 13. French, the traditional foreign language of the Catalan primary school of the 1970s and 1980s, seemed not to play a major role in technology-enhanced teaching environments in this sample. Questions were also asked about which age group of pupils teachers were using ICT with. Responses showed 15 for Lower primary stage (pupils aged 6–8), 23 for Middle primary stage (pupils aged 8–10), and 23 for Upper primary stage (pupils aged 10–12). Questions were also asked about which areas of the curriculum were most strongly linked to the use of ICT. Nine teachers (25%) applied new technologies in all or almost all the curricular areas. A key question for the focus of this work was the extent to which teachers used communication technologies to connect students for collaborative learning. While most of the teachers reported such use within their own classroom or with other classes in the same school, only three stated that they had “worked with other schools in the same city/town” and another three had “worked with other schools from cities/towns within the province.” One of the teachers marked the option “Work with Other Schools From Other European Countries,” but did not specify which one, and four indicated that they had students “Work with Other Schools From Non-European Countries”; Turkey and India were specifically mentioned in response to the open-ended question. In regard to the languages used for collaborative learning in the classroom, with the option to mark more than one response, the data showed that Catalan had 33 answers, Spanish 19, and English ten as the favored languages. When asked about their methods in blended and online learning for collaborative work, about a third said that they used face-to-face and online equally, 20% used mainly face-to-face methods, and only four (11%) used exclusively online methods. Asked about their level of satisfaction with the new technologies and their suitability for the objectives pursued, of 32 valid answers, 22 (69%) of the respondents considered them “quite adequate,” nine (28%) “totally adequate,” and only one (3%) “inadequate.” None claimed they were “unsuitable.” In terms of teachers’ perception about whether their pupils were motivated by interacting with pupils outside their own classroom, 21 (66%) considered that students were “quite motivated” while 11 (34%) answered “very motivated.” The last question asked teachers to rate the importance of collaboration with pupils outside their own classroom. Nearly 40% of respondents thought it was of average importance, about 30% said it was quite important, and 12% said it was very important. In response to a question about “Promoting respect for linguistic and cultural diversity,” 40% affirmed this was very important, 32% quite important, and only 4% said it was not important. In regard to the question on “The importance of encouraging cooperative work between pupils,” over 70% claimed that this was either very or quite important.

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Discussion Four broad areas of interest emerge from this data. First, virtually all of the teachers in this survey have enough ICT skills to be able to communicate at least by e-mail with other schools, and many of them have used an array of tools and are interested in learning more. Additionally, they are used to embedding a range of ICT activities across the curriculum, taking advantage of the Moodle VLE, the Google Suite (GSuite) for Education platform, weblogs, and other similar tools provided by the Department of Education and the school itself. On the other hand, their pupils have a moderate level of experience in the use of some digital tools, particularly for communication within their immediate area. The level of hardware in the 12 schools included in this sample is adequate since they have desktop and laptop computers with broadband and wireless access to the Internet. However, it should be noted that these schools were expressly chosen for the survey as ones that were well equipped. Second, while there is no single drive to use technology for global citizenship, a significant percentage of the teachers have used the Internet to link with other classrooms at the same stage, or across stages, within their own school. Additionally, a small percentage have used ICT to link with other schools within Catalonia. On the other hand, an extremely small percentage stated that they had connected with schools in Europe and the rest of the world. It is noteworthy that none of the teachers stated that they used the Internet to link with schools in the other 16 Spanish autonomous communities. Further research is needed to examine the reasons for this and to explore the feasibility of links between the communities through curriculum-based projects. It seems promising then that teachers reported that they thought their pupils would be motivated by contact with children outside their own classroom. Thirdly, as we have noted earlier in this chapter, the links between language, Catalan and Spanish, and the broader political push for greater autonomy in Catalonia place teachers in a particularly difficult position. Those employed in state schools in and around Barcelona are employed by the local Catalan government. While some may favor the movement toward independence, others may not. The safest position for teachers caught up in this may be to stay neutral in school and avoid initiatives such as linking to other schools in Spain which may raise difficult issues for children and their parents. In other words, there would need to be strong leadership at the Catalan and Spanish government levels to push any such initiative forward and that would have to include the kind of extended professional support for teachers that is being offered in Northern Ireland for Shared Education, in Israel, or for the European Union’s eTwinning program. In a word, teachers can only do so much in this area of education; they need strong support from local school leaders and policy makers. Finally, we might just reflect on the absence of political will to make school linking a priority. Catalan politicians have successfully secured a strong place

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for Catalan as a language of instruction in the schools they manage while also accepting the need for Spanish to be taught on an equitable basis. They might argue that linking their schools to other schools in Spain is not a priority since children outside Catalonia are unlikely to want to learn Catalan, and conversely, Catalan pupils may not wish to learn Galician or Basque. However, whatever the outcome of the move toward Catalan independence, we might suppose that it will be in the interests of Catalans and the rest of Spain to maintain a respectful relationship that allows commerce to thrive and for the people to coexist as harmoniously as possible. In this context, enabling blended learning links between young people and their teachers in Catalonia and the rest of Spain could be an important element in trust building. A good starting point might be greater engagement with a Europe-wide program like eTwinning, which would be one way of reminding young people growing up in Catalonia and Spain that whatever differences they may have about their local or national identity, they share a common European citizenship. And as we saw in Chapter 4 on eTwinning, this implies a commitment to intercultural education and to the development of a range of transversal skills, including the use of technology to work together. Catalonia is markedly different from Israel and Northern Ireland; we have seen that in spite of current tensions in Catalonia, there is a relatively cooperative attitude toward bilingualism and a readiness to find peaceful solutions to the present political impasse. All children in state schools are educated together irrespective of their cultural or linguistic background; given these considerable positives in terms of community cohesion, it might be said that there is less need for the interschool links observed elsewhere. In conclusion, technology is not currently used in Catalonia’s schools with the aim of promoting social cohesion nor to encourage attitudes toward peacebuilding as the Catalan political conflict is very recent. The focus in citizenship is more strongly linked to the global dimension and the reality of living in a multicultural society rather than the immediate situation in Catalonia and Spain. Note 1. https://mhm.mobileworldcapital.com/

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7

Promises Fulfilled and Challenges Ahead Roger Austin and William J. Hunter

Introduction The focus of this book has been the role that blended learning can play in fostering the kinds of intergroup contact that would support the development of global citizenship in future generations. To that end, we have examined the literature on a variety of ways to improve intercultural communications with a particular emphasis on intergroup contact theory and presented descriptions of projects in Northern Ireland, Israel, and Catalonia that have attempted to build cultures of online contact in schools. In Northern Ireland, we saw the progression from early uses of e-mail contacts and discussion boards through videoconference and face-to-face meetings leading to the current program of Shared Education in which there is a concerted effort to have children from different subcultures working together as a feature of everyday education. In Israel, we saw teachers using various technologies to collaborate across the nation’s cultural and religious divides in order to model for their children the potential of online collaboration and to jointly create educational programs that engage the children in crosscommunity collaboration. In Catalonia, against the background of a simmering separatist movement, we explored the attitudes of teachers about the possibility of using ICT to link to other schools and we learned that at least some teachers in Catalonia are prepared to explore the possibilities of interschool collaboration. In all of these cases, we were looking within nations, but we also explored larger international projects like eTwinning, the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN), and Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning (CCGL), which have all been actively engaged in fostering online cultural exchanges since the turn of the century, establishing a solid base of exemplars of ways that teachers and children can learn together across many borders and great distances in the service of intercultural education. Fostering a broader sense of citizenship is an explicit goal of two of these projects (eTwinning and iEARN) while the third seeks to promote and support an understanding of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the focus for global citizenship in action.

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In this final chapter, we will focus our attention on six themes that we believe have emerged from the work summarized prior. First, we will review the arguments we and others have made regarding the reasons for online learning to become a central part of interschool contact. Second, we will explore what has emerged in the last seven years about the purpose of using blended learning for global citizenship. Third, we will consider new data that is emerging concerning critical success factors in the implementation of blended and online programs that foster intercultural learning. Fourth, we will focus on what is being discovered about the use of blended learning as opposed to purely online learning in the delivery of this type of work. In the fifth theme, we will address the question of the context in which such programs are planned and whether lessons learned in one setting are applicable in others. In our final theme, we will explore areas of research on the uses of communication to foster intercultural learning and global citizenship that we believe merit further investigation. The Rationale for Online and Blended Learning for Interschool Contact In Online Learning and Community Cohesion (Austin & Hunter, 2013), we focused our final thoughts on the question of why schools and teachers should use online or blended learning for community cohesion in a chapter entitled “The promise of online contact.” That title told our 2013 readers that we felt a need to be tentative about what might lie ahead in the newly emerging approach to questions about how and why to link schoolteachers and children together using Internet-based information and communication technologies. We referred then to the potential of using online work as having a range of benefits which were educational, social, and economic. To begin our reexamination of those issues, we will briefly review our earlier comments. Educational Advantages

When we considered the possible educational advantages of using online learning for interschool contact, we used what we had learned about ongoing projects in different countries to point to the potential of online technologies to create opportunities for students with diverse learning needs, that is, to make learning more inclusive. We noted that many young people, including those with special educational needs, often thrived when they had an audience to communicate with. For example, we noted that the use of videoconferencing opened up remarkable learning opportunities for younger children who had not yet reached an age when they could write fluently. We observed that the capacity of such synchronous technologies to include both sound and visual connections offered learners unique insights into the classrooms of schools in other countries or regions. Young people could literally see their partners, hear their languages

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and accents, and share the work they had done or collaborate on new work that would be done together. We also saw how the use of asynchronous tools for communication, especially those that allowed the pupils to get involved in threaded discussions and to create content in a collaborative way, gave many children a sense of purpose in their learning and the experience of working in mixed online teams. This often involved negotiating with other young people in their partner school regarding how to divide up tasks and how to present information in an online platform. We argued that this social constructivist approach to knowledge creation was motivational for pupils and gave their teachers the opportunity to learn new skills in the use of technology. Crucially, the asynchronous work allowed pupils to reflect and think carefully about what they wanted to say to their partners without the pressure of having to make an immediate response. It also allowed time both to consider what their partners had said and to craft their responses more thoughtfully. The relative ease with which many teachers, especially in primary schools, were able to deploy ICT in their combined project work meant that pupils had far more frequent contact with their partners than would have been possible if they had had to depend on face-to-face meetings. Moreover, since this online contact was extended over long periods of time, it met one of the key conditions of the intergroup contact theory for making contact effective. In some cases, we saw how the use of ICT made links between schools possible that would otherwise have been out of the question either because the distances between schools were too great or because of the political situation. In the latter, data from Northern Ireland and Israel showed there were issues at that time about children’s security and the problems associated with schools being seen as part of the territory of the “other.” This often meant that face-toface meetings had to take place in neutral venues, with additional costs to rent rooms and facilities. We understood these developments to mean that pupils in each school were starting to “know” the pupils in their partner schools in ways that were different from the sometimes short and intense face-to-face meetings that took place alongside the online contact. We were not saying that the online approach was necessarily better but rather that teachers and program designers should think carefully about the affordances of each type of contact, real-time online, asynchronous online, and face-to-face, and plan for how each could contribute to the overall goals of the program. In that final chapter of our previous book, we also alluded to the issue of costs and the broader question about the types of contact that were more likely to offer the best value for money. We pointed out that schools in many countries were already purchasing hardware, software, and Internet connectivity as investments in infrastructure. We also noted that if contact programs set up

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as projects were to reach the whole school population, ICT was likely to be an essential tool not least in terms of cost. If we are to assert that all children have the right to be involved in interschool links, we argued that using online links was the only realistic way forward. It seems apt, now, to consider what has happened in the last seven years and to ask whether the case for online and blended learning has become stronger or less persuasive. We suggest that there is a growing body of evidence to argue that the case is now very much stronger than in 2013. We have identified six arguments to support that case. Argument 1: Environmental Impact

First, the debate about climate change and in particular the impact of CO2 emissions from public and private transport will remain a major threat until reliance on fossil fuels for energy production has been severely reduced. Massive resources are being coordinated on a global scale to examine the everyday assumptions we make about how we can travel from point A to point B without causing excessive pollution or, at the very least, with reductions in the levels of particle emissions (e.g., Mercure, Lam, Billington, & Pollitt, 2018; Mendoza Beltran et al., 2020). One example is the formation of a global network across universities to coordinate research and action (Ross, 2020) This has a direct bearing on the ways in which we should have geographically dispersed young people engaged in collaborative learning. For example, in Northern Ireland, a central plank of the Shared Education program is based on the expectation that participating schools will work together for 30 hours per annum and that a maximum of 20% of this time is allowed for online learning (Collaboration and Sharing in Education). In practice, most schools have between five to seven face-to-face meetings per annum for each class involved. As we noted in Chapter 2, about 748 schools, two thirds of all schools in Northern Ireland, are taking part in the program and each school is gradually involving all of its classes. On the basis that the average distance between partner schools is around 8 kilometers and that at least four classes in each school are involved, this represents an average mileage of 320 kilometers per school (five trips × 16 km per round trip × four classes per school). When that figure is multiplied by 748, the number of schools currently involved, the overall total comes to nearly 240,000 kilometers per annum. This represents an extra 95 metric tons of CO2 every year. Some may consider 95 metric tons of CO2 a justifiable cost for programs that enable children from different communities to meet and learn together, but we would note that this cost to the health of the planet is over and above the additional costs of vehicle rentals, fuel, and teacher time. More importantly, online learning technologies also enable the children to meet and learn with far less environmental impact.

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A similar case can be made for travel costs in international projects, where long haul flights for teacher exchanges also leave emissions which damage the quality of the air that we all breathe; this needs to be factored into the cost of this approach along with other costs like accommodation and subsistence. Argument 2: Demonstrated Success

The second argument for making greater use of online contact is the research that has emerged in the last seven years. As noted earlier in this book, particularly in the chapters on Israel and Northern Ireland, we can say with a lot more confidence that the use of online contact, supplemented by face-to-face work, is having a marked effect on participating children. The benefits range across a broad spectrum of outcomes from the growth of friendships, the normalization of relations between pupils who previously had little or no contact, and respect for difference. (White & Abu-Rayya, 2012; Walther, Hoter, Ganayem, & Shonfeld, 2015; Austin & Turner, 2020) Some research also shows that the effects of contact continued to be experienced a year after the program had stopped and that there were clear differences between children in the same school who had taken part compared to matched pupils who had not (Rickard & Austin, 2017). These positive effects are most likely to occur when teachers in partner schools train and plan together on how to get the right balance between the use of ICT and face-to-face contact, have adequate ICT resources, and anchor their work firmly in the curriculum. Argument 3: Persistent Need

Our third point is quite simply that the level of conflict within countries and between countries which we described in Chapter 1 is every bit as concerning as it was seven years ago. As we noted in that opening chapter, although some of the locations of violence may have moved to other regions, violent conflict remains a persistent problem in many countries with immensely damaging consequences for young people. In other words, the need for educational interventions to address ongoing tension is as important as ever or perhaps more important. For example, our reports of local cases in the chapters about Northern Ireland and Israel indicate that even though we can talk about improving political climates and demonstrate positive impacts on schools and children, peace remains a fragile and elusive treasure. Argument 4:Access to Appropriate and Affordable Software

Related to the previous point are questions about whether and how it might be possible to extend the benefits of successful programs to all the schools in a given population. Since the evidence quoted previously shows that well-managed

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contact programs do indeed make a difference, why should the benefits extend to only some children? These are important questions if the purpose of bringing about educational change is to affect all children and teachers in the system. In our view, achieving this goal will depend on the deployment of contact models that can be sustained over long periods of time. Our observations of projects that have survived for over two decades indicate that the long-term sustainability of interschool collaborations requires, among other things, the strategic use of the existing ICT infrastructure right across regions and countries. For example, when a purchasing body makes decisions about the adoption of particular software, the potential of that software for linking schools together collaboratively should be taken into account. While some platforms seem well suited to the world of business and may be valuable for teacher-to-teacher interaction, we need to be sure that there are comparable platforms that work well for young people. Google Classroom and other elements in the Google software suite are relatively good examples of this. So too are the many platforms that make it possible to create blogs, wikis, or websites at no cost to the user. One key element for us is the extent to which the platforms make it possible for meaningful interaction to take place. Argument 5: Enduring Inequities

Our fifth argument addresses the issue of whether the use of ICT can reduce actual or perceived levels of inequality in a given society. In Israel, for example, the authors of Chapter 3 noted that within the state of Israel, it cannot be assumed that Arab-Israeli schools necessarily have the same level of ICT infrastructure and equipment as Jewish Israeli schools. The authors’ work through the TEC Center is starting to create a more level playing field by offering the same professional development to their partner teachers, whatever schools they work in. In the context of citizenship, notions of equality are central and this means looking closely at the ways that ICT can create an arena in which all of the children involved feel (and are) equally able to participate. This is a formidable goal; it may mean that projects like the Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning which, as we saw in Chapter 5, has a strong focus on teacher professional development, may need to be matched by investment in ICT. Argument 6: Pandemic Shock

Our final point is that the emergence of the novel Corona virus pandemic in the early months of 2020 is already having a profound effect on what we have previously regarded as normal patterns of schooling. The closure of schools across the globe has meant that more teachers and children are learning online than at any other time in the history of the world. Seven years ago, the switch to online

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learning would have been nearly unthinkable and a great deal more uneven between countries than it is in 2020. And remarkably, what we are discovering is that the high levels of home ownership of laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and access to broadband means that a heavier reliance on online communications as a central feature of schooling is not a fanciful pipe dream. It has become the reality for literally millions of children and teachers. On a scale never seen before, parents and guardians have become more intimately connected to their children’s schoolwork through the switch to online learning. However, it is still the case that access to online communication cannot be taken for granted. A recent report in Ireland (Burke & Dempsey, 2020) argued that enforced home schooling was deepening social inequalities partly because of uneven levels of access to technology in the home. While we can’t be certain what the consequences will be of this move away from traditional notions of learning confined to the walls of the classroom, it seems very likely that elements of this new paradigm will have a profound effect on the take-up of blended learning generally. In turn, this will create new opportunities for its use in global citizenship education. Because the need for social distancing meant school closures in the middle of the school year in many countries, great numbers of teachers found themselves suddenly expected to continue teaching online even though they were ill-prepared or totally unprepared to do so. In April 2020, as we write this chapter, there is as yet little information about how this is panning out on a global scale. Local resources provided by school boards, government offices, and universities seemed to pop up almost overnight. For example, at Ontario Tech University, which has a commitment to teaching with technology, teacher education students and faculty quickly assembled a collection of resources1 for the teaching communities in which their student teachers work, but, of course, since such resources get published on the web, they also quickly become available to the world’s teachers. The Guardian newspaper also recognized this need and published a request for teachers to submit their ideas to the paper (Guardian Community Team, 2020). Our focus in this work has been on programs that serve school age children (generally, ages 5–18 years); however, it is worth noting here that universities and colleges also turned to fully online learning in the face of the Coronavirus pandemic. At that level, though, there has been a greater online presence for some time and a growing body of research and theory on online learning (e.g., Mayer, 2019; Johnson, Bates, Donovan, & Seaman, 2019; Swan, 2019). Many universities have been able to draw on those experiences to assist and lead as inexperienced faculty were required to teach online (e.g., Flaherty, 2020; Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust, & Bond, 2020). While it is beyond the scope of this work, it seems clear that, with respect to the use of online learning technologies, the experience of universities and colleges has lessons that elementary and secondary schools could learn from. As just one example, Carr (2020), in

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a piece that sought to update thinking about the concept of computer-mediated communication, cited “decades of studies” that have shown that computermediated communication that includes the use of audio and video tools can not only match, but perhaps surpass, face-to-face communication in terms of the “relations” among participants. Given our focus on intercultural communication and prejudice reduction, this is gratifying news. The Purpose of Interschool Contact Programs At different points in this volume, we have referred to the question of what the focus of programs designed to link young people together is or ought to be. As we noted in Chapter 1, part of this issue revolves around whether the goal is social harmony or social justice. If social harmony is the goal, then teachers will be inclined to focus on curriculum topics that are not controversial and which stress what children from different backgrounds have in common. We have offered evidence both in the case of Israel and Northern Ireland that teachers are often much more comfortable working like this because it avoids conflict. The same pattern can also be found in projects that cross international boundaries like the EU’s eTwinning program and the international projects described in Chapter 5. However, research indicates that there are risks with focusing exclusively on the “harmony” side of a continuum because doing so ignores awkward and/ or controversial issues altogether. Researchers have shown that if no place is granted for dealing with questions of social justice, young people may be illequipped to deal with everyday problems outside the walls of the classroom. (Pahlke, Bigler, & Suizzo, 2012; Wolsko, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2000) There is still much more research to be done on the question of how teachers gradually move the focus from “safe” issues to ones which are more challenging. In Northern Ireland, a very good start has been made to this process through a report called “A Pupil Pathway” (2019), which offers a guide on appropriate activities from preschool to late adolescence. For example, its suggested outcomes for older primary school age children include “Recognise and understand some of the similarities and differences between different cultures in Northern Ireland and beyond” and “Understand what is meant by the words ‘sectarian/ sectarianism’ and ‘assumptions and prejudices’” (p. 16). For those in the first three years of postprimary school, teachers are advised that pupils should understand “how and why conflict in a community may arise and develop strategies to avoid and resolve conflict and build positive relationships” (p. 17). Toward the end of compulsory schooling, it is suggested that students should “Understand and respond to the specific controversial issues and opportunities that diversity and inclusion present in Northern Ireland and the wider world” (p. 18). We believe that there are at least two important variables in play in resolving this dilemma, namely the specific context in which links occur and the roles

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played by teachers. In terms of context, we observe that in the Northern Ireland example, some cities and areas were much more strongly marked by the violence of the period known as “The Troubles.” Dealing with the legacy of violence can make explicit reconciliation work particularly difficult. A very slow process of trust-building between communities, centered on families linked to schools as described in the case study of two schools in Belfast, offers an inspiring way forward. And in the two schools that were featured, it is significant that the process of linking classes together started with the very youngest children, which meant that by the time they had completed their primary school education, these children had had seven years to get to know each other. It was only in their final year that the teachers felt ready to broach more difficult topics. As we have said throughout the book, the role of teachers in all aspects of the work of building online collaboration is pivotal. We make two points on this. The first is that the evidence from Israel suggests that when work of this type is introduced during teachers’ initial period of training, especially if this includes placements for teaching practice schools that are already engaged in cross-community work, this is likely to build the foundations for ongoing interest and commitment during their careers. The second is that teachers need explicit professional development in the use of approaches that give them the confidence to feel able to explore issues that may be divisive. This may well include guidance on how questions of identity, for example, can be introduced even to quite young children if this is managed in a sensitive way. In summary, we suggest that on the issue of whether the focus should be on social harmony or social justice, it is not a case of either/or. Rather, it is to acknowledge the importance of both and seek ways to introduce them as part of a continuum of experience for young people. There is another dimension to the question of what the course content should be in the work we have analyzed. Programs in Israel and Northern Ireland have relationships between young people as the central focus, whether to build friendships, respect differences, or to start a process of reconciliation. This has been influenced to a marked degree by the contribution of the contact hypothesis to the overall strategic goals of the programs, possibly because of the role played by academics in the design and implementation of the work. With the focus on relationships, any subject matter in the curriculum can be drawn upon for joint work; there is no expectation that partners necessarily have to focus on citizenship in their work. In contrast, the programs we described in Chapter 5 on international links between schools have a very different starting point. Their aims are far more strongly related to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the development of understandings about climate change, the education of women, uses of water, or any of the other themes from the SDGs. Of course, as a result of working together on topics like these, the participants get to know each other,

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but the literature around these projects makes little or no reference to the contact hypothesis and draws far more strongly from a tradition of development education. It is also the case that children in these programs rarely meet and are often hampered by uneven access to hardware and Internet access. In such circumstances, focusing on relationships is much more difficult than would be the case in Northern Ireland or Israel where pupils do meet and also have much better access to online opportunities. And finally, the chapter on the EU’s eTwinning program indicates that the goals of linking schools together in that initiative reside more strongly in the development of transversal skills and more broadly in teacher professional development. Thus, there is no prescribed content that teachers have to focus on; it is more a case that they have to identify topics in their respective curricula that lend themselves to collaborative work. Again, it’s worth noting that eTwinning has not been shaped explicitly by the ideas of the contact hypothesis; it has been more concerned with broad themes around equality, diversity, and inclusivity. However, when we examine the subject expertise or the teachers who take part in this program, we should note the preponderance of modern language teachers. Both here and in many other contact programs which we have not reported on in this book, it’s clear that one of the driving forces behind links is to give young people first-hand experience of developing linguistic skills in languages other than their own. Critical Success Factors From the chapters reported in this volume, we can identify three broad areas that play a significant role in affecting the outcomes of interschool contact programs. The first of these is the political will to provide the funding and ongoing support from either national governments, supranational organizations like the United Nations or the EU, and private sources. The chapter on the EU’s eTwinning program, for example, showed clearly how the European Commission has played a key role in supporting the notion that the EU should find ways to supplement work done by national governments in the field of education. The evolution of the aims of the program indicated how proactive the Commission has been in ensuring that eTwinning developed to meet wide social and economic goals in the EU. Similarly, the administration in Northern Ireland has been extremely successful in finding ways to get outside agencies like Atlantic Philanthropies and the EU to fund the first two phases of the Shared Education program. And as we saw in the chapter about international links, the Department for International Development (DFID) and the British Council in the UK have been critical to the success of the CCGL. These large-scale projects have succeeded because the program managers have been able to gather data from teachers and schools that show impact on young people and value for money.

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One program, iEARN, has a much more diffuse funding model and lower operating costs but has still been able to demonstrate a range of strong outcomes for teachers and pupils. iEARN demonstrates that political will can be expressed directly though the choices of teachers to voluntarily participate in interesting projects. One indicator of the crucial role of political will and funding is to observe that when funding stopped, as in the case of the Dissolving Boundaries program which connected schools in Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland, the links between schools simply petered out. The Flat School Project seems to have suffered a similar fate. Peters (2009) described how that project, inspired by Friedman’s The World is Flat (2005), used wikis, blogs, and podcasts to bring children from Asia and the US together to discuss big issues around the idea of a shrinking planet. Today, essentially every search for Flat School websites, wikis, or blogs leads to broken links or nonexistent pages. In both of these cases, there was no suggestion that the quality of work done was not good enough, Though the demise of the Flat Schools project remains a mystery to us, in the case of Dissolving Boundaries, the problem was just that funding agencies had moved their focus to other areas. There will always be competing demands for funding, not least when unexpected events like the COVID-19 pandemic occur and take priority. Our point is that the effective use of existing ICT infrastructure is one way that program managers can show value for money. Teacher Professional Development We see the second key success factor as dealing with the kinds of professional development opportunities being offered to teachers to assist them in developing the skills necessary to find and use the resources available to support strong and effective online and blended learning practices to foster intercultural learning and to promote the achievement of global citizenship goals. Although no single pattern of teacher professional development seemed to warrant a wholesale endorsement, we have identified six characteristics that are present in some or all of the examples in this book. First, since the nature of the work is around citizenship in the broadest sense of that word, there is often an expectation and even a requirement that teachers attend courses about blended learning with their culturally or linguistically different partners for a face-to-face session. A face-to-face session not only enables the teachers to learn together but also to consolidate and strengthen their partnership by building trust. Professional development in the contexts we have described thus differs markedly from courses in which teachers seek to develop new knowledge of skills independently in their own school settings. Second, before the practical work of learning about any software used in the program, teachers need to clarify as a partnership their understanding of the broad goals of the program. For example, they may need to learn how research

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on theories like the contact hypothesis can inform the projects the teachers will carry out. In that case, understanding the broad goals might include focusing on the importance of group work, on linking children of equal status, and on ensuring that work is cooperative rather than competitive. All of these elements have implications for how common software could be used. This part of the professional development program would reinforce the concept that technology being used is not the school project’s focus per se but is rather one way of accomplishing program goals. Third, professional development often includes reflective discussion about the relative role of face-to-face and online contact. Teachers are invited to share views with their partner teachers and with the wide group about the different dynamics around each type of contact. This can include ideas about whether there is any particular order in which face-to-face and online work is carried out. Fourth, any planned work has to fit into the existing curriculum rather than be seen as an “add-on.” Although some projects like CCGL and iEARN have prescribed content, in their case work around the UN’s SDGs, it is woven into the existing curriculum of participating schools. However, it is just as common for teachers to be given the responsibility for deciding what content they should study together. In cases like this, which are typical in Northern Ireland and to some extent in Israel, this gives teachers a sense of ownership and places the emphasis on the process of collaborative learning more than the content. Fifth, in some cases like Israel and Northern Ireland, intensive 2–3 day courses are built around the principle that teachers will draw up an action plan to implement a blended learning project in their respective classrooms and will set this in motion as soon as possible after the course. In other words, teachers’ acquisition of a new set of skills is reinforced by the assumption that they will deploy them immediately with their pupils. Finally, after a period of project implementation (in Northern Ireland this is usually around six weeks), teachers come back together to report on what they have done, what challenges they faced, and what they and their pupils learned. These sessions are not just about teacher presentations but are part of a deliberate attempt to encourage a collaborative learning network where insights from one partnership are shared with the rest of the group. Although we have not found any explicit models of continuous professional development specifically aimed at developing skills in the use of blended learning for global citizenship, there is nonetheless an abundant literature on teacher professional development in general. For our purposes, Laferrière, Lamon, and Chan’s (2006) examination of international literature on the emerging trends related to the provision of online teacher development were the most fruitful for our thinking about professional development programs for teachers engaged in online or blended learning to promote intercultural understanding and global citizenship. They noted that “Despite much enthusiasm given to the use of

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technology in education, the potential of e-learning in transforming teacher learning is neither sufficiently explored nor well understood” (p. 77). They also argued that the need for continuing professional development was due, in part, to shifting views about learning: “In contrast to the knowledge-transmission view, social-constructivist theories emphasize the social, distributed, and collective nature of learning. Learning is active as students tackle authentic problems in real world situations in collaboration with their peers” (p 77). This is important because the way teachers learn can have an impact on how they teach. For example, Becker and Riel (1999) in a study of teaching and professional development that surveyed over 4,000 teachers found “Teachers who work in collaborative settings, create the same settings for their students” (p. 37). We have seen this principle in action in the way that teachers in Northern Ireland learned to use the Fronter Virtual Learning Environment (Austin & Turner 2020) and more recently in the ways that they are currently learning how to use Office 365, Google Classroom and the Collaborate software. Similar processes can be seen in the deliberate, gradual approach used for both teacher and student learning in the work of Israel’s TEC Center. From their review of the international literature on teacher professional development, LaFerrière et al. (2006) identified four general trends: the growing use of online resources, the rise of web-supported classrooms, growing participation in learning networks and communities, and an increased focus on knowledge management and knowledge creation as part of the work of teachers. We have seen all of these trends in action in the projects discussed in this book. Use of Online Repositories, Online Courses, and Programs

LaFerrière et al. (2006) noted that sources like eduSourceCanada,2 and MERLOT3 (Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Teaching) were increasingly available to provide teachers and other educational professionals access to instructional resources and information. In the case of MERLOT, the resources listed have been subjected to professional peer review. Many additional resource collections have emerged over the past 20 years, including many that are specifically geared to local curriculum. For example, the 2learn.ca project began as an online repository for teachers in Alberta, Canada, to share classroom ideas and lessons. It is now a resource bank4 managed by the Alberta Teachers’ Association providing access to thousands of teacher-developed resources. Perhaps the clearest example of this kind of activity in the projects we have discussed is iEARN’s creation of a collection of projects which teachers may join. Each of those projects has a body of information and a history of implementation that enable new teachers to learn from the work that has preceded them. The option to create new projects also exists, but as with MERLOT, there is a vetting process to ensure the quality of the resources in the collection.

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That this trend is now well established was clear in the response of teaching communities to the COVID-19 pandemic as teachers rushed to share their experiences and resources with colleagues who were suddenly expected to teach online. As we note elsewhere, we expect these activities to have lasting impact. The Rise of Web-Supported Classrooms

Even in face-to-face teacher education courses, seminars, and practica, LaFerrière et al. (2006) saw increased use of Internet resources as linked to social-constructivist theory in ways that engaged teachers in meaningful problem-based learning. They noted, however, “Unfortunately, many online tools in web-supported classrooms do not support the social structures that promote community learning processes” (p. 81). Today, there is a wealth of collaborative software tools that would indicate this problem has been overcome. Teachers can work collaboratively within a wide range of learning management systems; easily create free blogs, podcasts, and wikis with which to share their (and sometimes their students’) work; use software that allows communal commenting within documents; and create shared spreadsheets, presentations, and documents using Google Drive or other cloud-based products. Free video- and audioconferencing tools also provide space for a more personal form of collaboration over distance. The tools to support social constructivist learning for both teachers and pupils are now ubiquitous; the missing elements are in the human domain: teacher interest and willingness, political support, and policy guidance. Participation in Learning Networks and Communities

LaFerrière et al. (2006) saw the emergence of professional learning networks as reflecting a stronger focus on social learning as part of a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001). They argued that participation in learning communities that share goals is enhanced by the use of technology because teachers could “reach out to different communities in their own local districts as well as across a province, country, some countries or the world” (p. 82). Examining the work of such learning networks and communities has been the driving force behind this book—Shared Education in Northern Ireland; eTwinning in Europe; the TEC center in Israel; and, on a global scale, both Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning and iEARN are all examples of well-established learning networks that support both teacher professional development and connected learning in schools. In Catalonia, we believe we are seeing the emergence of yet another network that seeks to bring teachers together around concerns focused on language learning in schools in a context of political tension. We have focused on these examples because of our

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own learning networks and because information about these projects has been available to us, but, as we have alluded to along the way, many similar learning networks exist around the globe. Knowledge Management and Knowledge Building

Teachers have not traditionally engaged in evidence-based practice (e.g., Hunter, 2017; Paran, 2017). LaFerrière et al. (2006) saw this tradition changing and argued that the emerging model of the Knowledge Society Network (KSN) engaged teachers in collaborative knowledge communities in which members engaged in “progressive discourse” that would add value to the community, treating teachers as knowledge creators and designers. This change in direction is embodied in literature on teachers’ personal practical knowledge as a basis for building professional knowledge (Connelly, Clandinin, & He, 1997; van den Bogaart, Mazereeuw, Hummel, & Kirschner, 2019). We have seen only very limited evidence that this is happening in the projects we examined, but we hold it as an aspiration for project participants who carry on to further study. LaFerrière et al. (2006) presented these four trends as a kind of continuum in which teachers might begin their learning process by engaging in information access and knowledge delivery and might later explore critical reflection and collaboration as well as technological change. Still later, they would begin to participate in communities of practice and share their knowledge and practice with others. Finally, some teachers might become knowledge creators and designers as part of a knowledge-building community. They argued that “These approaches could overlap, take place sequentially, or concurrently under different contexts” (p. 85). Some key elements of this developmental framework can be found in Northern Ireland where the Department of Education published a policy framework for continuing teacher professional learning called a “Strategy for Teacher Professional Learning” (2015). The strategy has four key areas • • • •

the the the the

teacher professional learning framework development and dissemination of good practice building of professional learning communities building of leadership capacity

This framework has informed the kind of courses that have been designed to help teachers understand how to develop blended learning in Shared Education. One essential plank for the success of this work is that the software demonstrated on professional development courses needs to be available across the school networks that teachers are working in and that there is an agreed common platform between partner schools. For example, in the case of Northern Ireland,

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teachers and their schools need to agree in advance of any training, whether their schools are adopting Google Classroom or Office 365. It’s simply not possible to run a collaborative project between schools unless the partner schools are using either the same software or compatible software. Decisions about which software to use can make a big difference. For example, does the platform make it possible for pupils to interact easily with each other in a threaded discussion? And, more broadly, is the platform sufficiently secure to mean that the exchange of information between pupils will not fall into the hands of hackers? Is the broadband connectivity sufficiently strong to enable both videoconferencing and other applications to take place at the same time? All of these considerations will affect whether the potential use of online interaction can in fact be delivered across every type of school from those in urban settings to those in more remote rural locations. The evidence so far indicates that in Northern Ireland and to some extent in Israel and Catalonia as well as in the EU’s eTwinning program, adequate bandwidth, a secure platform, and reliable software are providing sufficient technical means to say that the online part of interschool linking is a reality. However, none of this would count for very much without the kind of carefully thought-through examples of teacher professional learning described earlier. We underline the point that these examples do not fit entirely with preexisting models, largely because the linking of blended learning and global citizenship is still at a relatively early stage. The Nature of Blended Learning The title of this volume, Blended and Online Learning for Global Citizenship, was a deliberate signal of our intent to look at the role of both online and face-to-face together rather than focusing on just one of these elements. What are the factors that determine the relative importance of each of them in the programs we have analyzed, what can we say about the order in which they are used and the contribution each of them make? Although there is an extensive body of work in this field for higher education (e.g., Broadbent, 2017; Smith, Hayes, & Shea, 2017; He, Xu, & Kruck, 2019), the research at this level focuses on variables like student achievement, student engagement, or critical reflection. Since our focus is on elementary and secondary schools and on the capacity of online or blended contact to promote and nurture citizenship qualities, the higher education work does little to address our questions even though, as noted earlier, it may provide guidance on teaching methods or professional development In terms of relative importance, we suggest that the aims of the program, geography, and political imperatives are forces that shaped two of the projects we have described in this book. Both in Israel and Northern Ireland there is a drive to build reconciliation through the TEC model and Shared Education,

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respectively, and this drive places a premium on building trust between partner schools by making sure that there is frequent and regular interaction. The distance between partner schools means that face-to-face work is a realistic option to do this; however, the ethno-cultural composition of the school population plays a role in the timing of the use of face-to-face contact. In Israel, the visible differences in appearance between Jews, particularly Jews from an Orthodox background, and Arabs has led the program designers to make extensive use of text exchange and online audio contact at first to build trust, with face-toface contact normally taking place toward the end of the period of contact. In Northern Ireland, however, physical appearance would not signal an individual’s identity or background; thus, face-to-face work can begin at an early stage of the program and again, the relatively close distances between schools means that bus travel for joint work is a feasible option. In contrast, the chapter about the EU’s eTwinning program and Chapter 5 on international links underline how the vastly greater distances between partner schools makes online contact the primary means of communication at least for pupils. However, it’s also clear that wherever possible these programs find ways to bring teachers together face-to-face, either for professional development or to spend time in each other’s schools. The importance of doing this is particularly clear in the case of the Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning (CCGL) project where we saw how the removal of reciprocal visits was seen to have been damaging to the program and, as a result, face-to-face visits were reinstated. A further factor in shaping the respective roles of online and face-to-face contact is age. Now that children as young as six or seven are taking part in the Shared Education program in Northern Ireland, teachers are looking closely at both the contribution of face-to-face work and the use of real-time online videoconferencing tools like Collaborate. The immediacy of synchronous tools like Collaborate is creating opportunities for musical performances, polls, quizzes, presentations, and interactions that do not rely on high levels of written language or strong technical skills in the pupils. As pupils get toward the last three years of primary school, they are already making more use of textual interaction in virtual learning environments. On the broader issue of the types of online tools that have the greatest impact, we are still at an early stage of assessing the role of avatars and virtual worlds. As young people move into secondary education from around the age of 11, a new factor affects the balance between online and face-to-face work. Most postprimary schools organize their days around individual lessons with a subjectspecific focus; pupils move around the school to different subject departments unlike primary schools where the general pattern is for pupils to remain with one teacher in their own classroom for most of the day. This makes it much more difficult to do collaborative work with other schools unless each subject department has easy access to a bank of laptops, tablets, or stand-alone computers.

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Furthermore, the gradual increase in focus on external examinations can make it difficult for teachers to use precious curriculum time on interschool links and this affects both time out of school for face-to-face work as well as online connectivity. This takes us clearly to a very basic question about the function of schooling and the relative weight attached to examination performance visà-vis the development of the kind of personal and human values embedded in citizenship education. The final factor to be considered in examining the balance between online and face-to-face contact falls under the heading of value for money. In the case of Shared Education in Northern Ireland, we have seen that schools in the current phase of the program are allowed to spend up to 20% of their contact time online and the remaining 80% of the 30 hours allotted time on face-to-face contact. It does not seem that there is any basis in research to explain these figures and it seems likely that at least one reason for the heavily weighted preference for face-to-face contact is that it’s easier to measure the number of children involved and the time spent together. In other words, data can be provided for funders that is clear and can be used to justify expenditure. It’s more difficult to measure time spent online, even if the quality of that online time is as good if not better than on face-to-face contact. We have made the point in several chapters that we cannot assume that one type of contact is necessarily better than another; everything depends on the skills of the teaching staff in making the contact productive. The evidence we do have suggests that where geographical proximity allows, blended learning with the judicious use of a range of online tools can extend and deepen face-to-face work. We need funders to understand this to sustain and broaden this work so that it can reach the maximum number of schools. Can Blended Learning for Global Citizenship Be Applied to New Settings? There are many places in the world where internal tensions around ethnicity, race, or religion might be addressed by the kind of work reported on in the current volume. Obvious examples include the Balkans, Cyprus, and the Indian subcontinent. We examined the potential for blended learning to be used in new locations through the chapter on the Catalan region of Spain where there has been a long history of tension around identity and language. The evidence presented in that chapter suggested that there was little appetite for work on citizenship issues to be developed through interschool links, although the technology was in place in schools for this to happen. When we reflect on this, we might note that unlike the long-term historical and widespread intercommunal violence in Israel or Northern Ireland, violence in Catalonia has been limited and confined to sporadic eruptions of street disturbances.

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By comparison, the Basque region of Spain was marked for many years by a violent separatist movement spearheaded by a guerrilla organization, ETA. This has not been the path taken by activists in Catalonia whose tactics fall more into a tradition of passive resistance. It is also important to stress three other characteristics of the educational setting in Catalonia. The first is that whereas in both Israel and Northern Ireland, children from different communities generally attend separate schools, this is not the case in Catalonia where all children in state schools are educated together. Second, not only do the Spanish and Catalan languages have equal status, but they are not as different as Arabic and Hebrew or English and Irish. In everyday life in Catalonia, Spanish and Catalan are used interchangeably in cities like Barcelona without difficulty. Third, education for citizenship is a well-established part of the curriculum and the diverse population in the majority of Catalonia’s schools means that learning about cultural differences occurs naturally in such multicultural classrooms. There is simply less need to connect to other schools. It seems safe to conclude that a model of blended learning for global citizenship has less traction in Catalonia because the political context does not make this kind of approach appropriate. However, in the Balkans, steps are being taken to address divisive ethnic issues through linking schools. Different approaches have been taken across the region. Next we summarize the situation in Macedonia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina and the role that blended contact might play in each context. In the Republic of Macedonia, intergroup tensions exist between the two largest ethnic communities, which have different languages and religious affiliations; Macedonians are predominantly orthodox Christian and speak Macedonian whilst ethnic Albanians are predominantly Muslim and speak Albanian. The constitution in Macedonia gives students the right to study in their mother tongue, resulting in an ethnic division in the classroom with Albanians and Macedonians learning their respective languages in school. Although most schools are predominantly single language, about a quarter of primary schools and a third of secondary schools are multilingual. From 2012 to 2017, funding from USAID resulted in the Interethnic Integration in Education Project (IIEP) designed to develop feasible and effective models of implementing joint student activities in both multilanguage schools and in single language schools. Whilst blended learning may be less important in multilanguage schools since students are on the same site, it may be especially useful in partnerships between joint schools where students may have to travel some distance. Even if regular shared classes were established, as in Northern Ireland, blended contact might help to maintain communication between classes to ensure that relationships continue to develop and thrive. Given that the funding is now completed for this project, use of online classes may also help to ensure that joint activities take place despite the limited funding.

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Croatia has a majority Croat (approximately 78%) and minority Serb (approximately 12%) population that, following the Balkans conflict of the 1990s, is profoundly divided along ethnic lines (Č orkalo, Biruški, & Ajdukovicˇ, 2016). As in Macedonia, pupils have a constitutional right at all levels of education to be taught in their mother tongue, that is in Croatian or Serbian. Although there are three models of minority education in Croatia, only a small percentage of the school population experiences this. In the remaining Croat-speaking schools, blended contact might be a relatively inexpensive way of developing links with schools where Serbian is the main language. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, there are three main ethnic groups: Bosniaks, Bosnian Serbs, and Bosnian Croats. The school curricula have been adapted to the demands of ethnic groups across the country, resulting in three forms of schooling (Velicˇkovic´, 2012). Only in one region, Brcˇko District—a neutral, self-governing administrative unit within the country—are all three ethnic groups treated equally, i.e., regardless of their demographic size, children attend most classes together. Education reform here is considered the most successful in terms of integrating and fostering reconciliation between the three main ethno-national groups. Where pupils from majority and minority groups are taught in separate schools, blended learning might be a means of ensuring communication through a form of shared education. However, Bosnia and Herzegovina, out of the Balkan countries discussed, is at the earliest stages of development when it comes to such partnerships, and getting these partnerships established is likely to be a priority before the implementation of blended contact. Nonetheless, it will likely be useful for policy makers here to consider the inclusion of blended contact in order to enhance the frequency of school-contact once shared education is established. A final point in this discussion involves turning the question around and examining the conditions in Israel and Northern Ireland that made blended learning part of the approach to delivering global citizenship. We have already alluded to some of the factors, like the political will to take action and the ICT infrastructure, but we need to highlight two further elements. The first is that the relatively small size of Israel and Northern Ireland means that there is a greater degree of shared knowledge amongst program designers about what works and how it works. Even when there is rivalry between organizations, individuals often find ways of working together for the common good. And this takes us to one last point which is about leadership. Even when all the conditions are in place for action to be carried through, it requires individuals to have a vision of what might be done and the skills to negotiate with politicians and civil servants to roll out programs which are appreciated by teachers. One key feature of good leadership is legacy planning, ensuring that the work

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started by an individual or a team is sustained when the early runners have stepped aside. What Further Research Is Needed in This Field? Research is necessary to examine the direct impact of blended contact during Shared Education (versus face-to-face contact only) on pupils’ cross-group friendship development, attitudes toward pupils from the partner school and toward the other community more generally, and their confidence at engaging in intergroup contact (Turner & Cameron, 2016). Austin and Turner (2020) focused on teachers’ perceptions of the impact of blended learning on pupils and while valuable, understanding the perspective of pupils themselves is crucial. Examining the impact of blended contact on broader outcomes, for example, the ability to work in teams, problem-solving skills, academic self-efficacy, and future aspirations should also be considered. In addition, among older pupils, although perhaps not among primary school children, examining whether blended contact helps them to discuss issues of identity and controversy in relation to cross-community relations would be valuable. Research suggests that taking an approach to prejudice reduction which ignores the reality of ethnic, religious, or cultural difference is ineffective, as it is necessary to ensure that any positive attitudes toward individual out-group members generalize to the group as a whole. Moreover, confidence in discussing issues of identity is likely to help reduce intergroup anxiety (Stephan & Stephan, 1985), and in doing so, promote more positive relations with the host school and more positive intergroup relations more broadly. While we do not know if there is a minimum amount of time needed to instill values of tolerance and respect for difference, it seems likely that an approach which involves children from the early years of primary school into postprimary education will be needed. In other words, time and repeated positive experiences are required to nurture these qualities. We might learn something from the insights of Sanderson (2020), who reported that people who had been trained in first aid were more likely to intervene in dangerous situations rather than behaving like bystanders. Her point was that it was not personality that made the difference but training in the right skills. In our context, the right skills mean the kind of transversal skills and values that we saw were central to eTwinning and which included teamwork, whether online or face-to-face. Longitudinal empirical studies are needed to explore this. Given the pivotal role of teachers, we also need to know more about the relative importance of being exposed to this type of work in pre-service compared to courses of continuous professional development. Just as it takes time for young people to learn the right skillset to work productively together, the same is true for teachers.

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In conclusion, by calling this chapter “Promises Fulfilled and Challenges Ahead,” we wanted to underline the very real success stories of teachers using blended learning for global citizenship. We can now say with confidence that not only does this approach have substantial, proven benefits but that in some cases, it’s on the cusp of being developed as one of the most promising means of reaching all schools. The challenge is for policy makers and those responsible for the implementation of programs on global citizenship to take note of the evidence presented in this book. Notes 1. Ontario Technological University Faculty of Education Learn at Home resource page. https:// docs.google.com/document/d/1JqIOblaMOwNSAXMmLGGgjN0wAwkKhpfs13zeTVOH yyo/edit#heading=h.nj23sjpj5u97. Accessed: May 6, 2020. 2. Athabasca University, Edusource: Canada’s Learning Object Repository Network https:// auspace.athabascau.ca/handle/2149/743. Accessed May 6, 2020. 3. MERLOT multimedia learning object repository. www.merlot.org. Accessed May 6, 2020. 4. Alberta Teachers’ Association Library’s Web Resource Pages. https://teachers-ab.libguides. com/topicguides?b=g&d=a&group_id=15070. Accessed: May 6, 2020.

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Education Authority. (2019). A Pupil Pathway: A resource for teachers to support shared education. Retrieved from www.eani.org.uk/sites/default/files/2019-11/A_Pupil_Pathway_Shared_ Education.pdf Flaherty, C. (2020, March 24). Faculty home work. Inside Higher Education. Retrieved from www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/03/24/working-home-during-covid-19-proveschallenging-faculty-members Friedman, T. L. (2005). The world is flat:A brief history of the twenty-first century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2001). Critical thinking, cognitive presence, and computer conferencing in distance education. American Journal of Distance Education, 15(1), 7–23. Retrieved from http://cde.athabascau.ca/coi_site/documents/Garrison_Anderson_ Archer_CogPres_Final.pdf Guardian Community Team. (2020, April 19). Teachers: Share your tips for working at home. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/19/teachers-shareyour-tips-for-working-at-home He, W., Xu, G., & Kruck, S. E. (2019). Online IS education for the 21st century. Journal of Information Systems Education, 25(2), 1. Retrieved from http://jise.org/Volume25/n2/ JISEv25n2p101.pdf Hodges, C., Moore, S., Lockee, B., Trust, T., & Bond, A (2020, March 27). The difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning. Educause Review. Retrieved from https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teachingand-online-learning Hunter, W. J. (2017). Evidence-based teaching in the 21st century: The missing link. Canadian Journal of Education/Revue canadienne de l’éducation, 40(2), 1–6. Retrieved from https://files. eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1143680.pdf Johnson, N., Bates, T., Donovan, T., & Seaman, J. (2019). Tracking online education in Canadian universities and colleges: National survey of online and digital learning. 2019 National Report. Retrieved from https://eduq.info/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11515/37136/canadiannational-survey-online-distance-education-2018-cdlra-2019.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y Laferrière, T., Lamon, M., & Chan, C. (2006). Emerging e-trends and models in teacher education and professional development. Teaching Education, 17(1), 75–90. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mayer, R. (2019). Thirty years of research on online learning. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 33(2), 152–159. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3482 Mendoza Beltran, A., Cox, B., Mutel, C., van Vuuren, D. P., Font Vivanco, D., Deetman, S., . . . Tukker, A. (2020). When the background matters: Using scenarios from integrated assessment models in prospective life cycle assessment. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 24(1), 64–79. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jiec.12825 Mercure, J. F., Lam, A., Billington, S., & Pollitt, H. (2018). Integrated assessment modelling as a positive science: Private passenger road transport policies to meet a climate target well below 2 C. Climatic Change, 151(2), 109–129. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/ 10.1007/s10584-018-2262-7 Pahlke, E., Bigler, R. S., & Suizzo, M. A. (2012). Relations between color blind socialization and children’s racial bias: Evidence from European American mothers and their preschool children. Child Development, 83, 1164–1179. Paran, A. (2017). “Only connect”: Researchers and teachers in dialogue. ELT Journal, 71(4), 499–508. Retrieved from https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10060303/1/Paran_%27Only%20 Connect%27-%20Researchers%20and%20Teachers%20in%20Dialogue.pdf

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Peters, L. (2009). Global education. Washington, DC: ISTE. Retrieved from www.academia.edu/ download/55156549/Global_Education-Using_Technology_to_Bring_the_World_to_ Your_Students_by_Laurence_Peters.pdf Rickard, A., & Austin, R. (2017). Assessing impact of ICT intercultural work: The dissolving boundaries program. In L. Tomei (Ed.), Exploring the new era of technology-infused education (pp. 1–388). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. doi:10.4018/978-1-5225-1709-2, 102–120. Ross, J. (2020, April 1). Universities form global network to coordinate on climate change. Times Higher Education. Retrieved from www.timeshighereducation.com/news/universitiesform-global-network-coordinate-climate-change Sanderson, C. A. (2020). Why we act:Turning bystanders into moral rebels. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Smith, S. U., Hayes, S., & Shea, P. (2017). A critical review of the use of Wenger’s Community of Practice (CoP) theoretical framework in online and blended learning research, 2000–2014. Online Learning, 21(1), 209–237. doi:10.24059/olj.v21i1.963 Stephan, W. G., & Stephan, C. W. (1985). Intergroup anxiety. Journal of Social Issues, 41, 157–175. Swan, K. (2019). Social construction of knowledge and the community of inquiry framework. In I. Jung (Ed.), Open and distance education theory revisited (pp. 57–65). Singapore: Springer. Turner, R. N., & Cameron, L. (2016). Confidence in contact: A new perspective on promoting cross-group friendship among children and adolescents. Social Issues and Policy Review, 10, 212–246. van den Bogaart, A. C., Mazereeuw, M., Hummel, H. G., & Kirschner, P. A. (2019). Comparing collective and personal professional theories of experienced practitioners. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 63(3), 363–377. Velicˇkovic´, N. (2012). Obrazovanje: Nacionalizam u bošnjacˇkim, hrvatskim i srpskim cˇitankama. In Politicˇka participacija u Bosni i Hercegovini. Sarajevo: Sarajevski Otvoreni centar. Walther, J. B., Hoter, E., Ganayem, A., & Shonfeld, M. (2015). Computer-mediated communication and the reduction of prejudice: A controlled longitudinal field experiment among Jews and Arabs in Israel. Computers in Human Behavior, 550–558. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. chb.2014.08.004 White, F. A., & Abu-Rayya, H. M. (2012). A dual identity-electronic contact (DIEC) experiment promoting short-and long-term intergroup harmony. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(3), 597–608. Wolsko, C., Park, B., Judd, C. M., & Wittenbrink, B. (2000). Framing interethnic ideology: Effects of multicultural and color-blind perspectives on judgments of groups and individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 635–654.

Index

360 VR Cultural Exchange 131 ABC Cultural 131 Adenauer, Konrad 95 Adobe Youth Voices 148n5 Albert, M. 157, 158, 161, 162 Alliance party 36–7 Allport, Gordon 7, 15–17 Al-Qasemi Academic College 66, 72–3 Amigos Alrededor del Mundo 132–3 Anglo-Irish treaty (1921) 35 Arabic language 61, 64–5, 83–4, 86–7 Arabs in Israel 59–61; see also Israel, Arab Palestinian citizens Arab students: and prejudice reduction 79–84; and technology skills 85–6 assimilation 6–7, 96–8 Baby Quilts Project 130 Barcelona 161–2 Belfast 31–2, 36, 53–5 Belfast Agreement 35, 38 Berners-Lee, Tim 22 Bezos Family Foundation 128 blended learning 22–4, 31, 35, 49, 76, 141–5, 191–3; and Shared Education 42–8; and teacher attitudes in Catalonia 162–6 Bosnia and Herzegovina 192–3 Bradford race riots 98 Brexit 36–7 British Commonwealth 142 British Council 135–7, 142 Brown vs. Board of Education 6 Cameron, David 99 Catalonia 111, 123, 190–91; education and digital strategy 157–9, 161–6;

history and politics 153–7; language and cultural identity 155–7; relationship to Spain 157–9; teacher attitudes toward technology 162–7 Central Support Service (CSS) 103, 105–6 citizenship 39, 116, 178; education 111–14; global 11–14, 124, 144–5; and intercultural education 5–10; in Spanish curriculum 159–60; and teacher professional development 183 civics 12 Classroom 2000 (C2K) 42 Classroom Earth 123 Cold War 95 Collaborate 42–5, 189 collaboration 17, 40, 68–70, 69, 75–9, 173 Collaboration and Sharing in Education program (CASE) 40, 48, 52 Collaborative Learning Online for Shared Education and Reconciliation (CLOSER) 43, 48–50 conflict hypothesis/conflict theory see intergroup contact theory Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning (CCGL) 126, 135–145; blended learning 142–4; curricular focus 140–1; distance, contact, and cost 141; funding and project management 138–40; participating countries 141 contact hypothesis/contact theory see intergroup contact theory controversial issues 46–8, 71–80, 180 Coronavirus 179–80 Council for Curriculum Examinations and Assessment 42 Council of Europe 99–100 Counter-productive contact see intergroup contact theory

198

Index

creativity 107–109 Croatia 191–2 cross-community partnerships 31, 35, 39 cultural competency 8, 70, 79–84 culturally responsive pedagogy 8–10 cultural pluralism 6–7 Currie Primary School, Belfast 47–8, 52–5 decolonization 96 De Gaulle, Charles 95 Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) 36 Department for International Development (DFID), United Kingdom 135, 138–9, 141–2, 144 Department of Education, Northern Ireland 39–40, 42 Department of Education and Skills, Ireland 33 Department of Justice, Northern Ireland 36 development education 139–40 Dewey, John 124 Diccionario Afectivo 132 Dissolving Boundaries Programme 11, 33, 35 Druze see Israel, Arab Palestinian citizens East Germany 95–6; see also Germany Education and Training Framework (2020) 101, 117n3 Education and Training Inspectorate, Northern Ireland 41–2 Education Authority, Northern Ireland 41–2 Education for Mutual Understanding (EMU) 52–3 education for shared living 65–6 English language 130 environmental impact 176–7 equality 7, 9. 102, 144 Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) 107, 109–10 Erasmus+ 108, 113, 114. 117n3, 117n4, 117n5 EU Joint Research Centre, Seville (JRCSeville) 113–14 EUN Learning Events 103–6, 109, 113 European and global citizenship 117 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) 94–5, 104 European Commission (EC) European Council of Ministers 92, 104 European Economic Community 95 European Education Area 93, 113–14 European Parliament 37, 92, 156 European Pillar of Social Rights 107, 112, 117n9

European Schoolnet (EUN) 103–6, 108, 111, 113–115 European Schoolnet Academy 103 European Union 33, 36. 38, 92, 117n1, 117n2 face-to-face contact 15, 17–19, 24, 39, 41–45, 47–51, 64, 65–6, 68, 69, 75–6. 78, 81–2, 84, 86–7, 95, 142–3, 145, 147 faith schools 97 Figel’, Ján 104, 108 First Israel 88n2 Flat Schools project 183 Four Tribes of Israel 65 France 94–8, 98, 99 Franco, Francisco 156, 159 Franco-German Youth Exchange 95 Friends Around the World 132 friendships 16–17, 19, 43–5, 47, 49, 65, 177, 181 Front National 98 gaps, digital 76, 85; socio-economic 61, 62 Germany 95–6, 99 Girl Rising-Education for All 132 global awareness 137 global Education WA 126, 148n1 Global Peace Index 1 Good Friday Agreement 36 Google: Classroom 186; Drive 188; Suite 48, 153, 161; Translate 133 Government of Ireland Act (1920) 35 Gragert, Ed 128, 121, 133, 147 Green Party (Northern Ireland) 36 Hands for Peace 132 Harland and Wolff 32 Hebrew 64, 66, 83, 86–7 High Commissioner for Refugees 98 Higher order thinking (HoT) skills 76, 77–9 Holy Family Primary school, Belfast 31–32 human capital formation 93 immersion model 157–8 inclusion 8, 107, 109–111 Information Communication Technology (ICT) 42–44, 85, 104, 162, 165–7 Institute for Economics and Peace 1 intercultural education 99–101, 102, 104, 108, 110, 115 intergroup contact theory 14–20; counterproductive contact 18–20; face-to-face contact 14–16; online intergroup contact 16–18; video contact 18–19

Index International Education and Resource Network iEARN 126–135, 183; conferences/Youth Summit 133–4; coordination 133; external evaluations 129–30; funding 127–9; history 127–131; projects 125–133; teacher education 134 internationalism 3–4, 67–8, 74, 132–8, 146 Irish Free State 35 Irish Republican Army (IRA) 17; “new IRA” 36 Islam 96 Israel 59–87, 173, 176, 178; Arab Palestinian citizens 60; language learning 61–4; religious groups 50; separated educational sub-systems 61; society 60 Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) 127–8 Kibbutzim College of Education 66, 72, 73 King, Stephen 53–4 knowledge creation 175–85 Knowledge Society Network (KSN) 147 laïcité 97 language learning 116, 162 learning communities 186–187 liberal internationalism 123–4 Linguistic Normalisation Law 157–8 Lisbon Declaration/EU 2020 Strategy 104, 113 London bombings 98 Macedonia 191–2 Machinto-Hiroshima for Peace 130–1 Maghrebis 96 Manchester bombings 98 McAulliffe, Christa 123 McCallan, Kate 53–4 McKee, Lyra 36 McMahon, Nicola 53–4 McQuaid, Siobhan 52–4 MediaSmarts 22, 25n4 Merkel, Angela 88 Microsoft Office 365, 48 migration 3 minority 6, 65–6, 72, 79, 81, 96–7, 100, 192 MOFET Institute 59, 67, 75 Moodle 74, 84, 161, 164, 167 Moscow 127, 129, 147 mSchool program 162 multiculturalism 5–8, 87, 97, 99–100, 151 multicultural projects in Israel 62–87 Muslim 17, 127, 191 National Catholicism (Spain) 156 National Support Services (NSS) 103, 105

199

Neil, Liz 141–4 Nepal 136 Newfoundland, Canada 40 New York 127, 129, 133, 147 Nodes 161 North Africa/Sub-Saharan Africa 96–7, 128, 137, 141 Northern Ireland 15–16, 19, 24, 31, 33–41, 45, 48–9, 137, 140, 145 online intergroup contact see intergroup contact theory online programs to connect Arabs and Jews 66 open method of coordination 114 organic law (Catalonia) 157–9 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 110, 142 partition of Ireland 35–6 peacebuilding 4–5. 168 Peer Learning Activities (PLAs) 101 Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) 38 postsecondary education 18, 21 Powell, Enoch 97 power-sharing government 35–6 prejudice 7–9, 15, 66, 71–2, 80–1, 87, 180, 193 problem-based learning 186 Proteus effect 72 race 16 reconciliation 37, 38–9, 43, 46–7, 55 religion 32, 53, 60, 96, 159–60 religious education 12 Republicans, Irish 26 Republic of Ireland 33, 37 Rivlin, Reuven 65 Russia/Russian 98, 124 Sarkozy, Nicholas 99 Saura, P. 157, 158, 161, 162 school intranets 161 Schools Online portal 143 Second World War (1939–1945) 94–96 sectarian violence 32 seuil de tolerance 96–7 Shared Education 32–3, 34–5, 30–42; empirical research on 42–51 Shared Education Signature Project 39 shared Jewish-Arab life 62–4 shared society 86 Sinn Fein 37 Social Democratic and Labour Party 36

200

Index

social harmony 180–1 social justice 8, 10, 40–1, 48, 180–1 socio economical gaps 61 Soros, George 128 Soros Open Society Foundations (OSF) 128 Soviet Union 95–6, 127–9 Spanish Constitution 153–55, 156–58 special education needs 50, 66, 174 Stevens Institute 127–8 subsidiarity 117n1 sustainability 42, 51 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) see United Nations systemic change 31, 39 TAC plan (Catalonia) 161 TakingITGlobal 129, 148n1 Talpiot College of Education 66, 72–3 teacher education 6, 9, 73, 75–6, 34–5, 164, 179, 186 Teacher-in-Space 123 teacher professional development 51, 103, 105, 108–9 Teacher Training Initiative 103 Technology, Education & Cultural diversity program (TEC) 59, 62, 66–68; development and revision 68–71; impact 72–84; innovative technology 71–2; TEC Island 71–2; TEC4Schools 84–5 Tikva Israeli 65

Titanic 32 Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) 36 transnational (society) 25, 93 Troubles, The 37 Ulster Defence Association (UDA) 36 Ulster Scots 31 Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) 36 Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) 36 UN see United Nations UNESCO 11–14, 110, 124–5; Global Education First Initiative 13, 25n3 UNICEF 2–3, 140 Unionists 36 United Kingdom 33. 35. 36 United Nations 3, 11, 98, 132, 139; Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2, 5, 139, 173, 181, 182 United States of America (USA) 8, 35, 94, 124–6 USSR see Russia/Russian video-based contact see intergroup contact theory Virtual Learning Environment 153, 164–5 Virtual Peace Education Camp 132 West Germany 94–6; see also Germany World Economic Forum “Schools of the Future” 127