Including Migrants through Organisational Development and Programme Planning in Adult Education
Policy Recommendations & Action Plan
The purpose of the DIVERSITY project is to provide a mentalityshift from focusing on migrants as distinct target groups and preparing them for integration into the society around them, towards including migrants into the providers’ regular programs as an equal target group to actively and directly foster diversity and inclusion in adult education and society. In many cases, adult education for migrants is subdivided into adult education for refugees and adult education for other migrants.
Thus, migrants are considered as a special target group of adult education, with specifically tailored solutions. While this approach may be appropriate when responding to and managing needs resulting from the contingency of sudden migrant inflow, it leaves migrants outside the mainstream adult education provision.
Throughout data collection/mapping, curriculum development, testing and feedback, we have gained important insights not only into the specific needs and necessities of providers in the context of opening their organisations to migration diversity but also into the necessary support on the policy levels as well as the barriers policy decisions may create and uphold. Incorporating migrants into the wider planning strategies of adult education results in a call upon policymakers of the economic sphere to align their regional strategies with changes in the makeup of the workforce.
Below, we propose a summary of the fields of interest tackled by both policy recommendations and action plan, reader can consult the full document in multilanguage version at: https://www.aewb-nds.de/themen/eu-programme/diversity/
| Policy Recommendations | |
| Fostering Diversity & Inclusion | Inclusion at programme levelInclusion at organisational levelInclusion at learning environment level |
| Funding | Switching from the cost to investment perceptionProvision of additional financial incentivesPublicly funded and centralised training Funding migrant entrepreneurship |
| National Agenda | Diversity quotaCelebrating inclusionSkills and competences |
| Train-the-trainers | Professionalization and upskilling opportunities Providing an opportunity for migrants to share their experience |
| Inclusion of migrants | Migrants as a specific learning groupAccess to informationMulti-stakeholder approach |
| Action Plan |
| Get to know your students: ensuring that cultural awareness starts with the teacher understating of each individual student |
| Maintaining vibrant communication: teachers are encouraged to engage on 1-on-1 communication that is tailored to each students’ best approach |
| Acknowledgement and respect: celebrating diversity, and when relevant, supporting students in the valorisation of their own cultural background and nuances with their peers |
| Practicing cultural diversity: embracing everyone’s cultural beliefs and language concerns – including learning styles – so as to better design lessons plan and upskilling pathways |
| Incorporate diversity in the lesson plan: fostering a planning approach to diversity – by foreseeing for instance the contribution of foreign speakers to which students can relate to |
| Give students freedom and flexibility: testing and consolidation new experimental peer-learning dynamics, so as to encourage learners to in training more sophisticated transversal skills (i.e., public speaking, team working, problem solving) |
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