The University College of Teacher Eduaction Styria has been taking part in the European Erasmus programme for more than 20 years now. Currently we hold about 60 inter-institutional agreements with international universities. Mobility programmes and especially student mobility have always been at the core of the institutional interational strategy. Since the beginnings of the programme about 500 of our students have sucessfully studied abroad and about 300 international students have attended courses at the University College of Teacher Eduaction Styria.
Before the new European programme Erasmus+ started in 2014, each European university had to apply for the Erasmus Charter for Higher Education (ECHE). The Erasmus Policy Statement (EPS), which is identical with the institutional interational strategy, had to be reviewed, including the guiding priniciples for student mobilites, which are briefly described here.
According to the principles of the Austrian´s government education reform programme for teacher education titled “Teacher Training - NEW”, the respective law was passed in summer 2013, enhancement of internationalisation and mobility is a core aspect of the new curricula for basic pedagogical competences.
Focus is set on the following international competences (Van der Zee & Van Oudenhoven, 2000, 2001)
+Cultural empathy: the ability to empathize with the feelings, thoughts and behaviour of individuals with a different cultural background.
+Open-mindedness: having an open and unbiased attitude towards diverse groups and their respective cultural standards and values.
+Social initiative: this is defined as ‘the tendency to introduce oneself from the point of view of another culture’, e.g. the ability to make contact with people from other cultures.
+Flexibility: the ability to switch from one pattern of behaviour to another taking into account the requirements of the (sub-)cultural context.
+Emotional stability: the ability to deal with mental stress, since in an intercultural context one is after all confronted with different cultural and interpersonal situations which have to be addressed.
Educational cooperation within the framework of the European Mobility Programs and active participation in European projects and networks has been the main focus throughout the recent years. This focus is now being extended to cooperation with non-EU countries. Currently the University College of Teacher Education in Styria cooperates with about 60 partner institutions within Europe and holds a Memorandum of Understanding with two universities in Asia (Indonesia, Thailand). Neighbouring countries such as the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland constitute one focus for decisions on geographical areas as well as a balanced variety of countries all over Europe. Extended focus is placed on cooperation with non-EU countries based on the same quality requirements as with EU countries.
The most important target groups of the mobility activities at the University College of Teacher Education in Styria are students in the first and second academic cycle and staff members (teachers and administrative staff). Their mobility is supported by a great number of measures such as enhanced information policy, language courses or academic tutoring for studies abroad.
Our institution supports the development of a variety of courses held in English as a working language thus facilitating participation of international students to become an even more attractive partner for other institutions in the field.To enforce this idea the curriculum of an international course called "International Teacher Competences" (30 ECTS - Credits) is now being developed for international and Austrian students.
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