Research Projects

Erasmus+ Project Culturally Responsive Leadership and Evaluation in Schools (CReLES)

The context of this project entitled Supporting Culturally Responsive Leadership and Evaluation in Schools (CReLES) relates to the increased immigration into countries of Europe with the consequent range of diversity of cultures among students in schools. In line with the current influx of migrants and refugees to Europe and the international Sustainable Development Goal of inclusive and equitable education for all, this project aims to prioritise the inclusive education of migrant students and the school leadership that facilitates that inclusive education.

This project focuses on the support and strategies needed in all levels of school leadership in order to facilitate the needs of a diverse multicultural classroom and a diverse multicultural school. The main objective of the project is the enhanced school inclusion of students with a migration background through the identification and dissemination of innovative practice in culturally responsive school leadership, the development of frameworks for the evaluation of culturally responsive leadership as well as the provision of high-quality training resources in the form of leader training and the development of a MOOC for school leaders and those interested stakeholder groups outside of the project.

Improving the educational achievement of migrant students can involve a serious, demanding challenge for classroom teachers. In this staff challenge, the exercise of school leadership at all levels of the school is crucial in addressing the needs of staff for professional learning and in providing direction and support for staff. For students with a migration background, the school can be the first place of belonging within a new country and culture.

OBJECTIVES

CReLES project aims to enhance school inclusion of students with a migration background through:

• the identification and dissemination of innovative practice in culturally responsive school leadership,
• the development of frameworks for the evaluation of culturally responsive leadership,
• the provision of high-quality training resources in the form of leader training
• the development of a MOOC for school leaders and those interested stakeholder groups outside of the project.

Erasmus+ Project Inter Cultural Community Evaluation and Planning (ICCEP)

The context of this project entitled Intercultural Community Evaluation and Planning [ICCEP], is a social, and economic scenario that is increasingly concerned with the integration of migrant students into school communities, where the quality of education is central to economic productivity (Baxter & Hult, 2017) and the emphasis is on decentralising the management of public services away from government to other stakeholders. At the same time, somewhat paradoxically, this greater autonomy to develop practices to ensure the integration of migrant students has also been accompanied by increasing requirements for localised planning and quality assurance of activities (Brown et al. 2020). This project aims to explore and offer strategies and supports on how best to put in place the mechanisms that plan, evaluate and support the integration of migration background students into educational communities. Within Europe, various models of evaluation and planning have developed and transformed within a short period while the quest for the best fit continues (Ehren et al. 2012). The cost and complexity of individual schools working in isolation to put in place mechanisms to enhance the life chances of migration background students and in parallel, the need to empower schools to work together in clusters or groups have produced the concept of group or clusters of schools coming together for both developmental and evaluation purposes.

This project aims to develop a community-based planning and evaluation system, referred to as ICCEP where schools and other stakeholders collaborative in networks for the improvement of migration background students and a member of the network or an external body act as a facilitator and mediator during the ICCEP process. The term ICCEP means involving all stakeholders in the process of evaluation and planning.

In this project, the education governance systems and the underpinning intercultural policies and documents of the participating countries will be reviewed. Teachers’, school leaders’ and other sectoral support agencies survey responses will lead towards developing a conceptual map of ICCEP. and the development of a framework of quality indicators and the detailed mechanism of ICCEP. Through case studies, the consortium will explore what training needs should be provided to upskill the existing competencies of members of the network. For this reason, this project includes developing a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and a toolkit of essential resources to plan for and integrate migrant students in communities. It will also involve training on the mechanisms required for ICCEP.

The participants in the project are academic staff from Dublin City University, Ireland; the Spanish Inspectorate of Extremadura; Johannes Kepler University, Linz (JKU); Pamukkale University, Turkey (PAU); and the University of Oslo, Norway (UiO). Each partner brings interest, knowledge, experience and infrastructure to the project. Each partner country has an established system of quality assurance and educational governance and has a high proportion of migration background students in their education systems and therefore, they are interested in exploring the scope of ICCEP as it specifically applies to all types of migrant students (refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants) across Europe and developing a framework that offers a complete mechanism for this new model of evaluation along with a comprehensive professional development system for the upstream of stakeholder competencies in ICCEP.