Teaching and Learning for Intercultural Understanding: Engaging Young Hearts and Minds

Teaching and Learning for Intercultural Understanding is a comprehensive resource for educators in primary and early years classrooms. It provides teachers with a complete framework for developing intercultural understanding among pupils and includes practical and creative strategies and activities to stimulate discussion, awareness and comprehension of intercultural issues and ideas.

Drawing on the most current research and work in the field of intercultural competence and existing models of intercultural understanding, this book explores topics such as:

• understanding culture and language
• the importance of personal and cultural identity
• engaging with difference
• cultivating positive attitudes and beliefs
• embedding awareness of local and global issues in students
• designing a classroom with intercultural understanding in mind.

With detailed ready-to-use, enquiry-based lesson plans, which incorporate children's literature, talking points and media resources, this book encourages the practitioner to consider intercultural understanding as another lens through which to view the curriculum when creating and choosing learning materials and activities. Teaching and Learning for Intercultural Understanding sets out to help the reader engage young hearts and minds with global and local concepts in a way that is easily integrated into the life of all primary schools – from New York to New Delhi, from Birmingham to Bangkok.

Debra Rader is a former primary school headteacher with over 30 years’ experience teaching and working with children and families from multicultural and multilingual backgrounds. She is an international educational consultant and develops programmes and workshops linked to intercultural understanding.