Comunidades de aprendizaje en contextos multiculturales

Workshop Internacional “Communities of learning in multicultural contexts: experiences and developments towards a culturally sensitive education. Searching for real interculturality”

The aim of this workshop to exchange and enliven a network of collaboration among a group of international scholars involved in research-intervention projects aiming, in different national contexts and communities, to develop a culturally relevant learning practices. Most participants are involved in projects that aim to build a community of learners (Wenger, 1998, Rogoff, 2003) that fosters development rooted on the learner’s cultural background. We will address epistemological and practical issues related to the inclusion in the curriculum of students´ experiences, in both, formal and non- formal learning activities. Over the last decade, a range of social and cultural perspectives on leaning as culturally sensitive activity have flourished, drawing on anthropology, linguistics, education and cultural psychology. Intersubjectivity and dialogicity among different meaning systems will emerge as a relevant topic when approaching social transformations in educative practices, both, when addressing diversity in on-going local practices as well as wider social processes of change empowerment.

The theoretical and practical debates will circulate around a group of research-teaching-intervention projects that emerged based on La Clase Magica (University of California, San Diego). All these projects approach intercultural education through the management and observation of communities of practices based on collaborative learning in most cases mediated by TIC. La Clase Magica in California and Texas (USA), La Casa de Shere Rom in Barcelona (Spain) with gypsy communities in and out of school, the Community Centers in Ausburg (Germany) and the emerging project of Universidad Pablo de Olavide-Poligono Sur in Seville (Spain), show different settings where new educative experiences settle in incorporating local cultures and practices to the learning processes.