In 2019 MCU entered the Erasmus+ International Consortium that received a Capacity Building grant in the field of higher education aimed at cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices. The grant will be applied to implement the project Supporting Culturally Responsive Leadership and Evaluation in Schools (CReLES), which relates to the increased immigration into countries of Europe with the consequent range of diversity of cultures among students in schools.
This capacity building initiative is the next step of cooperation between MCU and Dublin City University (DCU) that has evolved based on the institutions’ mutual interests in interrelation of metropolitan cities and education, pursued within the series of International Symposiums Education and City. The International Consortium also includes Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria, and University of Salamanca, Spain.
For the next 4 years, the partner universities will work on the CRELES project, building an efficient framework to support culturally responsive leadership in European and Russian schools. The main objective of the project is the enhanced school inclusion of students with a migration background via
- Identification and dissemination of innovative practice in culturally responsive school leadership,
- Development of frameworks for the evaluation of culturally responsive leadership
- Provision of high-quality training resources in the form of leader training and the development of a MOOC for school leaders
The planned activities include development of a multi-language website featuring methodologies, guidelines, research articles, statistics, crosscultural analytics and results of the research work conducted within the framework of the Project.
At the kick-off meeting held in the end of November at MCU, the working teams from the partner universities discussed the planned agenda and the most efficient ways to implement the project stages. The MCU’s team was represented by Rector Igor Remorenko, Deputy Director of the Institute of System Projects Igor Shiyan, Department’s Senior Researcher Irina Vorobyeva, Vice-Rector for Development Kirill Barannikov, Head of the International Relations Department Daria Milyaeva, and Department’s specialist Natalia Ageeva. The delegates from Ireland were Joe O’Hara, Director of The Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection and member of the School of Policy and Practice in the DCU Institute of Education; the experts of the Center Denise Burns and Martin Brown. The University Linz was represented by Herbert Altrichter, Professor at the Education Department, and Master’s graduate Alexandra Postlbauer. The University of Salamanca’s team included Maria Jose Rodriguez Conde, Professor at the University of Investigation Methods and Diagnostics in Education, and PhD graduate Adriana Garcia Gamazo.
During the working sessions the participants discussed
- Overview of the legal educational frameworks in partner countries
- Literature review of research on culturally-responsive leadership policies
- Data collection on culturally-responsive environments and multicultural schools in partner countries
- Possible scope for research articles within the problem field
- Evaluation of the existing culturally-responsive policies at the educational institutions in partner countries
- Design and conducting of trainings for school leadership
