Page 72 - Diversity in Action

Martina Irsara, Valentina Gobbett Bamber, and Barbara Caprara

10-hour course delivered in a hybrid format, in which Italian-speaking under-
graduate students preparing to become kindergarten and primary school
teachers participated both on-site at the faculty and in online collaborations
with peers from Austria and Croatia, using Microsoft Teams.
Although students also met online outside of class hours, the course was
primarily synchronous, with a blend of face-to-face and online supervision
provided by academic professors and educators. The hybrid course enabled
lecturer-mediated synchronous collaborations in small groups with partici-
pants from different countries and universities. Six sub-groups were created,
with 4–6 students in each. The key educational objectives were for students
to:

1. analyse the content and language of picturebooks from those listed
and identify those that promote a GCED perspective for specific YLs,
2. selectanappropriatepicturebook,anddesignactivitiestofosterglobal
awareness and global competencies in YLs within the language class-
room, and
3. collaborate with peers to develop effective read-aloud/storytelling
techniques and language mediation strategies that enhance the acces-
sibility of picturebooks and encourage learners’ active participation in
read-alouds and literacy-based activities.

A list of picturebooks was made available in the transnational teacher de-
velopment course. The picturebooks were intended to supply variety for
the course tasks: some address local/global issues explicitly, some recount
true stories, while others embed GCED themes and values more implicitly.
Course tasks included picturebook selection and read-aloud tasks, and for-
mative assessment projects entailing the planning and presenting by each
sub-group of a short story-based lesson plan for specific YLs. Course par-
ticipants read aloud, evaluated (with lecturer mediation) and selected five
picturebooks according to the criteria briefly described above. Two groups
chose the same picturebook. Students selected picturebooks that can give
rise to reflections on: emotional intelligence, friendship, care (Wolf and Bear,
Rolfe, 2023); multifaceted aspects of humanity’s relationship with and curios-
ity about the natural world (This Moose Belongs To Me, Jeffers, 2012; Look Up!
Bryon,2019).Studentswerealso drawn to picturebooksthat prominentlyfea-
tured important themes, such as the right to education for all as enacted vo-
cation (Malala’s Magic Pencil, Yousafzai, 2017), and child/family poverty (It’s a
No Money Day, Milner, 2019). The latter picturebook features a child narrating

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