INTERACTIVE LEARNING FOR INTERCULTURAL TEACHER TRAINING

The world in which our students must live has suffered a deep transformation in the past decades. Social changes are often present in the classroom before society realizes the problem. Teachers are taken by surprise and unprepared (Esteve, 1997).
Teachers, and students preparing to be future teachers, must stand up to the challenge: to educate our pupils in intercultural skills. In order to do so, they must be trained themselves (Sercu, 2006).
Moreover, teachers sometimes show negative feelings towards diversity, making intercultural education an almost-impossible goal. We need to answer the question “What kind of society am I helping create?” (Essomba, 2006; Muñoz Sedano, 2000).
The creation of interactive materials has answered a need among these teachers. However, materials need to be carefully selected, structured and analyzed (UNESCO, 2006). We will produce an online workshop for this purpose, working attitudinal aspects, information and intercultural skills. In our opinion, these are the three pillars of intercultural education. Wanting to know, knowing and being able to interact interculturally are essential for our teachers and, therefore, for our students.