About the project
NoZa - Intercultural Mobility Project received funding from the DIKU programme NOTED - Norwegian Partnership Programme for International Teacher Education (text in Norwegian) in 2019. NOTED aims to strengthen educational collaborations and student mobility between teacher educations in Norway and abroad.
The project was granted 2 mill. NOK, for the collaboration between Østfold University College (HiOF) and State University of Zanzibar (SUZa) in the period 2019-2023, which was extended to 2024 due to Covid-19 postponements.
Aims of the project
The NoZa-project works towards the overall aim to influence the student teachers' understanding of the multicultural classroom in both institutions.
Underlying aims are:
Aim a) Strengthening the future teachers’ intercultural competence through joint program and practical training in a foreign country
Aim b) To increase the teacher educator’s capacity of inclusive and innovative teaching practices as good rolemodels for future teachers
Aim c) To conduct research investigating the relevance of the students’ and staff’s experiences from the mobilities, on their understanding of the multicultural classroom
In order to achieve this goal the project consists of workpackages ensuring student mobilities through exchange as well as a joint course, teacher educators sharing best practices and joint research.
Workpackages:
Workpackage 1: Student exchange/joint program/practical, linked to Aim a).
Workpackage 2: Capasity building/innovative and creative approaches to teaching, linked to Aim b).
Workpackage 3: Research and dissemination, linked to Aim 3).
Workpackage 4 consist of administration and project coordination, and is organizationally placed between the overall goal of the project and the three underlying aims.
Student exchange
The project has successfully received three Zanzibari students, completing 5 months of exchange in Halden. Aisha Rashid, Zuwena Abdalla and Enock Mathias were studying Nordic Citizenship Education, with the modules Open Air Wisdom and Deep Ecology - Environmental Ethics and politics and Staging Citizenship – art and democracy.
The project team is currently recruiting new students from Zanzibar to apply for exchange scholarships to Østfold University College, hopefully sending some in January 2023 and others in August 2023.
Joint course
One of the main outcomes of the project is a joint course entitled Learning together – educating for multicultural democracies. The course will be a 15ECTS option for students taking Professional pedagogics in their 6th semester at HiOF, and an elective course within the master programme of Youth, Gender and Development for students from SUZa. It will be taught mainly at the campus in Zanzibar, with lectures given by staff from both institutions. Within the course Norwegian students will also receive practical experiences from classrooms in Zanzibar, and some Zanzibari students will be offered a scholarship for practical training in Norway for 5 weeks. Topics range from comparison of school systems to traditional pedagogies to postcolonial perspectives. Dialogical and interactive methods are preferred for teaching and learning.
Sharing best practice
Joint research projects
The participants of the project have initiated joint research projects, planning publications oriented at common research interests. One of these projects, Implementing pre-primary curriculum through indigenous pedagogies, was presented by Gunhild Brænne Bjørnstad and Maryam Jaffar Ismail at the digital Pre PAL conference in 2021.
News
Oppdate on news from the project.