International projects
Border Education - Space, Memory and Reflections on Transculturality
Researchers (2)
Organisations (1)
Abstract
Within the EU, one main goal has been to reduce the role of political borders in its citizens’ everyday life. The removal of border control in the Schengen area is its most visible expression. Although important steps have been made, the vision of “borderless EU” is far from accomplished. The deterring economic situation in the EU gave new impulse to nationalistic and Eurosceptic movements in EU member states and candidate countries. Soon after the crisis started, media and politicians, by default, mostly found the culprit over the border or among members of minority groups.
The dramatic shift in attitude towards “others” can’t be explained if borders are perceived as lines on maps separating nation states. Borders are – first and foremost – a complex and dynamic mental phenomenon, (re)produced through creation of binary distinctions between the “I”/“We” and the „Other(s)“/“Them”. People constantly draw (mental) borders between themselves and others in accordance with their individual experience, perception, memory, belief, by taking into account the collective ones they identify with – and thus practice inclusion or exclusion.
BE-SMaRT is on the ball regarding the fact that understanding mental borders needs a transdisciplinary approach of different aspects of borders and thus to comprehend their impact on (young) peoples’ life-experiences and constructions of identities within ever more globalized societies. Therefore bottom-up reflective educational approaches in the professional development of teachers and teacher students will be developed to challenge memories and “traditional” conceptions of “Europe”'s borders. The major innovative issue of BE-SMaRT is not just to bring together the concept of “borders” with individual/collective memory but to do this within teacher education and thus to act in an pedagocical context. The project’s target groups (teacher, teacher students, education providers,…) show this particular educational potential. In this way, BE-SMaRT is complementary to other initiatives dealing with borders, border perceptions and/or memories, which are not targeting „educational multipliers“.
The project approach is multidisciplinary but anchored in Teacher Education and includes teacher students and teachers in service (as focus groups), curricula and textbooks (as political references and basis media for schools), the collection of border related life-stories/memories (as working material for teachers and teacher students) will be included in and form the basis of analysis.
