In conjunction with the British Council Sweden, the Swedish Ministry of Education and the Swedish National Commission for UNESCO, resources from three tried and tested education products have been pooled and translated into English to produce what we hope is a new and useful global resource for teachers.
The three projects on which the Discovering Diversity project are based are:
- Rooms (”originally titled “Utrymme”, which in Swedish means both “to have room in which to live”, and “room to express one’s views”) celebrates both the similarities and diversity of teenagers from 15 different countries, including Australia, Egypt, England, India, Sweden, South Africa and Belarus. The project resulted in a book of the same name which details a series of interviews with teenagers discussing their relationships with their friends, parents and schools, and how they feel about the country in which they live. A picture of them in their bedroom accompanies the texts, which catalogues some of their most prized possessions. The book has subsequently been translated into English and is due to be published soon. You can find an extract of the English version of the book in the Student Zone.
- Together (originally titled “Tillsammans”) was a highly successful anti-bullying initiative that reached over 3000 schools in Sweden, and included role-playing games, videos and thought provoking exercises for students and teachers to work with.
- All Different, All Equal was an Education Pack for Teachers on the theme of tolerance, produced by ECRI (the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance) in 1993. The contents of this pack have since been updated and abridged by their original author Mark Taylor for inclusion in Discovering Diversity.
Discovering Diversity is a three-year project aimed at providing teaching materials for use by teachers and pupils with the objective of exploring issues of diversity and tolerance.
It is intended as a direct response to the Stockholm International Forum on Combating Intolerance. During the conference, a call was made to educators “to instil in our youth respect and appreciation for diversity and the conviction that intolerance is an evil that must be fought” (Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum: Combating Intolerance, 2001).Along with the other 60 countries that attended and ratified the declaration, Britain and Sweden agreed to “support education and research to this end, as keys to combating intolerance” (ibid.)
The Teacher’s Pack which accompanies this project will be tested at over twenty schools from around the world during the months of April and May 2003. The pack introduces the main themes of Diversity and Tolerance to teachers, as well as providing them with several concrete exercises that they can then conduct in a classroom environment. The on-line resources you’ll find on this web site complement the core information in the Teacher’s Pack. Once the schools have completed the trial period, feedback will be gathered in the shape of questionnaires and a (possible) group session in either Stockholm or Paris where selected delegates will have the opportunity to provide more detailed input.
