Erasmus+ Mobility: A Whole-School Intercultural Approach

Description

Creating a successful Erasmus+ mobility is not only about organizing travel, completing documents, or finding the right partner school.

The most valuable international experiences happen when students, teachers, and host schools are prepared to understand cultural differences, manage expectations, and turn each exchange into learning for the whole school community.

This course is designed to give Erasmus+ coordinators and school leaders practical ways to build intercultural competence and prepare their whole school for international mobility.

This way, they will be guided to host and follow up international mobilities through an intercultural lens. For these very same reasons, it is designed for schools that send staff or students abroad, host international visitors, or do both.

The course will explore the hidden assumptions that usually lie behind cultural friction (e.g., different ideas of time, hierarchy, communication, feedback, trust, hospitality, participation, and conflict) and what outgoing staff and students actually need to know before they travel.

Since trust gets built differently from one culture to the next, the course also focuses on a good welcome, so that visiting staff and students feel at home from the very first day.

Participants will learn how to move from quick judgement to curiosity, active listening, and better questions.

The course intends to follow the full mobility cycle, as case studies, role play, and hands-on exercises will be used to turn abstract knowledge into practical skills.

Participants will design pre-departure briefings for outgoing staff and students, create welcoming routines for visitors, practise responses to awkward intercultural moments and build shared norms for hosting.

Peer exchange with colleagues from different European contexts will be an important part of the learning process.

Also, a key focus will be the “whole-school impact”.

In fact, the idea is that mobility should not remain the private experience of the people who travel.

Participants will learn simple ways to collect learning, debrief experiences, share insights with colleagues and students, and turn international mobility into a resource for school culture.

By the end, participants have practical tools they can start using immediately, ideas to share with their team, and the confidence to prepare their whole school for international mobility, in a way that’s inclusive of everyone involved.

Concept by Tjasa Strle

Learning outcomes

The course will help participants to:

• Understand how cultural assumptions can influence Erasmus+ mobility, hosting and international collaboration;
• Identify common sources of cultural friction in school exchanges and respond with curiosity rather than judgement;
• Prepare staff and students for mobility through structured pre-departure briefings;
• Design welcoming routines and shared hosting norms for international visitors;
• Use active listening and curious questioning in intercultural situations;
• Respond more confidently to awkward or unexpected moments during exchanges;
• Involve colleagues, students and the wider school community in mobility learning;
• Turn mobility experiences into whole-school learning through debriefing, reflection and follow-up activities;
• Create a practical Erasmus+ Mobility Culture Pack for their own school context.

Tentative schedule

Day 1 – Introduction to the course

• Introduction to the course and the Academy;
• Introduction to the host city and the week’s cultural activities;
• Icebreaker activities;
• Presentations of the participants’ schools and institutions.

Why internationalization needs a team, not just a traveler

• Erasmus+ mobility as a whole-school process, not only an individual trip;
• The mobility cycle: before, during, and after the exchange;
• The culture iceberg: visible behaviors and hidden assumptions;
• Meeting cultural friction with curiosity, not judgement.

Day 2 – Hidden assumptions and unwritten rules

• Case study: the cultural friction nobody expected;
• Surfacing the unwritten rules of your own school (punctuality, hierarchy, feedback);
• How trust is built differently across cultures;
• Personal cultural triggers and automatic reactions;
• Active listening and curious questioning in intercultural situations;
• Role play: responding to an awkward moment without escalating it.

Day 3 – Preparing staff before they travel

• What outgoing staff and students need to know before mobility;
• Designing a pre-departure briefing: expectations, communication, observation and reflection;
• When being “direct” helps, and when it can backfire;
• Preparing participants to notice differences without stereotyping;
• Inclusion in mobility preparation: language confidence, anxiety, special needs, and first-time travelers.

Day 4 – Hosting well: preparing the school to receive

• Shifting perspective: what visitors need from the host school;
• Welcoming routines from first email to first day;
• Shared norms for hosting staff and students from other countries;
• Making visitors feel included in lessons, staff rooms and school life;
• Workshop: creating a hosting checklist and welcome protocol.

Day 5 – From trip to transformation: bringing it back home

• Bringing learning back to the whole school;
• Debriefing after mobility: what to ask, collect and share;
• Turning individual experiences into school development;
• Sharing mobility learning with colleagues, students and families;
• Building the Erasmus+ Mobility Culture Pack;
• Action planning: one concrete next step for participants’ schools;
• Course evaluation: round-up of acquired competencies, feedback, and discussions;
• Awarding of the course Certificate of Attendance.

Day 6 – Structured cultural activities

• Structured cultural activity(ies) according to the hosting location;
• Learning journal: individual written reflection on the course experience;
• Course reflection: self-reflection and review of course materials and resources.

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