The Future of Education

Youth centre of Dravinja valley from Slovenske Konjice, Slovenia, developed an innovative approach to raise awareness on intercultural dialogue amongst youngsters aged between 15 and 25 years. Three specific learning models called Hours of intercultural dialogue were developed on how to inform about Islamic, Roma and LGBT culture. One part of the firstly mentioned model that we would like to present on the conference is a role play in which youngsters through the given roles research their knowledge about Islam and the prejudices and stereotypes about the Islamic culture in society. The youngsters are divided in groups – each containing 4 role players and 4 observers.

One part of the Roma model is a mimic game followed by writing articles about the seen. The youngsters are divided to actors and newspaper reporters. The method raises media literacy and critical thinking and also addresses one to think about the prejudice and stereotypes about Roma.

The model about raising knowledge about LGBT community contains a part in which firstly a method of case study is applied and after the case is actually acted out in groups. For the act out youngsters use their fingers as role players.The method helps breaking taboos about LGBT and promotes ways of effective integration of LGBT youngsters. All the methods were developed in non-formal education and were tested in the year 2013 as a part of formal education with 700 secondary school pupils. The leader of implementation of all the given methods is throughout only the moderator. All the activities are based on the direct activation of the youngsters and are therefore a mean of experiental learning.