Meetings

Transnational Meeting in Paris (September, 2008.)

The second transnational meeting of the partners, held between 1st-3rd September in Paris, represented the end of the activities planned for the research phase. Though the work involved during this phase was very demanding, it was also extremely interesting and fulfilling for the partners involved. Moreover, the interviews have generated very rich and valuable data, which has considerable transferable value for other projects and applications. During the meeting, partners were actively engaged in the process of agreeing a common definition of Intercultural Competence, and in discussing the final results of the research phase (Work Package 2).

After this important achievement, the partners began the activities associated with Work Package 3, which is called Assessment Methodology. Once the partners had agreed on the joint use of questions and situations to assess intercultural competencies, they shared out the competences areas amongst themselves for further development, and started providing initial inputs concerning the contents, numbers, types of questions and situations, and the IT development considerations of the assessment tool.

Over the next six months, until January 2009, this phase of the work will be devoted to transferring the modifications of the framework model into the digital assessment tool, translating contents into the partners' languages, creating the definitive format of the assessment tool, and designing and editing the contents. By the end of this phase we will have produced a prototype of an assessment tool which is designed to assess the intercultural competence levels and different training needs of professionals facing intercultural situations. The validation of the prototype along with the creation of the definitive format of the assessment tool will form the objectives of Work Package 4.

Kick-off Meeting in Budapest (January, 2008.)

The Kick off meeting of the project held in Budapest (Hungary) in January 2008, represented the launch of the activities foreseen in the research phase. The study phase will end up in September 2008 with the integration in a framework model on intercultural competence of the results achieved from the interviews submitted to the professionals. Notwithstanding the heterogeneity of countries and sectors involved, the partners have designed, developed and are using the same tools for the interviews (interview grid, methodology, samples) and the analysis (common processing methods). This approach allows the comparability and transferability of products, results, practices and processes at a transnational and inter-sectoral level.

Currently, the partners are finalising the collection of interviews to professionals belonging to different sectors. They are in particular intended to: find information on the specificity of intercultural competence required by the different intercultural situations and integrate this information into the framework model. Afterwards, it is foreseen that each partner will analyse the interviews collected and share the results with the others. By the end of August a common framework model on intercultural competence will be written and edited.