“Decolonise Your Mind”: A “Study- Teach-Andresearch” Project Between Germany and Laos

Speaker: Dr Isabel MARTIN (University of Education Karlsruhe, Germany)

The “Teaching English in Laos”-project (Angels-for-Children Foundation & University of Education Karlsruhe) began in 2015 at three Lao schools with five German graduates and is based on a bi-directional and cascading 4-tier structure of learning and teaching, with mentored pre-, while-, and post-phases. By 2018, it had grown into a multi-module-project involving more Lao partners at college-, university-, and ministry/party-level as well as research partners abroad. Modules are separately funded by the AfC-Foundation, the BMZ, DAAD, and Erasmus+. As time moved forward, more school subjects were added to the teaching and research portfolio (maths, biology, chemistry, physics, technics, economics), and after two years of bilateral learning, emerging mutual understanding, and ongoing decolonization of minds, first research results were presented. Simultaneously, the teacher educators developed new classes for helping preservice teachers to become more globally competent for their future task of “Global Citizenship” education at schools. For this, the educators need to become more globally competent themselves. www.thelaosexperience.com