Cross professional competences for inclusion, diversity and sustainability towards  Education and Development for All

John Willumsen

The Danish National Centre of inclusive Practise

UCC-Copenhagen, Denmark

E-mail: JWPW@dk-online.dk, www.NVIE.dk

And

Christian Quvang

UCSyddanmark, Denmark

e-mail: CQUV@ucsyd.dk,  www.NVIE.dk

Drawing upon some of our data and discussions in a number of European projects on inclusion and intercultural education and on empirical studies on the development cross professional competences this paper will discuss some of the conditions especially for the development of such competences in projects promoting cooperation between different kinds of ressource advisors and teachers and preschool teachers and in projects aiming at their development within teacher education and education for preschool teachers.

The discussion will focus especially on research projects within DNCIP upon the development of necessary competences for cross professional cooperation i.e. in Copenhagen and one of its suburbs – the municipality of Ballerup, North West of Copenhagen as well as in other parts of Denmark, i.e. in the western part of the country. For the past 5-6 years the municipalities have supported the development of cross professional working within the schools and the pre- and after school activities as a way to promote social inclusion and diversity.

Some of the experience and results give evidence that, like in many other European contexts, some success in terms of an improved professional intervention has been produced within the projects, in terms of increased inclusion within the professional practise. In Copenhagen as well as the suburb and most of the municipalities in Denmark resource centers within and around the schools – in Denmark i.e. the municipal PPR – the pedagogic and the psychological advisory center increasingly try to develop the way of organizing the positions of the advisor in relation to the practicians, the teachers and the preschool teachers. The study explores, the conditions of problems and success in terms of the competences developed asking: What was actually established as a meaningful cross-professional community of practise (Wenger) and what type of competences can we observe being developed in order to deal with the task of cross professional cooperation  and inclusion.

As a link to these first studies within the profession, we also focus upon the established cross professional in-service courses within teacher education and social worker/pre school teacher education to see if similar competences and cross professional communities of practise are promoted from working together on the subject cross professional cooperation and inclusion between students, teachers and preschool teachers.

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