29.10.18 Movetia provides financial support for the partnership between the Thurgau University of Teacher Education and Hawaii

Last summer Gerit Jaritz and Prof. Dr. Christina Colberg developed the project «Teaching and Learning for a Globalized and Sustainable World» and submitted it to the open project fund of Movetia, the Swiss Agency for exchange and mobility. The project was put together in collaboration with the University of Hawai’i at Manoa (UHM) in Honolulu which is one of the partner universities of the Thurgau University of Teacher Education. A Whole-School-Agreement with the University of Hawai’i was established in 2017 which is unique in Switzerland. The project between the Thurgau University of Teacher Education and the UMH will now be supported with a grant of CHF 136'496 for the following two years in correspondence with the amount applied for.

Due to the implementation of the project it will now be feasible that 10 students from Thurgau and Hawaii, respectively, will be able to take modules at their home universities relevant to the topic of the project. Furthermore, they will have the chance to participate in the exchange programme and visit the respective partner university for several weeks. The main aim is that the participants learn to understand global connections, mutual dependencies and existing gradients in global society and identify their own scope of action, develop shaping skills and discover their shared responsibility. This will be transferred into their own living environment in the course of a study trip.

The described project will lead to a new orientation of the already existing Master's project Global Learning. So far this Master' s project has implemented the topic Global Learning into the teaching programme at the Thurgau University of Teacher Education as part of the preceding project North-South Partnership of the Thurgau University of Teacher Education and the Escuela Superior de Formación de Maestros Simón Bolívar in La Paz (ESFMSB). During the last seven years the Thurgau University of Teacher Education has been able to successfully carry out the North-South partnership thanks to the financial support of the foundation éducation21 and the sponsorship of the Thurgauer Kantonalbank and the STUTZ AG. A reassessment of the partnership with the university in La Paz has become necessary this year as a consequence of various incidents.

Against this backdrop, the manager of the project at the Thurgau University of Teacher Education, Prof. Dr. Christina Colberg and Gerit Jaritz, have considered other possible options to continue to offer the important topics of sustainable development and global learning as a Master's project in our study courses and to benefit from the established know how. Taking advantage of the successful application the latter goal will now be achieved with the Master's project «Global Learning: Cooperative teaching and learning for a globalized and yet sustainable world with Hawaiian partners».

Text: Christina Colberg

Back