Glocalising the Erasmus experience through the E-LOCAL project

According to some scholars, the project of internationalisation promoted by the Bologna Process can be viewed as a “systemic, sustained effort at making higher education more responsive to the requirements and challenges related to the globalisation of societies, economy and labour markets” (Kälvemark & van der Wende 1997: 19). In this perspective, student mobility is seen as a means to ensure the competitiveness of the Community on the world market through the training of European-minded professionals. In other words, when considering the Erasmus programme, the economic and professional rationale tends to prevail on the political and civic rationale of creating European citizens (Papatsiba 2005). Due to this dominant utilitarian approach, however, the programme “is discordant with the content as well as with the humanistic and cultural mission implied by using the portrait of Erasmus” (Wielemans 1991: 177). By reversing the priorities and dovetailing economic urgencies with the cultural purposes, however, student mobility can become a means to accelerate European integration and foster international understanding, which are also crucial desiderata in a global competitive environment. These goals can be attained with projects preparing students to become ‘culture carriers’, whose global mindset incorporates awareness of the local realities that build the People’s Europe. Intercultural competence and knowledge of local languages are the key ingredients for the individual appropriation of an enlarged action-space, and these are also the main objectives of the E-LOCAL project, abbreviated from Electronically Learning Other Cultures and Languages. This multilateral, two-year project funded by the EU (www.e-localproject.eu) belongs the sub-programme Key Activity 2 for Languages of the Lifelong Learning programme. The aim is to promote multilingualism and LWULT (Less Widely Used and Less Taught) languages by creating original and uniform learning tools and materials for six languages and cultures: Dutch (Belgium), Finnish (Finland), Hungarian (Hungary), Italian (Italy), Polish (Poland), and Portuguese (Portugal). The partnership involves six universities and three secondary schools, and the target consists of university students that, in planning their Erasmus experiences are willing to appreciate the role of cultural diversity in a globalized world. Our communication will discuss the key values of the project, the methodological aspects and the specific approach to building competence of cultures and languages that are not in the mainstream of general awareness.