The Faculty of Humanities (FH) at Notre Dame University-Louaize (NDU), as part of the Erasmus+ Program Mobility for Learners and Staff, organized on July 5, 2018, a seminar delivered by Dr. Alonso Mateo Gómez from the University of Castilla–La Mancha (UCLM), Spain, in the Abou Khater Auditorium Conference Room, Zouk Campus.
This seminar comprised two topics, one on “Bilingual Education in Spain: Achievements and Challenges;” and the other on “Teaching Social Sciences through International School Projects.”
Topic one covered the educational system in Spain and analyzed its features based on the quest toward multilingualism in an interconnected and globalizing world. Dr. Gómez also provided a brief historical review of the 1978 Spanish constitution and the reality of the 17 autonomous regions, as structures of a decentralized system. He then presented the Spanish bilingual education programs and underlined the main differences among autonomous community models. He discussed the outcomes and achievements of bilingualism implementation as well as the obscurities and negative effects of the system. He concluded with the challenges facing bilingual education in Spain based on the previous analysis.
Topic two tackled the experience of Spanish schools in developing international Erasmus+ and Etwinning projects. He presented teh steps toward the realization of projects were presented and explained the main school associations based on common topics. He also discussed the multiple projects developed internationally on the Etwinning platform since their implementation in 2013. Also deliberated were the two main Erasmus+ projects related to social sciences, recent European history through personal histories (2014-16), and historical board games for peace: making history alive (2016-18). Other pending projects were briefly reviewed: a school exchange program with Germany during the course 2017-18 and a new Erasmus+ application: “The Influence of Emotions in History (2018-20).”