Module 1: Promoting a Whole School Approach

Studies prove that the Whole School Approach has positive effects on the learning outcomes across the school and that it will better support wider school improvement. Specifically for students with migrant backgrounds, it has been found that it is important to involve all relevant actors of the school community (e.g. teachers, school heads, other education professionals, parents and the local community) because it addresses migrant students’ holistic needs and ensures students’ continued progress.

This module is therefore designed to teach educators and facilitators more about the Whole School Approach, with particular emphasis on how to apply it themselves and how it can help to integrate students with migrant backgrounds in European schools. The first part of the module is designed to briefly introduce the subject. Then the following parts are structured in such a way that they each answer a question. By starting from a concrete question, it is always clear to the learner what the learning objective of each part of the module is. Thus, part 1.2 addresses the question ‘What is a Whole School Approach?’. This part defines the approach and discusses all its characteristics. Then, in the next part, the learners get an answer to the question ‘Why use a Whole School Approach?’. To answer this question, the advantages and disadvantages of this approach are listed. In part 1.4, they’ll receive an answer to the question ‘How to realise a Whole School Approach?’ by learning more about the step-by-step plan for designing and implementing a Whole School Approach. Finally, the last part of this module answers the most important question for our project, namely “How can a Whole School Approach help to integrate students with a migrant background in European schools?”. Knowledge from previous parts is concretely linked in this section to the problem of integrating students with a migrant background in European Schools.