Utilising Cultural Diversity in Education Teams

This project aims to empower vocational education teams to recognize, value, and leverage cultural diversity. By developing intercultural competence, teams contribute to education as an inclusive work environment, stronger collaboration, and a greater creative and innovative capacity for teams.

Mees Kok is pursuing his PhD within the Edubron research group at the Department of Training and Education Sciences of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Antwerp. At the HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, he works as a PhD candidate/researcher at the Research Group Working in Education.

The project delivers three powerful building blocks to enhance intercultural collaboration and utilising differences in vocational education teams:

• A theoretical and practice-based framework for working in culturally diverse teams
• Design principles for relevant and applicable interventions
• A rich and nuanced description of development opportunities for culturally diverse teams

The project follows a collaborative and learning-oriented approach. Through literature review, ethnographic field notes, and co-creation with teaching teams, we develop sturdy but practically applicable knowledge. These are tried and refined in real-world settings to ensure they truly meet the needs of teams.

Teams in vocational education can profit a lot from cultural differences, but only when team members are open to each other, share ideas, and adapt together. Equal collaboration can help teams truly utilise diversity.This research elicits the steps teams can take to achieve this.