We’re delighted to announce, thanks mainly to the efforts of Béndicte Halbe of iriv Conseil, the French partner in Mifamily, a first instance of the Mifamily framework has been developed!

While some additional editing needs is required, a great deal of really useful information is contained in the output – some of which is presented below:

A training curriculum: main points to be tackled

• focus on professionals working with migrant parents and trying to answer their needs and expectations;
• keeping in mind the mediation approach: integrating both migrant parents and education system (school) and so remaining as neutral as possible;
• insistence on the main specificities of family learning meant to support migrant parents to support their children at school;
• valuing innovative supports of training: they might differ from one country to another and even among the same;
• enrichment of the body of knowledge on family learning, taking into account the specificities of each country;
• integration of the public approach: family learning may be different when addressing different profiles of parents (fluent or not in the language of the host country, level of education or qualification);
• accommodation of the different topics in which cultural professionals are asked to work, (support for homework, topics tackled at school, extracurricular activities, evaluation of the children…);
• enhancement of the European perspective: some European countries may be more in advance in this field but are eager to learn form the other countries’ experience;
• clarity on the expected learning outcomes for the parents (beneficiaries) and the professionals (target groups of the training);
• the delivery of a dynamic and collaborative assessment process involving both target groups and beneficiaries

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

• Being able to identify and express an experience with a holistic approach (formal, informal and non-formal learning)
• Being able to combine Vo & linguistic approach (Vintage approach)
• Being able to express an experience in terms of competence with a focus on key competence (Key Tutors approach)
• Being able to self-assess and assess experience & competence making the link with the ESCO
• Being able to apply a dynamic pedagogical strategy with a relevant training curriculum
• Being able to build an efficient action plan

Opportunities

• The MiFamily project is based on critical thinking and pragmatic method open to both migrant parents and professionals working with them
• A concrete link is made with the ESCO- qualification required on the EU national labour markets with a definition of the levels of competences
• Professionals will be able to equip migrant parents with relevant tools & methods to answer their specific needs and therefore enhance collaboration with families
• Professionals together with parents improve their knowledge and own competences by combining learning acquired outside school and inside school to combat ESL.

Weaknesses

• The profile of the learners – professionals working with migrant parents who are faced to many demands from school and/or their children
• the linguistic level of the parents might be a main issue
• the lack of knowledge of the institutional context of their children school s and the educative system in general in the country they are living in
• the lack of understanding and support of the institution (school) with diverse professional profiles – teachers, administrative staff
• being identified as “migrant parents” may be stigmatizing as they may be judged “incompetent”, ie. unable to support their children

Threats

• lack of recognition of the migratory background of the parents and special profiles
  gap between “curricular activities” (formal learning at school) and “extra-curricular activities” (non-formal and informal learning outside school)
• low levels of communication between teachers and parents; the situation is even more complicated with migrant parents
• personal issue of authority for migrant parents as their children are better informed on the national school than they are- the parents are “lost in translation”