For University Educators

COLAB recognises that across the globe many of our educational contexts and settings are increasingly diverse. COLAB uses a virtual, online platform to support preservice teachers to develop and begin their teaching career with insights into the complexities of working with those who are culturally other to themselves. Importantly, COLAB recognises that not all university students have the opportunity to travel abroad or engage in university sponsored international programs. Instead, COLAB's inclusive approach aims to provide all students with intercultural experiences through an online, virtual platform that is embedded in their existing teacher education course content.

COLAB was developed as an online unit specifically aimed at introducing intercultural and global learning into teacher education. It involves early childhood and primary school preservice teachers engaging in ways that support their developing interculturality, insights, understandings, and sensitivities.

COLAB tasks include:

  • Use of assigned readings

  • Reflections on personal/professional experiences

  • Timelines and assignments

  • Course and online threaded discussions.

  • Comprehension of materials

  • Thoroughness in completing all tasks

  • Respectful, considerate, collaborative and culturally sensitive language and intercultural exchanges

2023 COLAB Discussions on CANVAS involve:

Assignment One:

  • PART A - week 1: Welcome, introductions (personal/professional and cultural information, and experiences of past/present cross-cultural encounters)
  • PART B - week 2: Sharing childhood memories

Assignment Two:

  • PART C - week 3: Documenting a "day in the life of an early childhood setting in your context"
  • PART D - week 4: Researching and presentation of social justice issues in local area
  • PART E: Final reflection paper


"I feel like many assumptions I held about what teaching young children looks like where all based on my own cultural assumptions and I lacked awareness of how these personal views effect my teaching. I think that from personal experience I hold assumptions about availability of food, school supplies, parental involvement, parent-teacher interactions, and teacher-student interactions."

-COLAB Student