UNESCO Transdisciplinary Chair Human Development and Culture of Peace University of Florence

Community practices of UNESCO Chairs on Inter-religious and Inter-cultural Dialogue for mutual understanding – CoPr: Community of Practices of Research on line - (international network) UNESCO, Paris

The aim of the "UNESCO Chairs of Inter-religious and Intercultural Dialogue for Mutual 
Understanding" network is to allow students, researchers and teachers to benefit from a 
wide range of learning material on the inter-religious theme.
The issues are secular and multi-religious at the same time and are intercultural.

We are aware and convinced that there is a qualitative change in the teachers’ 
interactions, inter-relationships and their responses to conflict situations in and 
outside the classroom, thanks to the programmes developed by these universities and 
institutes.
UNESCO would like to know what ‘Good Practices’ you have adopted or developed during your 
teaching assignments.

Identifying ‘good practices’ is a necessary part of organisational learning and the 
pursuit of programme excellence. Good practices distil innovative and validated 
approaches - be they in programming, training, advocacy or management, in the long term.

All good practices are an attempt to better understand what works (and what does not 
work!), how, why and in what conditions: they allow us learning from experience, pursuing 
the best approaches in each situation and they have to be repeatable even out of their 
original context.

What is your experience on the subject of education for inter-religious dialogue from the 
local and regional levels, based on your teaching discipline’

This would contribute to the UNESCO inter-sectoral platform, for there can then be a 
fruitful discussion on its current theme of education in the inter-religious context.

We intend to formally publish all contributions; to start with, the publication will be 
online, titled ‘Good practices on Education for the Inter-religious Dialogue’ and will be 
circulated within the international community.

Objectives of the research

       The general content of this research is  the interreligious and intercultural 
dialogue. As this is a first attempt to create a research database, we not only intend to 
sift through the common points but also the different approaches taken by the 
participants.

Therefore, we proposed two different levels of analysis which are connected yet distinct:

1.  The first level of analysis will consist of participants with their inputs of 
theoretical interpretations which will encompass the funding concepts of the research, 
such as:
-        interculture
-        interreligion
-        dialogue’

2.  The second level of analysis will consist of Best Practices of interreligious and 
intercultural dialogue, with a special attention to youth and women.