Cultural Heritage

Cultural heritage is something that all human beings share; wherever we come from there is a culture that follows us from that place. No matter where you grow up, where you go, your culture will always be something you can take with you. Cultural heritage can come in many forms: tangible, intangible, and natural. Tangible heritage consists of artifacts like sculptures, paintings, manuscripts, etc. Intangible heritage consists of oral tradition, rituals, and performing arts. Natural heritage consist of cultural landscapes and geological landscapes, any type of landscape that is naturally formed. It is very important that we protect our cultural heritage so our future generations can continue to look upon their past as we do. The importance behind the types of cultural heritages in a student’s life should be relevant in their education.

Heritage education is a pedagogical process in which students are able to learn about heritage resources, and it will be a significant part of the citizenship curriculum, bringing students to understand their own cultures from the past, and how the past heritage has developed and transformed alongside history, bringing the past to the present

The basic idea of heritage education is to offer opportunities to engage in experiences to learn new concepts and skills. By directly experiencing or analysing cultural heritage, learners gain knowledge, intellectual skills and a wider range of competences on issues such as cultural heritage maintenance or societal well-being.

Heritage should be part of official school curriculum or an extracurricular activity and provide relevant skills based on a multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral approach. Heritage education helps to develop a better understanding and respect of our living environment, ourselves and the others.

Course Objectives

To preserve and expose the cultural heritage of our ancestors
To Explain what cultural heritage is, its different types and how it has emerged as an area of public policy
To Identify the key actors of cultural heritage governance
To Evaluate the impacts of cultural heritage projects on cities
To Explain the tensions between urban development and cultural heritage
To Compare the governance of heritage in different cities or countries
To understand the general idea of culture
To demonstrate the different aspects of culture
To identify tangible and intangible cultural elements
To explore different methods to teaching a cultural heritage or diversity lesson
To explain the concept of the experiential learning cycle and how it is used in teaching.
To have teachers reflect on their own practice of teaching heritage and diversity themes
To develop outlines of a curriculum for teaching cultural heritage and cultural diversity in their classrooms