SHARMED aims to promote intercultural dialogue in schools, encouraging and supporting every child to make a valuable contribution to the shared learning process of the class. By using self-produced or freely chosen photographs each pupil can share with his/her classmates some personal and family stories. The process of describing, sharing and comparing the memories behind the visual material taken into the classroom creates a dialogic dynamic leading to a new form of learning experience. With SHARMED cultural difference is not just considered; rather, it is exchanged and valued as positive in its cognitive and affective dimensions. The use of special communicative techniques related to dialogical facilitation makes it possible.

• Foster equity in participants’ contributions to classroom interaction, enhancing empowerment and recognition of children’s contributions.

• Provide opportunities for children’s production and collection of visual materials (in particular photographs), concerning children’s and their families’ memories.

• Facilitate description, comparison and sharing of visual materials through dialogic teaching and production of narratives in classrooms.

The primary objective of SHARMED is producing, comparing and relating in a dialogical way children’s memories of personal and cultural roots in multicultural classrooms, through the collection and use of visual materials, in particular photos.

Further specific objectives are:

• Integration between facilitative methodology of dialogic teaching and competence in dealing with and comparing visual materials (photographs).

• Application of facilitative methodology and use of visual materials in different areas of teaching and learning (oral communication and literacy, Art, History, Geography, Intercultural Education).

• Development of synergetic connections in the school between teachers and between schools and their contexts.

• Analysis and evaluation of (a) facilitative methodology and use of visual materials, and (b) children’s participation and narratives