Insights into Teachers’ Intercultural and Global Competence within Multicultural Educational Settings

As multicultural classrooms appear to be the norm nowadays, giving rise to new, more particular and targeted needs which must be accommodated, teachers now need to reflect on and adjust the strategies and practices they apply in order to meet the specific learning needs of their intercultural classrooms. For this reason, teachers’ education should be re-examined, evaluated, and enriched. In this light, this original study uses a case study to explores the language views and attitudes of graduates of a Hellenic Open University Master’s international programme entitled “Language Education for Refugees and Migrants” (L.R.M.). The aim is to explore teachers’ level of intercultural competence and readiness as well as their global competences as future teachers in multilingual and multicultural settings after completing the programme. To do this, the study attempts to evaluate the programme through the lens of the personal experiences of the graduates in terms of successes, weaknesses, and strengths. To conduct the research, both quantitative and qualitative methods were applied in the form of a close-ended questionnaire and a semi-structured interview conducted in two different formats. The results indicate that the majority of the participants were confident enough to manage the challenges arising in multicultural settings after completing the program, as they felt they had developed appropriate Skills, Knowledge, and Attitudes; however, a few among them still felt uncertain in doing this. In addition, a number of different approaches and methods were found to be appropriate as used for teachers’ training, while the importance of teachers’ intercultural training was highlighted

Preoperative Cardiac Assessment before Carotid Surgery: Should Perhaps Things Change?

Carotid endarterectomy has been associated with perioperative symptomatic or asymptomatic myocardial ischemia and cardiac mortality although it has been classified as a procedure of intermediate cardiac risk. Recent data indicate that the Cardiac Risk Index score for preoperative assessment by the latest guidelines is not suitable for vascular surgery procedures in general and carotid procedures in particular. This review aims to present and analyze all these results, concluding that current recommendations for this specific procedure should perhaps be reevaluated