21st Century Skills and Citizenship Erasmus Project

Project Title

21st Century Skills and Citizenship

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

Christelijk Lyceum Zeist has developed an international project for 106 2TTO (bilingual education) pupils aged 13-14, together with Kasavuoren Koulu and Puistolan Peruskoulu, both situated near Helsinki. As they will participate in this project with only 56 13/14 -year-old pupils, two more Finnish school, Espoo International School and Kilopuiston Koulu, will take part in this project with another 52 pupils. The teachers of the latter will not design any assignments themselves, but they will use all the materials developed for this project.

The aim of this project was to support our pupils’ development of 21st century skills and 21st century citizenship, because our pupils need these skills to be successful in college, career and life. Both, Dutch and Finnish education focus on learning skills, literacy skills and life skills. Pupils are educated to become involved empathic and critical citizens, who possess good communication and digital skills. In addition, internationalisation plays an important part in education; students are prepared for increasing worldwide cooperation. We developed projects in which these 21st century skills became transparent so that pupils could reflect on them and improve them. Apart from the development of our pupils’ skills, the project aimed at professional development. By collaborating with Finnish schools the Dutch school could profit from the experience of the Finnish teachers in creating the assignments. The eight teachers used email and Whatsapp to communicate while designing their assignments. The project were monitored by the project co-ordinator who was also responsible for its implementation.

The teachers designed assignments in the field of art, history and science which all aimed at their pupils’ development of 21st century skills and 21 century citizenship. Activities included exploring the cities of Helsinki and Amsterdam by doing an Instagram tour, a guided tour and a puzzle tour by canal bikes, visits to a few museums for their Art assignments (Van Gogh in Amsterdam), and Science assignments (Heureka and University Museum Utrecht) and attend a lab at the university of Helsinki. During the assignments pupils practised collaboration, creativity and communication. They communicated through social media and used online tools to do research. The pupils studied science, arts, history and heritage in a way that made the lessons fun.
Apart from assignments developed by teachers, pupils organised a farewell party themselves. In this way they practised some more 21st century skills.
The immersion in another culture contributed to global awareness, another important goal of the 21st century skills. It also developed new perspectives, and strengthens their capability to solve problems and their adaptability.

All pupils had to produce a logbook in which they described the activities and their experiences, both at school and in the host-families, and reflected on them. Moreover they had to collaborate on creating either a film and a presentation which they had to give.
Digital competences, responsible citizenship and international cooperation are some of the criteria on which the pupils’ work were assessed.
As the pupils had to write a report on their experiences we learned in what way the pupils mastered the 21st century skills we wanted them to develop. We also evaluated the skills the teachers learned or improved during this project.

We want to reuse the assignments which will be developed for future projects at all schools which participated in this project, including Espoo International School. Moreover we presented the assignments and the products to colleagues at both the Finnish and Dutch schools during department meetings and team meetings, informing them about the variety of 21st century skills involved. In this way we wanted to inspire and motivate the colleagues of our departments and teams to create assignments for their subjects in which they use these skills too.
The products of our project (log books, films, presentations) were shown and will be shown to pupils, parents, teachers, management, aspirant pupils.
Apart from the schools whose teachers designed the assignments, (parts of) the project will be used by other schools.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 49340 Eur

Project Coordinator

Christelijk Lyceum Zeist & Country: NL

Project Partners

• Kasavuoren koulu
• Puistolan peruskoulu