Am I European? Erasmus Project

Project Title

Am I European?

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 : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Social dialogue; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

Across Europe, the far right has been gaining traction, with movements in a wide range of European countries lobbying for more extreme policies in the face of global issues. Divides in our European society follow intergenerational, social/economic divides with each faction showing an unwillingness to engage positively with those they disagree with and the consistent increase of extreme views both in politics and social media (Evan Maudsley, 2018).
This project aims to address the rise in extreme viewpoints and confrontation by helping pupils and their communities to develop skills in negotiation, critical thinking, social media literacy and ultimately a sense of diverse European identities. It will do this through supporting students to engage with their communities, interviewing and researching their opinions, and evaluating the results they get critically. Through generating evidence of the overriding attitudes in their locality and comparing them to the attitudes across Europe, and those presented in the media, students will be supported to create valuable qualitative research about European identity. They will also be empowered to challenge stereotypes and prejudice, using skills in negotiation to mediate the different viewpoints and take their findings back into the community.
We will work in partnership with Spain, Turkey, Romania and the UK with a wide variety of backgrounds including some who have never had the experience of working with European people outside of their own locality. By giving our participants the opportunity to go out into their communities, to find out different attitudes and then bringing young people from these locations together, we will be able to generate a wide ranging set of resources that will be used by teachers/researchers for many years. The skills that young people and other stakeholders develop on this project have been shown to accelerate learning and will create better informed students, teachers and communities; less likely to be mislead by the media and more able to engage in open discussion for coming years.
We will use a toolkit of methods to set a baseline to measure skills & attitudes/values of staff and students at the start of the project and at the end of the teaching and training sessions to see the impact on skills, attitudes and values related to the project theme of ‘Am I European’. We will refine these tools to develop a robust methodology to record attitudes and values and make comparisons between local, regional and European participants. We will hold a series of 3 Learning, Teaching and Training Events with teaching staff/officers from all partner organisations and a series of 3 students/teaching staff exchange events to trial the methods developed with our students/teaching staff. These joint events will also be opportunities to develop the theme in practical situations; observe in situ the impact of our methods.
We will produce 4 Intellectual Outputs that will be transferable to use by other stakeholders interested in the development of Critical Thinking/Evaluation/Debate/Negotiation skills combined with active research by students. The IOs will include:
• A teacher resource pack on teaching controversial issues/appreciative enquiry
• Teacher/pupil resource pack
• Teacher training handbook – content analysis, social media literacy/skills for debate and dialogue
• Evaluation
Expected results/impact expected:
• impact on the people who have built it through allowing them to look critically at their communities,
• to build a database of qualitative evidence shared internationally as a resource.
• students will develop a closer link with their local community through greater curiosity for what is happening locally/regionally, and local/regional ‘actors’ that influence local/regional actions
• greater interaction between schools & local/regional communities IMPACTING on closer networks of mutual support between local/regional communities, appreciation of the role of community in society.
• The development of critical thinking/negotiation skills to support accelerated learning across international borders, with all participants showing an improvement of skills/designing tools that will enable others in their locality/region to do the same.
• Several countries will compare the opinions of a wide variety of people within their communities which will be challenging/nuanced, with strong opinions needing mediation/discussion.
• better understanding of a range of different cultures and communities.
• the development of INTERCULTURAL dialogue between these students that will follow them into their life post project and more importantly post school into all aspects of their futures lives.
The ultimate aim and expected impact of this project is to enable better international cooperation, as different countries challenge the stereotypes being levelled at them and students being able to take those experiences into their communities and share them

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 443830 Eur

Project Coordinator

International Links (Global) Ltd & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Prof.Dr. Fuat Sezgin Ortaokulu
• Welsh Centre for International Affairs
• Scoala Gimnaziala Iancu Vacarescu Vacaresti
• ASOCIACIÓN PARA PROMOVER LA FORMACIÓN, INTERNACIONALIZACIÓN E INNOVACIÓN DE LA EDUCACIÓN (AFINE)
• KONYA IL MILLI EGITIM MUDURLUGU
• SCOALA GIMNAZIALA SERBAN CIOCULESCU
• Gilwern Primary School