Citizen in 31 Hours Erasmus Project

Project Title

Citizen in 31 Hours

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); Pedagogy and didactics; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The 21st century will demand of the rising generation a new level of social awareness and skills to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing and uncertain social environment. The young generation is also expected to have the necessary capacity and attitudes to tackle major societal issues that today spread in a complex manner: inequality, poverty, migration, pollution, consumerism, or fake news. A holistic understanding of social processes is key, and the skills necessary to embrace those processes can only be effectively taught through cross-disciplinary holistic exploration, practice, and feedback. Today’s mainstream instruction- and subject-based school education is struggling to deliver these outcomes. While interdisciplinarity is increasingly being applied in science, technology, maths and natural sciences (e.g. STEM), it remains underdeveloped in social awareness education.

Our objective is to equip school youth in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland with cutting-edge interactive resources for interdisciplinary phenomenon-based learning of social and civic skills in a digital environment.

Our primary target audience are upper secondary school youth aged 15 to 19. We will address their needs to become active competences builders and effectively develop social and civic knowledge, attitudes and skills of critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, adaptability and teamwork, necessary to thrive in a complex and rapidly changing social reality, pursue productive and rewarding lives of meaning and purpose, foster active citizenship and societal well-being. Our secondary audience are school teachers of economics, civics and ethics. Teachers are the number one driver of learning and they must change with the evolving competence-based curriculum. We will address teachers’ need to transform their role in the classroom from an instructor to a facilitator, to foster a student-centered learning environment, and to enhance learners’ motivation and participation. The project will indirectly target school administrations, educational authorities in charge of curriculum development and teachers’ qualification development, educational NGOs and associations, teacher training institutions, faculty members and students.

Our project will focus on the development, piloting and dissemination of a digital course A Citizen in 31 Hours consisting of 31 modules, embedded in interdisciplinary phenomenon-based learning and the integration of economics, civics and ethics, and provided through an online learning platform. Our project is based on four key elements of innovation: integration of economics, civics and ethics for interdisciplinary learning of social awareness and skills, a phenomenon-based learning method, profoundly injected with the personal, community and global perspectives, and enabling a holistic understanding and analysis of the social reality, interactive methods of inquiry learning, problem-based learning and experiential learning, and extensive digitalization of learning content and tools.

During the life of the project a total of 1,500 pupils in grades 9 to 12 will have studied from the course in Lithuania, Poland and Latvia. Upon the completion of the project as many as 18,000 upper secondary school pupils in Lithuania, Poland and Latvia will learn from the course every year and we expect to see a 10-percent increase in this number of users year-on-year.

The project will have the potential to transform learning and teaching practices and stimulate an increased reliance on the application of interdisciplinarity and digitalization in social awareness education. The course “Citizen in 31 Hours” will be easily replicable in other countries by virtue of the applicability of its methodological and thematical framework and content in different school education systems, curriculum structures and national contexts.

The project reflects the horizontal priorities of Open education and innovative practices in the digital era and Supporting individuals in acquiring and developing key competences.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 155155 Eur

Project Coordinator

Lietuvos laisvosios rinkos institutas & Country: LT

Project Partners

• E. mokykla, UAB
• Laisvosios mokyklos institutas
• Fundacja Liberté!
• LATVIJAS UNIVERSITATE