Learning for a Future between Tradition and Trend Erasmus Project

Project Title

Learning for a Future between Tradition and Trend

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Gender equality / equal opportunities; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

This project, called “Between Tradition and Trend” is a follow-up project to a previous one on “Gender Differences: Understanding Each other on Different Levels”. The partners have been working together very harmoniously and productively and thus decided to continue their cooperation, but with a slightly different focus on the contents and context. The focus will now be on the similarities rather than the differences between male and female students of the same age, i.e. between 14 and 16 years of age as in this globalized world the problems and the issues they are facing are more or less the same. No longer are they settled in their own communities only, but they have to face the challenges of a world in which natural resources are terminated, in which their social life is changing by the use of social media and computer sciences, and in which traditions are constantly overthrown by something new. Their life is more dominated by appearance and social standing than by education – at least on the surface.
The aim of the project is to work against this superficial trend and make the students recognize how important it is to be embedded in their cultures and traditions as much as being part of a modern approach to life. To be torn between these two worlds may lead to a high level of frustration at learning and in consequence to an early dropout from school without the necessary qualifications for an affordable lifestyle. By using new materials and methods in a varitey of contexts, i.e. new CLIL and ICT methodologies, the project aims to work against this.
Visits to local places of interest connected to intellectual or handicraft tasks during the mobilities will support the interest in the topic set for the exchange and further the students’ awareness of being involved and of becoming more active citizens. This will especially hold true for the issues concerning environmental problems and the students’ activities connected to their way of living. As the lingua franca between them is English, working on new and with already established methodologies in CLIL will also chellenge the students into growing more interested in the process of learning and education on a wider level.
Students from different backgrounds are invited to participate in the project to further social and gender equality and inclusion. A number of students does not have the financial background to being able to travel widely in European or other states, which makes it appear necessary to prioritize their participation. Yet, it will be up to the schools to decide upon a method to choose their participants. The number of them coming from the four schools will be between 6 and 8, depending on how many want to participate and the number of available hosting families.
The activities will include visits to local and governmental authorities to introduce the public to the proceedings; the visit of environmentally interesting places; the visit of historically interesting places and work at the schools. There the students will learn and work in especially designed courses just among themselves, and they will also participate in normal classes, both as guests and as members, if the issues that are discussed are included in the project’s topics. It will be taken care of that any group of students will be properly introduced to both topics and methodologies used for the lessons or courses to motivate active participation. The materials and results of these activities will be made accessible to teachers and students to introduce new and established methodologies to a wider group of participants.
To conclude, the students will be motivated for and enabled to a more active participation in their civic life, they will know more about how to deal with problems caused by social media, they will have a better command of the English language and they will also have a greater knowledge of ICT methods. These are the immediate and also long-term results from participating in the project. In addition, as the methodologies and results will be available for the school communities, and perhaps even to a wider public, there will be long-term benefit for many more students and teachers.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 123184 Eur

Project Coordinator

Erasmus-von-Rotterdam-Gymnasium & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Cesu Valsts gimnazija
• IES Alonso Sánchez
• Istituto d’Istruzione Superiore Majorana