Building European Wellness in Learning for Life Erasmus Project

Project Title

Building European Wellness in Learning for Life

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 Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; Inclusion – equity; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

The main aim of the project was to address the horizontal priority of providing ‘inclusive education, training and youth.’ Through this priority we agreed on three over-arching objectives:

1. To improve the variety and quality of innovative teaching and learning techniques.
2. To improve well-being in our schools by promoting inclusive initiatives.
3. To develop the common European identity by exploring national characteristics.

Through these objectives there was a strong focus on improving the prospects of our socio-economically disadvantaged students and improving well-being for all students. In addition to addressing the horizontal priority our plan addressed the 2020 European Agenda where targets had been set to improve education to “help employability and reduce poverty” and social exclusion. Objective 1 is pertinent to this as all partners were required to provide the best possible educational experience to their students and each partner school had identified that well-being was an area in which each of our schools could,and should, improve upon.

There were five participating secondary schools are from the UK, Finland, Italy, Romania and the Basque Country.

To meet objective 1, we used a range of pedagogy to create a ‘Good Classroom Guide’ which provides examples of innovative teaching methods which have supported wellbeing through the encouragement of integration and aspiration. These methods were engineered to help reduce the disparity seen in all partner schools in learning outcomes between those who are, and who are not from, disadvantaged backgrounds. We focused on teamwork and growth mindset pedagogies. All partners collaborated and shared best practice from their schools with the associated mobilities for this being led by the UK who have strengths with the ‘Growth Mindset’ pedagogy which raises aspiration and attainment, and the Finnish school which has strengths with the ‘teamwork pedagogy’ which encourages integration and promotes diversity in teaching and learning techniques. By sharing best practice each partner were able to improve their teachers competencies and improve their students skills, learning and well-being and share this success with local education providers.

We conducted a base line survey which revealed that <50% of students and staff felt supported their school and <40% felt a sense of belonging in their school community. Objective 2 was agreed upon based upon this survey as it suggested there was a need for activities to improve their state of well-being and community cohesion, such as non-formal education activities, initiatives that promote equity in education and multi-cultural projects and exchanges which reflect and/or benefit the school community. To meet objective 2, we used the classroom based pedagogies, to promote inclusive formal education activities and to develop and promote two inclusive non-formal educational initiatives; mentoring groups and environment societies. We created a 'Mentoring Guide' to provide support on how to set up and improve mentor groups in the secondary education field which have been utilised to tackle wellbeing issues such as discrimination, segregation and bullying in addition to assisting with academic issues such as underperformance, stress and literacy. Led by Italy, who already has a very successful mentoring programme, partners collaborated, shared best practice and trained their own students. We created and developed environment societies in each partner school. These societies provided an opportunity for students from all backgrounds to investigate, through informal educational, how environmentally friendly their school was through data collection and analysis. It taught students skills such as project management, presentation and enquiry. As schools improved their school environments through community action they also improved wellbeing as there was an improved sense of community, integration and belonging. It was imperative that this project took place multi-nationally as we were able to: - view and use and adapt the best practice in teaching, learning and mentoring from different parts of Europe. - take advantage of the skills each partner has to ensure success - enthuse and engage students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds - develop our students linguistic, social, civic, intercultural and competences through travel, pre-mobility training, exploration and dissemination. Due to the 'whole-school' nature of the project all pupils in the schools benefitted from activities and initiatives including: - opportunities to lead initiatives, access activities and visit countries - learning new skills e.g. competences in ICT, media literacy through websites, eTwinning and data presentation and analysis. - benefiting from mentoring schemes, either as a mentor or mentee. - having the opportunity to travel and take part in wider school projects that they then disseminate through presentations etc.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 109420 Eur

Project Coordinator

Highgate Wood School & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Istituto d’Istruzione Superiore “ALBERTI”
• Colegiul National “Emil Racovita”
• Riihimaen lukio
• IES HERNANI BHI