Bridging languages and memories to foster multiple identities: “Never leave your backpack behind!” Erasmus Project

Project Title

Bridging languages and memories to foster multiple identities: “Never leave your backpack behind!”

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Integration of refugees; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

Context/background of th Project
Backpack_ID is an innovative intervention for promoting the inclusion of refugee children at school in four European countries (Greece, Italy, Germany and Sweden). In all European countries today the creation of more inclusive classrooms for all students is a common goal, rarely achieved. To address this challenge, the Backpack_ID advances an innovative multidisciplinary approach based on expertise in social and developmental psychology, linguistics, and educational theory and practice. Bringing together academic expertise and valuable experience from educational organizations, international educational networks, and NGOs, it develops an intervention focused on elementary and lower secondary-school (10-15 years old) pupils’ multiple collective memberships, backgrounds and identities.

Objectives
The Project addresses both refugee and non-refugee pupils and seeks:
(a) to empower all pupils and make them see and experience aspects of “otherness” in themselves. Pupils’ families and/or immediate social background (their communities) served as pupils’ main resources to this end. “Never leave your backpack behind” refers to the trivial belongings of great emotional and symbolic value that refugees may carry in their backpacks, and serves as common ground in the quest for “pathways” and “bridges” across group-memberships and identities.
(b) to advance pupils’ literacy development through (auto)ethnographic collections of narratives and reflection on multiplie identities that emerge in these narratives.

Participants
– The academic staff of two universities who offered the necessary theoretical elements that formed the innovative intervention of Backpack_ID and trained accordingly the participating teachers.
– Twenty-eight teachers of 12 schools (11 ordianary schools and 1 reception unit of municipality) that co-developed the intervantion and implemented it in their classrooms providing all the partnership with constant feedback.
– 585 students of 12 schools who developed the educational material of the Project through the (auto)ethnographic activities they involed and their reflection on it.
– Students’ families (and communities) that offered their pictures, memories, languages, stories, the main sources on which the Project’s educational material was based.
– Other teachers, researchers, students, parents/ citizens, municipality authorities, policy-makers, NGOs and other stakeholders who participated in the dissemination activities and multiplier events of the Project.

Undertaken activities
– 7 transnational meetings as originally planned, 6 of them face-to-face and the last virtually due to covid19
– Review of the litterature and initial formation of the intervention
– Informal training of the participating teachers and final design of the intervention
-Implementation in schools, collection of the material by the sudents and reflection on it
-Development of the IO1, 2 and 3 that reflect the work done in the participating schools
-Development of the IO4 by the academic partners (EKPA and University of Crete)
-Numerous dissemination activities at a local, regional, European and international level.
-Development of a free acces on-line platform that provides to all educators and researchers the opportunity to use all Backpack_ID outputs.

Results and impact
The Backpack_ID reports positive results and important impact attained at various levels:
– Regarding the project’s outcomes, all the developed IOs were of the highest quality and translated to five languages.
– The direct participants (researchers and teachers) acquired significant gains in both academic and educational level. They enhanced their research skills, developed a deep understanding of the dynamics of multiple identities and created a strong potential for expanding the method of intervention for more inclusive classrooms. They also gained experience of mechanisms that led gradually to inclusion, enhanced their networking and cooperation with colleagues and social-networks from other European countries.
– In participating schools, the dynamics in class changed and facilitated communication in creative ways; pupils developed a readiness to recognise bias and discrimination while respecting other people’s social identities; thei literacy improved.
-The initially designed dissemination activities were not only met, but were expanded significantly, reaching large numbers (around 16000) of members of the international educational and academic community, policy-makers and NGOs.

Long-term benefits
The project is expected to have a timely positive impact on affirming common European values because of its bottom-up approach. Rather than seeing them as an imposed set of restrictive regulations, Backpack-ID approaches common values as the ultimate outcome of addressing the needs and perspectives of refugee and non-refugee children, local communities and stakeholders, in a common account of social inclusion challenges.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 342757,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

PANEPISTIMIO KRITIS & Country: EL

Project Partners

• SWEDEN EMILIA ROMAGNA NETWORK
• Lernmobil e. V. – Verein für soziale und pädagogische Bildungsarbeit
• ETHNIKO KAI KAPODISTRIAKO PANEPISTIMIO ATHINON
• 1st Gymnasio Avlona
• RUPRECHT-KARLS-UNIVERSITAET HEIDELBERG
• Mottagningsenheten Adjunkten
• ETAIREIA KOINONIKIS KAI POLITISTIKIS STIRIKSIS PALINNOSTOYNTON OMOGENON – NOSTOS