TOGETHER: Towards Gender Equality Today. Handbook for Equal Rights Erasmus Project

Project Title

TOGETHER: Towards Gender Equality Today. Handbook for Equal Rights

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Gender equality / equal opportunities; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

With the help of the project TOGETHER (Towards Gender Equality Today. Handbook for Equal Rights) we want to put the debate on gender equality once more in the spotlight. Gender roles, harassment and exploitation cases and the gender gap have been current topics in the media for some time now. The gap between men and women across health, education, politics and economics has only widened in the past few years. Gender stereotypes, and gender identities outside the gender binary have also become prominent topics. Our students are in a vulnerable age and prejudices and discrimination based on their gender can damage their health and affect their success in school, as well as their further studies and career choices. Among other things, we need this project to be able to widen the view how teachers and students perceive gender and to eliminate harmful prejudices, as well as raise awareness of gender stereotypes and gender inequalities. This project will enable us to develop guidelines and concrete tools to ensure that in the future everyone is free to develop their personal abilities and make choices without the limitations set by stereotypes, rigid gender roles and prejudices. It is necessary to create concrete tools to promote gender equality in order to make it understandable and manageable for all people. With the help of this project, we can make surveys, organize exhibitions, visit organisations that promote gender equality and create a website and as a final product, a handbook for teaching about gender equality. The handbook can be used in different schools and subjects to educate students on gender equality, and thus the whole school and the local communities will benefit from the project, not just the students participating in the project.
The project will involve students at the upper secondary school level, ages 15-18 from all the five partner schools. We plan to organise 11 transnational learning activities in different countries during the two-year project. 12 students and 2 teachers from each country will participate in these each year, working together to do research on the topic and then creating a handbook for teaching about gender equality. All five participating schools will visit two other countries and receive students from the two others during the two years, so that at the end of the project they will have worked with all the other European partner schools.The transnational learning activities in the other European countries would be essential for both the students and the teachers to learn how to communicate and work with other students from different cultural backrounds and practise their foreign language skills. The project will increase the European dimension in the participating schools as it involves five distinctly different countries in Europe. The project will also reinforce the bonds between all the partners and enhance the students’ sense of belonging to a European community and sharing a common European identity.
Our project aims to strengthen relevant and high-quality skills and competences of our students, such as foreign language skills, digital competence and transversal skills. They will learn how to work in teams, using a foreign language as a means of communication. This will help the students to become solid independent users of foreign languages, English for most of the partners involved, but also French and German.
The digital competences of both our students and teachers will also be improved as students will both use and create ICT tools and resources in order to research our topic and share their work and outputs with all the European partners involved. Teachers will be closely monitoring students and helping them with different digital tools. As students must work in transnational groups to do research, plan and accomplish their individual tasks well as well as present their end products to the other partners and their school community, students will also develop their transversal skills: critical and innovative thinking, interpersonal skills (presentation and communication skills, teamwork), intrapersonal skills (enthusiasm, perseverance, self-discipline), global citizenship (tolerance, respect for diversity), media and information literacy (ability to locate, access and evaluate information and media content). The project also has a didactic objective for teachers: to exchange ideas on innovative practices, to diversify teaching methods and widen their pedagogical knowledge.Teachers will discuss their teaching methods and attend lessons during the learning activities in the host country, and then share their experiences among their colleagues. Working with transnational student groups will also enhance their pedagogic competence.
As a long-term effect of the project we will help gender equality get the attention it needs, and our students and the school community will be able to deal with possible inequalities and prejudices in a plausible way.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 142187,25 Eur

Project Coordinator

Sotungin lukio ja etälukio & Country: FI

Project Partners

• Lycée Xavier Mallet
• sir joseph williamson’s mathematical school
• Kopernikus-Gymnasium Rheine
• ISTITUTO TECNICO ECONOMICO “ENRICO TOSI”