Empowering the development of social and intercultural competences by promotion of active citizenship. Erasmus Project

Project Title

Empowering the development of social and intercultural competences by promotion of active citizenship.

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: Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

Context/background
Both schools share a strong belief in the learning outcomes from international projects, and internationalization forms an important part of the everyday school life in the two schools. We believe strongly in learning from each other and are sure that international focus is a successful way to motivate students and combat early school leaving.
Objectives
The main objective is to educate European citizens and to increase the students’ awareness of being part of a common society; the European society. Another main goal is to promote European values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. Through the main topics for this project, democracy and citizenship, we will work in line with these goals.
Number and profile of participants
The participating organisations are IES Velázquez, a combined secondary and upper secondary school in Seville that offers general studies and the following vocational study lines: Computer programming and designing. The school has 800 secondary students and 600 adult learners, and 95 staff members. IES Velazquez is well known for their quality language teaching; they have bilingual classes and some classes where 50 – 90% of the subject is taught in English. IES Velazquez has also achieved an eTwinning school label in 2018.
Ringsaker upper secondary school is located in Brumunddal, Norway, and is a combined school that offers general studies and the following vocational studies: Building and construction, Electricity and electronics, Health and social care, Service and transport, Technical and industrial production. The school has 750 students and 150 staff members. Ringsaker upper secondary has participated in some Erasmus+ projects over the last year as a part of a strong international strategy. The contact persons from each school have known each other for a few years and share a common engagement when it comes to international projects. With slightly different experiences in the field, they will learn a lot from each other. The students taking part in this project will mainly be from general studies. The first year of the project there will be 16 students from each country taking part in the mobility accompanied by 2 teachers from each country. The second year there will be 15 students from each country.
Description of activities and methology
We plan to carry out two mobilities each year and four in total. During the mobilities, the students will engage in activities that will help them go in-depth on the topic. We will offer a range of activities in the workshops that will make the students see our topic from different angles and work on it in different ways; investigating, researching, role-playing and simulation activities will be some of the different methods. In addition to the school activities, they will host each other and learn a lot both about each other’s culture, but also about themselves and their reactions. Moreover, the students will collaborate on eTwinning prior, during and after the mobilities, which will improve the students’ ICT skills and eSafety skills.
Description of results and impact.
Our main objective is to increase the students’ engagement as European citizens. We all have a common responsability to ensure a peaceful Europe for the future, and seeing how extreme ideologies are spreading over the continent today, we think it is important to address the responsability of every European citizen in the work for freedom, democracy and equality. The concrete results of this project may not be easy to spot at once, but hopefully this project will contribute to the development of a peaceful Europe. In order to see some results, we will do a survey with the students at the very beginning of the project and again at the end where we will measure to what extent their awareness of their responsability and participation as European citizens may have changed. We are convinced that a project like this will have a great impact on the participating stundents’ development both academically and personally. Moreover, it will have a positive impact to the schools as both schools highly rate international collaboration not only for the collaboration itself but also for the development of new teaching methods that we as teachers can bring to class. Hopefully, the project will also have a positive impact on the local communities.
Potential longer term benefits
We believe that this project will give new motivation to the students that will make them more commited as European citizens, and more and engaged in the schoolwork. It will also give new motivation to the teachers so that they develop new teaching methods that again will motivate and inspire the students. This again will make the schools more interesting and attractive, and will help us combat early school leaving and secure future enrollment to the schools.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 65420 Eur

Project Coordinator

Ringsaker videregående skole & Country: NO

Project Partners

• IES Velázquez