Open School Doors – Developing diverse school / parents communities through innovative partnerships Erasmus Project

Project Title

Open School Doors – Developing diverse school / parents communities through innovative partnerships

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: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Migrants’ issues; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

“Inclusion is a sense of belonging: feeling respected, valued for who you are; feeling a level of supportive energy and commitment from others so that you can do your best work.” (Miller, Frederick A. and Katz, Judith H. 2002)

The Open School Doors project [OSD], following the findings of EU report (2010/2011) was tackling the issues of equity and social cohesion, aimed at enabling parents with a migrant background to be more actively involved in their children education, and at the same time offering them the chance to improve their ICT skills, leading thus to better professional perspectives and providing access to equal educational opportunities.

The project partners’ research confirmed the role of digital media in that process (cf. www.carrer-guide.eu, www.aumil.de, www.tu9.de/mooc) both as learning technology and as gate opener for less connected audiences — like the chosen group migrant pupils. Indeed social (educational) media is a very powerful instrument in the hand of this respective group, including their parents, when they need to identify their entrance into different EU cultures. Digital empowerment holds a central role in the inclusion strategy of adult population at risk of exclusion and reflects the latest EU Council conclusions on the social dimension of education and training; social inclusion is a basic principle of human rights and is closely linked to concepts of social justice. ICT plays an important role in promoting social justice in terms of educational quality.

The OSD project did and does reinforce teachers’ awareness, motivation, knowledge and skills that will enable them to strengthen parents’ roles in schooling. Using social media properly is one of the best parent engagement strategies. It allows teachers to securely keep parents updated on their child’s progress, school announcements, events etc. Plus it is incredibly easy to use and is built to be incredibly user friendly. Therefore, it is easy to implement within the school.

To this end a training framework was designed, tailored to the learning profile and needs of the target audience, equipping them with all the attitudes, values, knowledge, skills and life-long learning competences to enable them support and sustain parental / family engagement in school communities. The developed framework did and does provide comprehensive guidance to teachers how to promote and encourage effective cooperation between parents / families and teachers. As such, training seminars took place across the partnership (both F2F & online) addressing parents, teachers, stakeholders, policy makers, whereas during two phases implementation was completed (with all the necessary revises/ amendments, etc.) till the final version of training framework has been delivered to the public as OER (cf. http://openschooldoors.westgate.gr/).

Teachers, in particular head teachers and class teachers, but also school personnel working in advisory and support systems, did constitute the main target group of Open School Doors; as key-agents, they were be trained to develop positive attitudes and particular skills in order to invite, motivate, support migrant parents and collaborate with them to deal effectively all obstacles of school life.
The indirect target group of the project were parents with a migrant background and in most cases with socially, educationally and economically disadvantaged background. Migrant pupils will be the long-term beneficiaries of the project approach, since schools’ and parents’ partnerships, that the project sets out to foster, have been found to have significant positive effects on important aspects of young people’s development, e.g. achievement from early childhood until adolescence and adulthood, social and cognitive development, school drop-out reduction, social integration and fewer behavior problems. A supportive material for the migrant parents, enhancing effective communication with teachers, was therefore.

Finally a Guide of Good Practices brings together a range of relevant resources and evidence, synthesising background policy and research with original empirical research findings to produce specific guidance for policy makers and training curriculum developers. As such, it illustrates how to increase parental engagement, effectively communicate with teachers through web2.0 tools, and map all potential members of Open School Doors community of interest at regional, national and EU level building thus upon the sustainability of the whole initiative.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 210329 Eur

Project Coordinator

TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET DRESDEN & Country: DE

Project Partners

• BildungOnline – Verein zur operativen Umsetzung und Präsentation von schulbezogenen IT-Projekten (B:O)
• EUROPEAN PARENTS ASSOCIATION
• ELLINOGERMANIKI AGOGI SCHOLI PANAGEA SAVVA AE
• BIRMINGHAM CITY UNIVERSITY
• INSTITOUTO TECHNOLOGIAS YPOLOGISTONKAI EKDOSEON DIOFANTOS
• STICHTING INTERNATIONAL PARENTS ALLIANCE