Practical Skills Matter Erasmus Project

Project Title

Practical Skills Matter

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development)

Project Summary

‘Practical Skills Matter’ is an Erasmus+ project realised by five secondary schools from NL, IT, RO, PL and GR for students between 12 and 17 years old.

We are questioning the function of schools as the starting point. Are schools providing enough fulfillment for real life or not? Are schools enough to gain basic skills for professional life or not? Are schools teaching requirements for being successful after school life or not? Do schools develop individuals enough to have self-esteem, self-confidence or not? Do schools teach moral values enough or not? Are schools the place where citizens get education for their specific talents or not? And most importantly; are schools able to provide a real education which transform theoretical knowledge into practical behavior or not?

Conclusions:
-Schools have lack of activities in term of what we really need in real life.
-Theoretical lessons don’t improve practical and social skills
-Practical knowledge and theoretical knowledge are both important phases of learning. Perfect combination of both practical and theoretical methods is necessary for real learning.

Learning in most of our schools is now for a great percentage limited to classrooms. We want to expand learning outside the classroom, outside our schools, outside our cities and beyond the borders of the countries in Europe, in real life situations.

Our project focussed on creating/developing practical materials/ activities/real situations for the theoretical knowledge that is given in school curricula. We aimed to connect both types of knowledge and provide real learning.

Activities to achieve this:

1. Every school changed lessons from their own curriculum from mostly theoretical lessons to more practical lessons. In some of the schools whole new courses were introduced and implemented. During the meetings and at the end of the project we exchanged our new lessons by a joined website so our partners and others can copy the lessons and use them.

2. We also planned extracurricular activities.

3. We organised three transnational meetings with students.

We worked on this objectives:
-Creating an active, happy and fruitful learning environment inside/outside the classes
-Providing real learning and changing our curricula by adding more practical education
-Preventing lack of basic skills
-developing our students self-confidence, independence, social and basic skills and (European) citizenship

Working both transnational as interdisciplinary was an added value of this project. Transnationality was also a must as every exchange will be a way of development of the skills and competences aimed in the project. Students practiced on an international level. Teachers observed good practices in host schools. This project made our activities not only interdisciplinary, but also cross-educational, multi cultural and cross-national which gave this project an extra European dimension and broadened mutual understanding and increased the learning effects. Our cooperation strengthenen the quality of our education.

The results and impact of the project mainly consist all the new developed practical lessons and activities. They are exchanged with the partner schools and any other who is interested through a common website. The long term benefits are the fact that we proceed offering these lessons and courses and activities in our schools to improve the quality of our education and to keep reaching the objectives we have for our current and future students.

Besides these results it had also a great impact on students: they developed more practical skills, they developed more self-confidence and social and basic skills for citizenship. Learning by doing created also more fun and pleasure and adventures. Also the skills and motivation amongst teachers improved.

Through this project we proved: Practical Skills Matter! In many, many ways!

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 113660 Eur

Project Coordinator

Accent Praktijkonderwijs Nijkerk & Country: NL

Project Partners

• I.I.S. “F.Brunelleschi/L. Da Vinci”
• Scoala Gimnaziala “Emil Isac”
• Katolicka Szkola Podstawowa im. sw. Stanislawa Kostki
• 2nd High School Larissa, Greece
• SEHIT UMIT YOLCU IMAM HATIP ORTAOKULU