Evaluation environment for fostering intercultural mentoring tools and practices at school Erasmus Project

Project Title

Evaluation environment for fostering intercultural mentoring tools and practices at school

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Migrants’ issues

Project Summary

Tackling early school leaving is a stepping stone towards improving the opportunities of young people and for supporting smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Young people with a migration background are at great risk of ESL from school. To this extent, the gap between natives and young people born abroad is still very high. One of the factors is the lack of prevention and early intervention strategies, both at institutional and school levels, related to the need to develop effective methodologies and support for these students.
The objective of E-EVALINTO was twofold. On the one hand, it was intended to promote peer mentoring actions addressed to both reduce early school leaving in migrant student population (secondary school) and to acknowledge the value of interculturality itself as part of an active and responsible European citizenship education. On the other hand, E-EVALINTO was aimed to develop an ICT framework for assessing, managing and developing activities for intercultural contexts.
The partnership consists of six organisations including four Higher Education Institutions, a NGO and a Research, Development and Education Centre: University of Salamanca (ES); University of Cádiz (ES); Społeczna Akademia Nauk (PL); Dublin City University (IE); Oxfam Italia (IT) y Cardet (CY).
It is a lean consortium made up of institutions well experienced in the intercultural area and well-balanced in terms of competences and experiences regarding Research, Methodology, ICT and Innovation and Teacher and Practitioners Training.
The E-EVALINTO team has been supported by 16 pilot schools, located in the partner countries, all secondary schools with different percentage of migrant students and different gap between natives and migrants.
To succeed in these objectives, E-EVALINTO carried out the following activities:
E-EVALINTO Framework: design of the theoretical and methodological framework for implementing peer mentoring actions and for evaluating the situation of a school with regard to interculturality, identifying migrant students potentially at risk, peers to act as mentors and teachers’ intercultural skills.
E-EVALINTO Environment: development of an educational portal, which offers to schools and teachers a complete set of tools and activities to manage and evaluate the implementation of the intercultural mentoring programme with their students.
E-EVALINTO Training Programme Design: to equip teachers with tools to deal with diversity and to apply them at school in order to work effectively with pupils at risk, a training programme for teachers has been designed and implemented both in face to face and online modality.
The results achieved are closely related to the activities planned, particularly the development of training actions addressed to teachers, the implementation of peer mentoring actions with students and the availability of an educational portal at disposal of schools and teachers where to develop and monitor all the intercultural mentoring programme stages (from the analysis of schools’ intercultural profile to decision making processes), so offering a framework to approach intercultural issues at school from a holistic point of view.
As regards the impact, we can affirm that the E-EVALINTO project strengthened the profile of teaching professions by introducing in classroom innovative intercultural strategies, that allowed teachers to access or create by themselves tools and materials for their daily teaching practices and the climate of inclusion and confidence among students at school, by enhancing the development of inter-relational competences and reducing also the stereotypes concerning languages and cultural diversity.
The very nature of the project has been planned to continue providing long term results. The ICT environment and their tools, based on open source solutions, are openly available for being used, downloaded and distributed and the E-EVALINTO network is expected to keep growing by joining new schools and educational practitioners. The training course for teachers is available in self-learning modality on the E-EVALINTO virtual campus but, attending the requests of teachers not so technologically skilled, structured training course for teachers will be offered after the end of the project (face to face or in blended modality) in the partner organizations, in order to increase the size of the network of schools and institutions involved during the project.
The methological framework (intercultural patterns, templates for activities, evaluation tools, guidelines and tutorials) let future users to benefit from the results of E-EVALINTO project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 121994 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSIDAD DE SALAMANCA & Country: ES

Project Partners

• OXFAM ITALIA ONLUS
• UNIVERSIDAD DE CADIZ
• CENTRE FOR ADVANCEMENT OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY LTD-CARDET
• SPOLECZNA AKADEMIA NAUK
• DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY