Creating pathways for inclusion Erasmus Project

Project Title

Creating pathways for inclusion

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: Inclusion – equity; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

One of the most important European goals is total inclusion. We truly believe that no matter how many resources, materials and supports there are for inclusive education, it is the teacher that ultimately determines its success. For that reason, our two-year project is aimed to provide our teachers with tools to accelerate the inclusion process in our communities in a successful way.
There will be 4 special school communities involved: two from Spain, one from Croatia and one from Poland. The direct participants of the project will be educators and students with intellectual disability in age between 16 and 24. In our mobilities there will take part 7 teachers and 6 students from Poland, Croatia and one of the Spanish schools and 6 teachers and 5 students from the other Spanish school. The overall number of beneficiaries of the mobilities will be 27 special-needs educators and 24 students with intellectual disabilities.
To achieve our goal, we will start increasing our competence and awareness as educators in the field of inclusion by broaden our practical and methodological knowledge and creating self-evaluation tools. Teachers will research about experiences, ideas and examples of good practices in their area, reflect on them and assess the possibility to embrace them. This research will be gathered in a report that will be disseminated to strengthen inclusion. The educators’ mobilities will help us learning from new inclusive ideas from our foreign counterparts and having some feedback from them. We will create alliances between our schools and countries to support each other in this process.
An essential aspect of our project will be inspiring our communities to implement a new approach towards students with disabilities and to provoke some changes to create a more accessible environment for all. We will create alliances with different agents to include our students in society with the same rights as any other citizen.
The objectives of our project are mainly focused on teachers but they will affect also pupils. Students’ competences, strengths and rights will be promoted among society as well as the whole Erasmus+ programme which facilitates that possibility. People from local communities will have a chance to meet and get to know better students with disabilities through the activities planned in the project, as well as their rights and the benefits of an inclusive society. Furthermore, students with disabilities will have a great opportunity to create international peer relationships while having the experience of an international trip. The whole experience will empower our students and the role they can develop as active agents in the process of inclusion in their communities and beyond.
There will be many activities going on in each community regarding inclusion in cooperation with other social agents: inclusion awareness days, volunteer students at local NGOs, use of local media by our students, participation in markets and fairs, meetings and shared activities wiht regular schools, organization of professional developments, teachers research, workshops for students, etc. Nevertheless, the mobilities are of great importance in the project. Educators will be the beneficiaries of the first year mobilities and students will take part in the mobilities planned for the second year. The short-term staff mobilities, organized by every partner school, will be focused on observation of different European special education systems regarding inclusion, sharing and showing our good inclusive practices and getting some ideas and feedback. Whereas the short-term exchanges of groups of pupils will be focused on the process of inclusion and empowerment, on the creation of peer relationships between students of different culture and backgrounds and on broaden their experiences traveling abroad. During both kind of mobilities we will take part in study visits, workshops, formal and informal meetings, visits to companies, organizations and local administrations and we will share plenty of quality time. We will use and implement active and effective tools to make our cooperation successful before, during and after the mobilities (workshops, TwinSpace forums). The eTwinnig platform will be used not only in that sense but also to coordinate our job regarding the objectives mentioned above and disseminate the outcomings and outputs of our project.
The results of our project will be the increase of inclusion opportunities in our communities as a result of higher educators’ competence and knowledge (gained throughout the duration of this project), the creation of outcomes to help us and others navigating through this process and the promotion of our students’ potentiality and their empowerment as an active agents of inclusion. The potential long-term benefits will be seen both in a growth of inclusive practices in our communities, in our partnership countries and in the European education system

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 67409 Eur

Project Coordinator

Zespół Szkół Specjalnych w Raciborzu & Country: PL

Project Partners

• CPEE Pla de la Mesquita
• Centar za odgoj, obrazovanje i rehabilitaciju Podravsko sunce
• CEE DOCTOR RAMON SURIÑACH