Dialogic Revolution Erasmus Project

Project Title

Dialogic Revolution

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

The general objective of project Dialogic Revolution was inclusion of students with fewer opportunities with applying rules of Dialogic Learning theory and themes of cultural heritage of partner institutions. Planned activities formed detailed objectives which covered such areas as implementing theatre and cooking sessions, guided tours (touristic quests- rhyming riddles), creating network of international ventures which was an efficient way of increasing the knowledge, skills and improving educational situation of participating people until the start of pandemic of COVID-19 in March 2020. From that moment we had to stop all actvities. We prolonged the project by 6 months but because of the pandemic we were not able to continue activities because the core of the project was base on interpersonal relations.
The participants were students with their families and teachers of four schools: Poland (2 schools- one of them was a project coordinator, Romania and Spain). Partner institutions have got some features in common: location far from big cities, need to widen educational offer and need to encourage students’ families to participate in educational processes more closely. Additionally all partners faced similar problems such as: poverty and parents’ unemployment, long distances to cultural, educational centres, low motivation to learn and behave in accordance with school rules. During project we tried to solve these problems in order to avoid potential future exclusion of students by working on their self- esteem, openness and willingness to learn. Participants who were involved directly: there were about 280 people (students, teachers, families) but indirectly there were much more as we spreaded the information about our project via Internet , in traditional media such as articles in local press, during meetings with local authorities, educational staff and parents.

The activities included in project were based on principles of Dialogic learning method which stresses meaning of interpersonal interactions. Our project also encompassed such scientific theories as: Social Development Theory (Vygotsky, 1978), the Theory of Multiple Intelligences (Gardner ,1983). All activities aimed at preventing social exclusion and at the same time strengthening the bonds between people. In our opinion the best medium which helped to achieve it was cultural heritage. It helped to extend knowledge about history, traditions and awareness of beauty of the region, moreover it enabled different generations to work on specific issues together which led to enhancing or in some cases creating the family bonds.

The project activities included: writing profiles of partner countries with a specific focus on school regions, learning about history and geography of these places which led to create tourist quests: another group of activities was connected with exploring local legends, stories, tales and preparing on the basis of them theatre plays. The third group of activities was based on the cooking heritage- learning traditional cuisine, choosing recipes, common cooking. All activities were realized at different levels: at local level in schools, within families, at international level- children exchanged their results via Internet and at the time of international meetings when children were visiting places already known from descriptions, then they were able to confront their depictions with real situations and they were able to work together on project tasks. Apart from these we had workshops on Dialogic learning method, we created and then updated the website of the project and project corner on eTwinning platform Additionally we evaluated our work.

We organised ex-ante evaluation in September 2018 to check whether project objectives and planned activities respond to real needs of partner institutions and their communities. On-going evaluation took place in December/ January 2019/20 and it checked the relevance of events regarding project theme, level of accomplishment of objectives , motivation and engagement of project groups.

We decided not to do ex post evaluation. The project was stopped from March 2020 to June 2020 because of the pandemic. We prolonged it by 6 months and tried to finish tasks in September and October 2020 but the pandemic made it impossible and stopped it for the second time so we decided to end the project without ex post evaluation because eleven-months gap change the perception of students, parents and teachers.

The results of project can be divided into two categories: the hard one -website, scenarios, quests, brochures and publications, films (recordings), presentations, exhibitions and the soft ones- changing attitudes, knowledge and skills of participants.

The benefits of project were connected with reorganising school situations in terms of widening teachers’ horizons, rising students motivations and their close relatives awareness of meaning of their presence in children’s school lives.

Project Website

https://sites.google.com/a/cellavinaria.org/dialogic-revolution/home

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 108977 Eur

Project Coordinator

Zespół Szkolno – Przedszkolny w Kostkowie & Country: PL

Project Partners

• Instituto de Enseñanza Secundaria Obligatoria Cella Vinaria
• Miejski Zespol Szkol Szkola Podstawowa nr.1
• Liceul Tehnologic Agromontan Romeo Constantinescu