Challenge Extremism: Using Philosophy for Children to develop critical thinking and media literacy in the classroom Erasmus Project

Project Title

Challenge Extremism: Using Philosophy for Children to develop critical thinking and media literacy in the classroom

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: Inclusion – equity; Pedagogy and didactics

Project Summary

Critical thinking is a key competency for young people growing up in the 21st century. Children need to make sense of complex and conflicting information. Social media presents a particular challenge with the increasing presence of extremist views. These issues have been recorded by the four partner countries, and this project builds the capacity of teachers today and tomorrow in response to this challenge.

SUMMARY OF PROJECT AIM ACHIEVED
The aim of this project was to support teachers with the training and resources they need to help children to become critical and challenging thinkers. This training directly reached 514 teachers across the UK, Hungary, Poland and Sweden. These teachers will have facilitated ‘difficult conversations’ with 6,245 pupils, and has the potential of reaching a total of 15,420.

OUTLINE OF OBJECTIVES ACHIEVED
The project had 4 key objectives and these have been successfully achieved.
1:- To know more about the teaching contexts of partner countries (specifically in dealing with diversity, media literacy and critical thinking).
This was achieved by the partners participating in project, training and dissemination. From the evaluation of the project, participants went from 0% saying they had “a good understanding of controversial issues in other European contexts” to 100%, by the end of the project.

2. To increase dialogic teaching skills as ways of challenging extremist views.
A key activity of the project was the international five day training in dialogic teaching attended by 25 teachers and educators. The main focus of this training was on Community of Enquiry (COE) as a technique for supporting teachers to facilitate ‘difficult conversations’. This was attended by all partners, and involved them sharing their teaching experiences and approaches to developing critical thinkers and challenging extremist views.

3. To understand how dialogic teaching can be delivered in schools.
The importance of this training was however for the participants to put the method into practice. The attendees therefore went back to their own countries and delivered cascade training to a total of 514 teachers. This allowed teachers to work with their pupils on holding difficult conversations. These discussions were based on either a current or historic event, and look at it through different media perspective, considering the arguments, evidence and ethics. This then reached 6,245 pupils, with the potential of reaching a total of 15,420. As a result the project collected 42 case studies from across the partner countries.

4. To develop and disseminate online resources to support teachers in the future/ trainee teachers.
The classroom projects using dialogue techniques, were collected in the project Intellectual Output – the Teacher Toolkit. This was the subject of the dissemination phase – sharing the learning of teachers in schools, with trainees who will become the teachers of tomorrow. Each partner worked closely with providers of Initial Teacher Training reaching 1143 trainees. This partnership is key to the sustainability of the project, as partners and universities will seek ways of embedding dialogue techniques into teacher training. This wider dissemination was well received with:
– 6 national and international events promoting the project
– 1980 views/downloads of Toolkit
– 7147 visits/likes/views of project website/facebook channels

LONGER TERM BENEFITS
The activities resulted in teachers having increased skills to teach critical thinking, and an understanding of how this can be used to challenge extremist views in the classroom. Pupils became more critical, caring, creative and co-operative in their learning, as teachers introduce aspects of the Philosophy for Children approach. Trainee teachers become aware of the need for critical thinking and have access to a relevant Teacher Toolkit resource. Partners have increased their capacity to train others, and developed networks to share their learning.

These chain of activities and results will support children to engage with the wider world around them, in positive and thoughtful ways. It will give them the thought processes and language to challenge media, and engage with extremist views. The project will therefore give confidence to teacher, trainee and pupil to “hold difficult conversations”.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 82178,62 Eur

Project Coordinator

Liverpool World Centre & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Stowarzyszenie Oswiatowo-Wychowawcze im.Sebastiana Fabiana Klonowica
• ELTE Radnóti Miklós Gyakorló Általános Iskola és Gyakorló Gimnázium
• Instytut Globalnej Odpowiedzialnosci
• ANTHROPOLIS ANTROPOLOGIAI KOZHASZNUEGYESULET
• Nyköpings högstadium