A Community of Ethics Teachers 2 Erasmus Project

Project Title

A Community of Ethics Teachers 2

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Ethics, religion and philosophy (incl. Inter-religious dialogue); Civic engagement / responsible citizenship

Project Summary

Context
One of the main objectives of the Erasmus+ Programme is the promotion of European values in accordance with Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union:

‘The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail’.

Ethics education plays an integral role in the fostering of European values. However, ethics is studied in European secondary schools within a wide variety of curricula, ranging from philosophy (such as in The Netherlands and Slovenia) and civics (such as partly in Slovakia), to ethics as an independent curriculum (such as in Germany). This fragmentation of curricula, along with a fragmentation of pedagogical methods and goals, inhibits the opportunities for exchanges of best practices and mutual learning, which are two of the objectives of the strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training (ET2020). The Community of Ethics Teachers in Europe aims at overcoming these curricular differences through (digital) innovation, in order to promote the acquisition of skills and competences of European ethics teachers.

Objectives, activities and impact
The Erasmus+ project from 2017 with the title ‘A Community of Ethics Teachers in Europe’ (COMET; 2017-1-NL01-KA201-035219) established a network of ethics teachers by means of an online platform, which can now be visited at https://ethics.community. With the current project, ‘A Community of Ethics Teachers in Europe 2’ (COMET 2), we are expanding the online platform with the ethics curricula of five new partner countries: Bulgaria, Greece, Luxembourg, Norway and Spain.

Coinciding with the development of the online platform, the research of the 2017 COMET project aimed at mapping and categorising the ethics curricula of the participating countries. One of the remarkable findings of the COMET project was that none of the participating countries employed a comprehensive methodology towards oracy in the ethics classroom: even though classroom discussions on ethical topics were common, a more systematic approach to debating moral dilemmas remained absent. This is noteworthy, as many studies have shown the positive impact of debate on the development of skills that are at the core of every ethics curriculum, such as critical thinking, empathy and respect for different viewpoints (see e.g. IDEA’s Erasmus+ funded study from 2017, ‘From Measuring to Learning: Evaluating the Impact of Debate on Critical Thinking and Democratic Values’, especially §3.3: Impact on Values).

In order to respond to this lacuna in European ethics education, the COMET 2 project will aim at the development of a teacher’s guide with the provisional title: ‘Teaching Ethics Through Debate’, that will fit to the variety of curricula and approaches throughout the partner countries. The teacher’s guide will consist of a systematic approach to debating ethical topics, supplemented with a collection of moral dilemmas that can be used as a starting point for classroom debates. The approach to debating ethical topics will be developed by drawing on the findings of the 2019 Erasmus+ strategic partnership with the title ‘A Debate And Philosophy Typology’ (ADAPT, 2019-1-NL01-KA201-060287). The teacher’s guide will be presented to ethics teachers through Multiplier Events in eight of the COMET 2 partner countries, with the long-term benefit of establishing a network of schools in Europe where current ethical topics are discussed in a systematic manner. This will have a positive impact on the quality of ethics education in Europe.

Participants
The COMET 2 consortium consists of five universities (Tilburg University, The Netherlands; Sofia University, Bulgaria; Universidad Complutense Madrid, Spain; Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway; Matej Bel University, Slovakia), three secondary schools (Wolfert Bilingual School Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Gymnasium Weilheim, Germany; Lycée Classique de Diekirch, Luxembourg), and three associations (Za in Proti, National Debate Organisation of Slovenia; Udruga Mala Filozofija, Philosophical Association of Croatia; Institute of Educational Policy in Athens, Greece). Additionally, the COMET 2 project has three associated partners: Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie (FISP), Association Internationale des Professeurs de Philosophie (AIPPh), and International Debate Education Association (IDEA).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 229661 Eur

Project Coordinator

STICHTING KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT BRABANT & Country: NL

Project Partners

• INSTITOUTO EKPEDEFTIKIS POLITIKIS
• Udruga za poticanje neformalnog obrazovanja, kritickog misljenja i filozofije u praksi Mala filozofija
• OSLOMET – STORBYUNIVERSITETET
• Lycée classique de Diekirch
• Stichting BOOR
• SOFIA UNIVERSITY ST KLIMENT OHRIDSKI
• Gymnasium Weilheim