BEAGLE – Bioethical Education and Attitude Guidance for Living Environment Erasmus Project

Project Title

BEAGLE – Bioethical Education and Attitude Guidance for Living Environment

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Environment and climate change; Ethics, religion and philosophy (incl. Inter-religious dialogue); Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions

Project Summary

Project BEAGLE – Bioethical Education and Attitude Guidance for Living Environment bases its work on three pillars: ethic values (personal values –my self and nature); democratic and societal values (my society and the nature – what can I do?) and bioethical / environmental values (preservation of biodiversity – what we can do? How to live in harmony with the nature?). Our aim is to address the field of bioethics and values education and focus on empowering education of primary and high school students, teachers and educators in formal and non-formal education. Why is this our intention?
Our opinion is that the recent galloping development of technologies demands a new approach to education. As educational system and professors struggle to keep up with the swift rise of numerous technological options, our aim is to present a toolkit for educators that can help them introduce innovative practices in modern environment. Moreover, as the process of digitalization rapidly takes over our everyday routine, children are getting more disconnected with their environment, nature especially. This partnership strongly believes that bioethics and values as well as critical thinking are becoming crucial aspects in the development of a democratic, pluralistic, knowledge-based and nature- conscious society. Bioethical education and critical thinking have thus a significant role in forming an bioethical mature human being. That being said, our aim is to design, test and implement an innovative practice-oriented learning environment focused on bioethical values.
Main motivation for our action is the fact that bioethical topics are not much covered in educational system, and we will use knowledge from past ethical project to develop innovative educational materials and curriculum using modern technology and knowledge. The project partners come from different fields and complement each other in their knowledge and performance capabilities. The coordinator Mala filozofija (CRO) together with STePS (ITA) are pioneers regarding approaches to formal and non-formal learning. Also, Mala filozofija is expert on critical thinking and early education. With two higher education institutions with strong erudite tradition, University of Split (CRO) and University of Ljubljana (SLO) our goal is even more underlined. Lastly, Greek association Internet now! is expert in new digital technology and digital media, which will aid in project’s overall aim of implementing new technologies in the field of education. More so, all partners cooperate with elementary and high schools in their countries, which is excellent opportunity for integration of associated partners in the upcoming BEAGLE project.
From the methodological point of view the project activities include collaboration among teachers and problem-based learning approaches via workshops, promoting agreed bioethical values within a framework of socio-cultural environment. The regular reflection on practice through observation and the documentation of children’s experiences which will be implemented will allow teachers to face new challenges by being responsive to the needs and potentialities of all children. Teachers will also collaborate in the design of the curriculum.
In addition, an open learning approach will be addressed and integrated. Teachers and other staff members from participating institutions will use collaborative online documents open for all participants in order to pose pending issues, problems, cases, questions to be solved through collaborative efforts. Teachers will benefit from collaborative activities designed in the curriculum. So again, collaborative learning method will be the key method used in the project.
To retort, BEAGLE project will create international teacher guidelines in bioethical education for primary and high schools and develop open educational materials and peer-to-peer learning methods with an aim to enhance the professional development of those active in the school education sector, by increasing the quality and range of initial and continuing training. Furthermore, BEAGLE will implement a school curriculum for bioethical education in the partners’ countries, complemented with a preparatory review of the current provision for 6-18 teachers regarding learning about bioethics, values education end critical thinking. In the end, BEAGLE will develop online archive for bioethical education which will prove to be useful for all teachers and educators from Europe to implement innovative education methods in schools and non-formal education institutions.
At the end of the project, at least 150 teachers will participate directly in the project development, more than 100.000 EU citizens will be informed about BEAGLE and more than 2000 organizations and institutions will be informed about the online platform. Considering our developed sustainability plan, these numbers will continue to rise, even after the active phase of the project is finished.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 117860,51 Eur

Project Coordinator

Udruga za poticanje neformalnog obrazovanja, kritickog misljenja i filozofije u praksi Mala filozofija & Country: HR

Project Partners

• SVEUCILISTE U SPLITU, FILOZOFSKI FAKULTET
• UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI
• Internet Now!
• STEPS srl