Big Ideas for Better Schools: Leading ‘big issue’ transformation in schools – Diversity, Democracy and Equity Erasmus Project

Project Title

Big Ideas for Better Schools: Leading ‘big issue’ transformation in schools – Diversity, Democracy and Equity

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

Context/background of project
There has been a worrying rise in racism and other forms of intolerance over the past decade in EU countries and beyond. These more recent developments have compounded many other well established forms of inequity. The outcome of this has been the increasing popularity of the political right, especially that of the extreme right. The increasingly unchecked ‘escalator’ approach whereby extreme, often unchecked views, can lead to either support for terrorism or direct action means that many people are treated with intolerance and are subjected to many forms of victimisation and marginalisation. Overcoming negative beliefs about others is not just a matter of legislation but of developing perspectives and attitudes that promote a sense of ‘shared humanity’. This means focusing on what we have in common rather than what divides us and having empathy towards those experiencing challenging circumstances. As children grow their views become more established. Once discriminatory attitudes become embedded they are hard to shake or change. Therefore, how young people perceive others and the culture of a future society needs to be addressed in school. Increasing tolerance and reducing discrimination requires deliberative action on the part of education in very specific ways. Schools are sometimes ill equipped to take on many of the ideas and conversations that are required to educate young people into a concept of society that is build more firmly on democracy, diversity and equity. In many cases there is a lack of in-depth knowledge and understanding among teachers about these ideas and a lack of opportunity for leaders and teachers in schools to engage in a process of enhancing knowledge and understanding of these areas. There are also limited opportunities to engage in in-depth robust deliberation on these type of bigger issue conversations and ideas.
Objectives
This project aims to provide
1. Action Learning Sets for use by school leaders with school staff to enhance educators knowledge and understanding of three core themes- i.e. democracy, diversity and equity
2. To develop cross curricular toolkits in order to take the enhanced knowledge and understanding among staff into the development of student learning in identified curricular areas
3. To provide a safe and bounded context where discussions and deliberations can take place firstly among school educators and more laterally among students themselves with view to enriching the quality of discourse, understanding, knowledge, empathy and action.
Numbers and Profile of Partners
The project involves 4 university lead partners, four school lead partners, 12 additional associated partners schools and four professional development organisations. The second phase will extend the project to at least 5 teachers in each of the 16 schools and this should engage in the region of 600 learners. It is hoped that both sets of resources will be used more extensively in future as a result of the integration of the resources into leadership development programmes in each of the participating countries.
Activities and Methodology
There are different project activities
1. Assembling and collating the action learning sets and the protocols for their use in staff development activities – this is the first phase that will focuses on school leaders and school educator teams
2. The training of all associated partner schools in the use of the Action Learning Sets.
3. The development of cross curricular classroom toolkits to extend staff learning into the classroom and to ensure that student learning is impacted strongly by the enhanced of school staff on these areas of democracy, diversity and equity. This will involve all partners in the identification of cognate curricular areas to be developed and in the
production of classroom ready resources and methodologies to explicate these themes in classroom practice.
Impact
There will be an impact on the direct target groups: school leaders, teachers and learners in upper primary and lower secondary schools, university education departments and leadership development organisations, and on indirect target groups other leaders, teachers, learners and other school support initiatives.
The action learning sets and the classroom toolkits will provide creative training and teaching documentation with methods instructional models that will lead to more student centered approaches to engaging with difficult and challenging concepts and ideas, strengthening the professional profile of the teaching profession; offer a transnational experience to teachers and leaders in the partner schools and extend the reach of these outcomes by developing a web platform for the material and ideas so that the project team may share their experiences with other cognate groups across Europe.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 391475 Eur

Project Coordinator

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND GALWAY & Country: IE

Project Partners

• VII Prywatne LO im. M. Reja
• Coláiste Bhaile Chláir
• IES Valle de Leiva
• UNIWERSYTET JAGIELLONSKI
• Rødberg skole
• UNIVERSIDAD DE MURCIA
• UNIVERSITETET I OSLO