Creative Thinking for Parents Erasmus Project

Project Title

Creative Thinking for Parents

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 adult 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; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Open and distance learning

Project Summary

Creative thinking is the ability to look at things differently, and find new ways of solving problems. The European Council in its Reference Framework for Key Competences for Lifelong Learning (2018) regards creative thinking as an important communicative and cognitive skill, which is embedded throughout all key competences and helps individuals generate new ideas and new theories, which lead to progress and success.

Nowadays, creative thinking has been proven to be a valuable asset, especially for parents, who need to stay at home with their kids as a consequence of the Covid-19 virus. From January 2020 to April, more than 3,5 billion people were confined at home, not only in Europe but in the whole world. The vast majority of them are children and their parents, since in many countries schools were closed. In hard times like this, it’s evident that parents need to be creative and look at the whole situation with a different perspective. They need to be flexible and at the same time give courage to their children, by finding different ways of entertaining them. That is why creative thinking of parents should be enhanced in order for them to be able to develop new and novel solutions to contemporary situations.

Moreover, creative thinking has been acknowledged as an important skill, which can be trained (Ritter & Mostert, 2016). As a result, numerous initiatives have been implemented to enhance post secondary or higher level education curriculum to develop creative thinking skills, but the vast majority of them concentrate on the world of work.

The general objective of the project as defined in its title is to develop the creative thinking skills and competence of parents of children at school age.

Specific objectives:
-To develop a training programme on creative thinking for parents
-To develop an online motivation learning environment that will bring creative thinking education in their houses
-To develop a parents’ guide on creative thinking
-To organise workshops for parents
-To disseminate the project results and to create an online community of practice of parents to promote creative thinking.

Target groups:
Direct target groups of the project are parents of children at school age as well as trainers at parents’ schools or parents’ support organisations.
Indirect target groups are the schools and all actors currently active in the promotion of creative thinking ( training centres, NGOs, universities, educational departments of municipalities, policy makers, education & adult learning stakeholders).

Final beneficiaries are the children themselves.

The project is structured in 3 outputs:
O1. Training programme: Creative Thinking for parents
The first output of the project is a training programme for creative thinking, specifically targeted to parents of school age children. The training programme will be divided into workshops, with a short duration each (2h) that will cover different thematics.

O2. Learning Motivation Environment CreativeParents
The learning environment will be accessible online and contents will follow the microlearning methodology, where notifications/ emails will be sent to parents’, notifying them about short duration (minutes) interventions/ resources they can do/watch on the topic of creative thinking along with practical exercises that they can do along with the children.

O3. Parents’ Guide on Creative Thinking
The Guide will include information on the same topics addressed in the training programme and will be provided as a trainees handbook for the workshops. It will consist of:
– basic theory/information on each topic
– practical tips, questions
– ideas for activities
– link to the online supplementing materials and community of practice
– information about the learning environment and how to use it

The online community of practice will be important for the target group as it will offer them space to discuss questions and uncertainties as well as material where they can find information and answers to their questions.

The project previews also the organisation of a short learning event and 7 multiplier events one in each partner’ s country.

Applicant is the Students’ Parents Federation, FAPEL (LU) and partners the European Parents’ Association, EPA (BE), the National University of Galway (IE), the non-profit organisation Mapa (PL), the adult learning organisation IDEC (EL), the Knowledge, Innovation and Strategic Management Club (BG) and the technical partner HESO (Cyprus).

Project Website

http://www.creativethinking4parents.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 180191 Eur

Project Coordinator

FEDERATION DES ASSOCIATION DE PARENTS D’ELEVES DU LUXEMBOURG & Country: LU

Project Partners

• NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND GALWAY
• AINTEK SYMVOULOI EPICHEIRISEON EFARMOGES YPSILIS TECHNOLOGIAS EKPAIDEFSI ANONYMI ETAIREIA
• EUROPEAN PARENTS ASSOCIATION
• HEARTHANDS SOLUTIONS LIMITED
• Fundacja Mapa Pasji
• KLUB PO UPRAVLENIE NA ZNANIYA, INOVACII I STRATEGII