Democracy experiments in my family Erasmus Project

Project Title

Democracy experiments in my family

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 : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship

Project Summary

DEMyF brings together 5 partner schools from Finland (project coordinator), Poland, Romania, Serbia and Turkey. Cooperation, justice and the respect for rules and laws represent democratic principles that children should be taught from a very young age. Beginning with the age of 12-14 years old, children start to become aware of abstract principles, such as justice and, as they work or play together, spend a lot of time making group decisions.
The necessity to put this project into practice is strongly related to the fact that students need to be taught about abstract principles, such as democratic values or political systems, they need to be prepared about how they can make further use of democratic instruments at hand – community iinvolvement, citizen intiatives, social dialogues with decision-maker actors, free expression of political choices through voting mechanisms- in order to become active citizens when they grow up. Thus, our project aims at creating specific activities that will make students fully aware of fundamental democratic values such as freedom, tolerance, respect, solidarity and equality.
After analyzing the educational development plan of each school, a few common features have been established: an international dimension of the school curriculum related to the subject of Democracy and citizenship, a need to raise students’ motivation with respect to getting involved in community life through direct experience, the need to teach students some key concepts, rights and duties, all these representing tools they can resort to to produce changes in local communities or at a wider level. An Erasmus+ project can offer all the 5 countries the possibility to cooperate in order to implement the project activities. Afterwards, the 5 schools will analyze how their educational systems can further include these activities in an optional curriculum.
This project aims at raising awareness among students, irrespective of their nationality and social background, with respect to democracy and citizenship, democratic values within various political systems at European level and, at the same time, at setting a model of teaching democracy and citizenship at lower secondary level, model based on the lesson plans and teaching strategies developed during this project.
Additionally, the project aims at improving teachers’ professional development and assisting them in adapting their teaching methods to the new trends in education, trends which refer to the holistic, cross-curricular approaches.

There will be 4 student exchanges (C2-C5) and one joint-staff training event (C1), during which we will cover different aspects regarding the principles of democracy:
C1 – The basic principles of Identity (at individual, national and European level) and Democracy
C2 – The basic principles of Democracy and Political Life: decision-making mechanisms, elections and power of the people
C3 – The basic principles of Democracy and Civic engagement- Civil society
C4 – The basic principles of Human rights – making justice work- Debates
C5 – Development of new curriculum as far as Democracy and Active citizenship are concerned
During the 5 LTTAs, there will be several topics that will become teaching units in a curriculum project. All partners will create lesson plans, sample activities and make scientifical and practical research that will be discussed during the final meeting, which is the joint-staff training event. Moreover, during the last LTTA there will be curriculum specialists and representatives of educational board invited to workshops to bring their contribution to the final output.
There will be several tangible outputs: lesson plans, sample activities, workshop materials and presentations, students’ and teachers’ research, records of project activities, posters, exhibitions, official blogs related to the topic of the project, flashmobs, e-brochures made during the LTTAs, achievement certificates, debate records, Europass mobility documents and the final output – new curriculum subject related to Democracy and Citizenship.

The students involved in the project will benefit from the learning methods by participating to the project results themselves. The project will create non-formal activities which will encourage students to cooperate, to get in touch with healthy lifestyles in order to get healthier habits. People involved will become more aware of the influence of nature on their everyday lives.
The project is strongly related to the promotion of fundamental values at European level, of communicative, creative and ICT skills, it will also resort to team work skills and critical thinking

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 141216 Eur

Project Coordinator

Kuoppanummen koulukeskus & Country: FI

Project Partners

• Osnovna skola “Miroslav Antic”
• Szkola Podstawowa nr 25 z Oddzialami Integracyjnymi, Zespol Szkol nr 19
• ÖZEL SAMSUN SINAV KOLEJİ ORTAOKULU
• Scoala Gimnaziala Ibanesti