DIGItal innovative Strategies for PArental and Civic Engagement Erasmus Project

Project Title

DIGItal innovative Strategies for PArental and Civic Engagement

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: Social dialogue; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The “DIGItal innovative Strategies for PArental and Civic Engagement – DIGI-S.PA.C.E.” project is proposed by CREATE Partnership Trust, in partnership with schools Agrupamento de escolas de Alpendorada, My School srl, the kindergarden “Etiudas” and knowledge partners Ponto PR, our tech experts, the Staffordshire University and the Home of Psychological Ideas as research and evaluation partners and ProMETEUS, as QA partner, representative of 4 EU countries (UK, Italy, Portugal and Lithuania).

The DIGI-SPACE project is based on the assumption that if key actors such as parents are disengaged, this deeply undermines the success of school education: in the pre-primary and primary age range, the impact caused by different levels of parental involvement is much bigger than differences associated with variations in the quality of schools. With this in mind, a developmental focus will be built into DIGI-SPACE differentiated strategic approach, that will tackle parental involvement issues at pre-primary and primary ages for ESL prevention. The European interest comes out clearly from the several documents issued by the EU institutions (i.e. EC DG Education and Culture “Study of Effective use of ECEC in preventing ESL 2014, EU n.d. “Involving parents in the Education of their Children” and many more), claiming for a European answer to the matter, as evidently impacting on ESL, academic results, social integration.
All schools in the consortium have stressed the need to boost parental engagement in order to reach a wider social inclusion, improve students learning outcomes, enhance democratic educational process and active citizenship and early prevent ESL. Partners in this proposal have agreed on the priority to identify effective and innovative interventions in supporting parental engagement, which include communication with parents, create partnerships between parents and schools and enhance mutual understanding, with the massive use of ICT.

DIGI-SPACE pursues the following general objectives:
– Prevent early school leaving, social exclusion and poor learning outcomes through a proactive parental engagement in the education life of the pupils
– reinvent the approach to parental engagement by introducing innovative methods that include ICT tools, peer support, a whole-school differentiated strategy

and the following specific objectives:
– empower school leaders, middle leaders and teachers and develop a tailored training kit in blended mode about innovative parental engagement strategies and introduce the Parent Support Advisor figure in partner schools
– enhance the engagement of parents thanks to an institutionalized protocol with concrete differentiated tools and initiatives, as well training kit for parents with ICT and mobile supports.

reached thanks to the development of 4 Intellectual outputs:

IO1 – Training kit for school staff and Parent Support Advisors: the main results will be to train a Parent Support Advisor in every partner school and spread the culture of parental engagement among school staff, leaders and middle leaders included, equipping them with practical, individualized and differentiated tools to enhance family involvement. This training will be delivered internationally during C1 and locally afterwards

IO2 – Protocol for Parental Engagement, a concrete guideline taking into consideration both content-related and management strategies to enhance parental participation

IO3 – Training kit to enhance parenting skills, that will enable parents to get closer to educational institutions, remove obstacles to participate in their children’s educational path, reinforce parenting skills through some basic cognitive theories and a strong focus on non formal tools to engage and empower

IO4 – DIGI-S.PA.C.E. App: an interface tailored to parents’ experience on the mobile world that, together with the e-learning web platform of IO3, will be parents’ best allies to reach the main goal: be more engaged in their pupils’ educational life, support their learning process and early prevent ESL.

6 TPMs will be organized, as well as 2 staff training events aimed at empowering school staff to conceive effective engagement strategies. The whole project turns around engaging fewer opportunities parents – and thus their pupils – in activities. This happens thanks to several strategies put in place all along the project duration, both in IOs development and in local activities. At the end of DIGI-S.PA.C.E. both teachers, parents, pupils and organizations will have acquired several competences. The aforementioned IOs, plus other actions organized with the support of the PM grant, will produce results on these different groups.

4 Multiplier events are part of the Dissemination and Exploitation of results strategy. The focus on teachers and parents’ training and methodological, holistic research, ensure the highest level of sustainability possible, long-term impact and benefits on all partners involved and beyond.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 363215 Eur

Project Coordinator

Create Partnership Trust & Country: UK

Project Partners

• My School srl
• PontoPR – Publicidade e Robótica, lda
• STAFFORDSHIRE UNIVERSITY
• Kauno menu darzelis “Etiudas”
• Vsi “Psichologiniu ideju namai”
• Agrupamento de escolas de Alpendorada
• Associazione Culturale Pro.m.e.t.eu.s