Empowering pre-primary schools to collaborate with “shadows” for children with special educational needs Erasmus Project

Project Title

Empowering pre-primary schools to collaborate with “shadows” for children with special educational needs

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Access for disadvantaged; Disabilities – special needs; Early childhood education and care

Project Summary

The SHADOW project aims to contribute to the development of higher quality early childhood education and care services by providing a reference framework for the collaboration between the kindergarten / pre-school teachers (with some extension for primary teachers) and “shadows” / facilitators / support teachers, namely all adults that are involved in the educational activities as support for children with special educational needs.
We are focusing especially on the situations where the kindergarten cannot provide shadow / support teachers for children with special educational needs (from various reasons, e.g. insufficient staff or funding, number of children with special education needs etc.) and involve adults with limited skills and expertise as shadows, and teachers need to adapt to collaborate with those adults as well as developing those adults’ basic pedagogic and didactic skills. Therefore, our project also aims to contribute to the development of the competencies of educators that support adult learners, in this case, adults that learn to become better shadows for children with special educational needs. At this moment, as far as we know, there are no training available for those adults (except for university studies that provide the better expertise, but take longer time to graduate), so our training will provide a short time solution to develop the basic skills for both teachers and shadows to work together, addressing school education and adult education in the same time, but with the main objective to facilitate equal access to education for children with special educational needs.
The SHADOW project focuses on pre-primary education / kindergarten as we strongly believe that an earlier intervention provides the best educational effects and starting the support services for children with special educational needs before school years is expected to have the best impact for ensuring equal access to education.
The objectives for the SHADOW project are: to extend the services that the partners provide by integrating two innovative training, one for teachers working with shadows and one for the shadows themselves; to promote the institutional development through exchange of good practices and two joined staff training events for mutual development of staffs’ skills, especially the skills for training the teachers and shadows; to enhance the internationalization process of all the involved partners, including the associated partners.
The partnership foresees at least 32 staff involved in the development of the intellectual outputs and joint staff training events: teachers (pre-primary & primary, but also teachers from university), teachers’ trainers, researchers, school inspectors, school counselors) with expertise in working with children with special educational needs and educational staff working with them (including teachers and shadows).
Three intellectual outputs will be developed through the project: a research on teachers’ competencies to work with “shadows”, a training of pre-school teachers that collaborates with “shadows” and a training for the “shadows” themselves (especially for those of them that are not teachers and don’t have the initial training in pedagogy and didactic).
Two joint staff training events will be organized to test the developed methodologies but also to develop our staff’s skills through direct exchange of good practices.
Four multiplier events, one in each country, are planned to ensure that the results of our project are available and used by specialists working in integrating children with special educational needs in mainstream schools.
The participants will develop their competences linked to their professional profile, especially training skills, intercultural skills, linguistic skills and team-work abilities, will become more sensitive to the specific issues of integrating children with SEN in mainstream education and will increase their job satisfaction and confidence in the quality of their work.
The participant organizations will integrate innovative methods to reach their target groups, especially teachers and shadows, to provide more adapted services to the specific needs of the beneficiaries, through using our IO and will increase their capacity to work at European level, to plan & manage transnational educational projects.
The primary target groups (teachers and shadows for children with special educational needs) will have access to better services, especially training services, more adapted to their specific needs and will develop their skills linked to their profession, especially the collaboration skills between teachers and shadows, but also with children with SEN.
On medium and long term, the SHADOW project will contribute to increasing the awareness of the importance of accepting diversity in education and providing equal access to education for children with special educational needs.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 144797 Eur

Project Coordinator

Centrul Judetean de Resurse si Asistenta Educationala Vrancea & Country: RO

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITATEA LUCIAN BLAGA DIN SIBIU
• ASOCIACION MALAGUENA DE EDUCACION Y FORMACION EUROPEA (A.M.E.F.E.)
• Buca Ilce Milli Egitim Mudurlugu
• Asociatia Alternative Educationale Vrancea
• Huseyin Avni Atesoglu Primary School
• ISTITUTO COMPRENSIVO DI MANIAGO
• CENTRO STUDI PLURIVERSUM SRL