European Tunes Choir for Peer Bullying Erasmus Project

Project Title

European Tunes Choir for Peer Bullying

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: Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

Educational institutions don’t only give students the necessary academic attainment but also teach them to control themselves, to be socially sensitive and responsible, to respect individuals around them. Every child and teenager is entitled to receive education in a safe school environment (Leach 2005, 385). Peer bullying and tendency to violence in our institutions contradict with these principles.Bullying in our institutions poses a major problem since it affects all students all over, mainly those enforcing it, and those being exposed to it.According to OECD, PISA 2015 analysis, the average ratio of students exposed to peer bullying is 19%. This rate is 23% according to PISA, 2019 report. Given these data, it can be said that peer bullying is ever increasing. Imposing positive behaviors and habits to children at an early age before any bullying behavior sets in is one of the key components of an anti-bullying approach at school (Arslan and Savaşer 2008; 65 Hurrer 2007).Therefore, actions against bullying in primary schools are very important to prevent bullying.
According to peer bullying survey results applied in our every institution, average rate of students exposed to various bullying is 25%.
The question is, “how can we prevent peer bullying being a recurring problem in our students?”. We aim to solve our problem with an interdisciplinary approach by using songs and lyrics being a fun activity for students.We plan to find a solution by emphasizing respect, love, democracy, equality, human rights, sensitivity to environment, tolerance, anti-bullying messages in the songs. Music and music education is very important in the individuals’ cognitive, affective and psychomotor development. Accordingly, music has been one of the most important aspects of education activities since ancient times and has been used as an important tool to shape human behavior (Tarman, 2006). Goals to be achieved via music education are to raise individuals who are conscious, sensitive, cultured, aware of a universal culture other than his, conscious of love and respect, who strives to seek the good, just and real. (KARKIN, 1984, p. 196). Given this information, we have decided to work our project studies with the title of “education of music, cultural themes and values” to prevent peer bullying, to effectively and efficiently imposing the education of values to students, being among the goals of our strategic plans for our schools.
The goal of our project is to enable our teachers to recognize and promote their and their partners’ cultural melodies and to ensure intercultural dialogue and multiculturalism being among the four main goals of the EU 2020, to broaden their visions by witnessing education system of each partner country in-situ. As mail and Skype conversations will be used often during the partnership process, our teachers are expected to gain communication and language proficiency skills on par with the European level. They are expected to implement innovative educational approaches by providing interdisciplinary education and go beyond traditional teaching methods, designing posters and logos, creating blogs, using web 2.0 tools, preparing surveys, e-catalogs, and gaining 21st century skills, and finally to transfer this knowledge and experience to other students and institutions to increase their institutional capacity.
Our main goal for our students is to seek, find and share songs including value such as love, respect, democracy, tolerance, etc. for a cooperative inter-cultural dialog. They are expected to turn such concepts into behavioral patterns and to ensure social balance through music. They are also expected to maintain better quality relationships with their peers and achieve European level linguistic skills, to actively use the technology to create logos, brochures, surveys and web2.0 toolkits to create clips, thus, gaining a 21st century skill set to become individuals with an augmented learning and investigating motivation.
How can we prevent peer bullying?We aim to find the answer to this question via LTT studies we will carry out with our project partners, England, Italy, Portugal, Latvia and Greece, and to demonstrate our success with the concert to be performed at the end of our meeting.
With these studies, we plan to reduce our problem in the long run by 3% in the first 6 month, 5% in the second 6 month, 7% in the third 6 month, and 9% in the fourth 6 month period. The goals in our schools’ strategic plans coincide with those in 2023 Educational Vision and the EU 2020. Based on data stating that the rate of absence by the students being victims of bullying increases by 3 to 4 times (OECD, PISA 2015), we aim that our project will contribute to the goal of reducing early school drop-outs to 10% for EU 2020 in the long run. Our project also coincides with the goals of recognizing foreign cultures and promoting own culture to promote internationalization being among the goals of ERASMUS + program.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 154946 Eur

Project Coordinator

Sarıgazi Ahmet Keleşoğlu İlkokulu & Country: TR

Project Partners

• Lanchester EP Primary School
• Istituto Comprensivo Statale “Don Bosco”
• Cesvaines vidusskola
• 2 Anavyssos Primary School
• Agrupamento de Escolas da Batalha