Highlight Your Surroundings Erasmus Project

Project Title

Highlight Your Surroundings

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 Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

The project has helped students with innovative methods to develop key and other competencies and in this way the knowledge is made useful and made students more useful as potencial future employees. This is achieved by an intensive international cooperation of teachers of art, of foreign languages, of the mother tongue, of (social) science (biology, chemistry), ICT teachers, their students and experts in the field of communication and publishing. The cooperation was divided into different areas: research, developing, writing, design, publishing, dissemination.5,5 million young people are unemployed in the EU today, which means that every fifth citizen, younger than 25 can’t find a job. The reasons are in the economic crisis and falling numbers of work places but also in inadequate education or unskilled young work force. The knowledge young people gain is often partial, theoretical, reproductive; young people can’t use it in unfamiliar situations, hence it is unuseful. Even though they gain a multitude of information during their studies, they do badly when they have to solve problems or show basic skills (PISA studies – there are no European countries among the best). Partially that can be the consequence of inefficient teaching methods, “compartmentalization of knowledge ‘, according to school subjects, focus on memorizing information rather than the development of transversal competences, which would allow young people to find themselves in new situations. An additional problem of today’s school is that we don’t really know what we are preparing our children for. » Of the 10 most wanted jobs today, only 2 existed eight years ago. So, what we are teaching in our schools today, won’t be needed in the future« (dr. R. Rajović, MENSA International)The European framework for key competences for lifelong learning has been used in many EU countries as a reference point for reforming national education and training systems. It has contributed to the move towards a more competence-based teaching and learning approach. Progress has been significant on school curricula and in giving transversal key competences a more prominent part therein. This does not mean that the objectives are achieved in this area. These competences should be developed by all teachers in all subjects, but only few really do that since the responsibilities are spread among all of them. Besides that, this is a completely new area of expertise. Teachers haven’t been trained for competence teaching and do not exactly know how to deal with it in class. Another problem is also that key competences cannot really be developed in an environment where teachers see only to the boundaries of their subject area. There have been some movements made (cross-curricular integration, project days) but all these forms are very short (hour or two) and limited to two or three similar objects, so they don’t represent the actual interdisciplinary approach to acquiring knowledge. A step forward is a modular approach that attempts to combine the objectives of at least some of the subjects (eg. Science, social sciences …)We should look for the solution of these problems in a different school, new approaches to teaching and learning. Young people need interdisciplinary knowledge, learning on the basis of solving authentic problems and development of key competences. To prepare youngsters for real life, schools have to work with local communities, learn about their needs and co-operate with them. In this way the youngsters will learn about their career possibilities and the requirements for jobs. We developped and tried out an example of interdisciplinary and competence focused approach to teaching. We developped an appropriate plan of teacher training, interdisciplinary (topic) teaching material and a practical learning tour which are tested in practice. The main focus was placed on tourism – because all these areas have enormous touristic potential that is not being just.Target groups: students and teachers General objectives:- To train teachers for new approaches to teaching.- To give an opportunity to teachers to develop key competences and interdisciplinary approach.- We linked knowledge of different subject fields and made it useful (contribute to prevent early school leaving)- Competences are developped with youth and teachers, which will help them find their way in the changing labor market and in life (prevent unemployment in the future).- Experiences and examples of good practice are exchanged between partner schools and beyond.- We have reinforced co-operation between schools and local community – Students, teachers and wider community are enabled to experience a multicultural exchange. To achieve this all the students learned about entrepreneurship, produced walking and biking tours, produced a website based on the basic assumptions of our project as written bove in this summary.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 218950 Eur

Project Coordinator

Rsg Tromp Meesters & Country: NL

Project Partners

• Collegio Vescovile Barbarigo
• ecolea Internationale Schule Rostock
• Gimnazija Ptuj
• IES Licenciado Francisco Cascales
• LYCEE GENERAL ET TECHNOLOGIQUE CONDORCET
• Marks gymnasieskola
• Askim Videregående Skole