Historical borders in Europe: Ancient limits, New Opportunities Erasmus Project

Project Title

Historical borders in Europe: Ancient limits, New Opportunities

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

The starting point of this project was to bring the European Union (EU) closer to our students, since it is necessary they understand the influence of the EU over their lives, and they should also be aware of the transnational relationships which have been established among the different member countries of the EU, which have allowed them to overcome ancient national borders and limits, and which have given them the opportunity of creating a real European citizenship.

Regarding the topic, we chose the study of the concept of “border” from several points of view and of the transnational relationships among countries as the main focus of our project. Analysing the relationships among different countries of the EU in a global way and trying to understand how difficulties created by ancient national borders have been overcome when they have been replaced by a feeling of belonging to the EU was a good way of bringing young European teenagers closer to the creation of the EU as a supranational identity.

Taking this theoretical approach as our starting point, we considered that working the concept of “border” jointly with students from different countries through an Erasmus+ KA2 project was a much more motivating way of studying and analysing this aspect. In addition, sharing experiences, ideas, knowledge and values with students from other countries and cultures have helped participants to overcome clichés and stereotypes about their own countries and the ones of the rest of participants. At the same time, this has also helped to reach the real dimension of an European citizenship.

This multidisciplinary and multinational project have been aimed at students from Secondary Education (12-17 yrs). The project included 100 mobilities -25 people in each activity, 3 students and 2 teachers from each country, but finally there have been 106 people (66 students and 40 teachers)- apart from the 19 people who participated in the 2 transnational project meetings held in Slovenia (October 2017) and Spain (May 2019). There has been a total of 125 people participating in the project activities (mobilities), apart of course from all of them who have participated in all the activities carried out in our schools, at a local and regional level.
Our students’ profile or background is quite varied: students with good marks, with learning problems or difficulties, from underprivileged familes or in risk of social exclusion, with few economical resources, etc. As we establised in the application form, there were some selection criteria to make the process fair and clear, trying to give the opportunity to participate to many people as possible. The participants were not only those 125 people, but we have tried to involve as many students, institutions, etc. as possible. In our schools, the project activities have been done by all our students (in the case of Spain, coordinator school, even students from Bachillerato and FP –levels not involved in the project- have participated in the activities carried out at our school) The tasks were organised and the work divided, and students working in groups and coordinated by teachers carried out those actitivities in an efficient way.

The participating teachers also have had a varied profile, aged between 25 and 60 yrs, from different subjects, since we thought that involving a great number of people from different subjects was something which would enrich our project.

The project objetives were the following:
– Learn the concept of “border” from different points of view.
– Know the historical evolution of the European borders.
– Distinguish the different types of political borders.
– Recognise the EU as a way to overcome the ancient transnational borders.
– Understand globalization and how it has contributed to the end of the traditional borders.
– Be aware of what being a European citizen means and its importance to be able to overcome the social, cultural, political, etc. differences.
– Reduce early school leaving.
– Increase our students’ interest on education and on the learning of foreing languages.

The project activities (search of information, press dossiers, interviews, inter-frontier guides, etc.) have helped us to achive the project objectives and we have got good results that we expect to keep over time. We think that these experiences increase the number of students in higher education levels, help to reduce early school leaving and to fight youth unemployment, objectives which are included in the European framework ET2020. Working the previous objectives in a collaborative way with teachers and students from other countries have given a more European dimension to us and to our institutions. And at the same time, this has implied a great impact, at different levels, and has enriched enormously the teaching and learning process in our institutions.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 115620 Eur

Project Coordinator

IES Francisco de los Cobos & Country: ES

Project Partners

• ISTITUTO COMPRENSIVO “GIGLI” RECANATI
• Agrupamento de Escolas de Mogadouro
• Zespol Szkol w Pobiedziskach
• Základní skola Kolin V., Mnichovická 62
• Osnovna Sola Verzej