Horizon to the Future Erasmus Project

Project Title

Horizon to the Future

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Horizon to the Future -project has been a guidance process which included important areas of human personal skills. The coordinating school was Joutsa High School from Finland and we had 5 partner schools, who has always had a strong international focus and they all have their own field of expertise: IIS ”Stendhal-Baccelli” Italy (entrepreneurial skills), INS Montmélo Catalonia Spain (socioemotional learning), Europagymnasium Walther Rathenau Germany (soft- and self presentation skills), IES Afonso X O Sabio Cambre Spain (peer mediation and conflict resolution skills), Joutsa Upper primary school was our partner because there same teachers are working in both of Joutsa´s schools and Joutsa High School´s strength are the counselling methods used.
The innovative content of our project was the process -perspective for the student’s career developmental process. Our project focused in all areas of personality growth: 1. The emotional area is the key of all learning processes, 2. Social relationships are extremely important both in work- and student lives and it is necessary to have conflict resolution skills, 3. Guidance for academic journey, practical skills to do that and life long learning perspective, 4. Help the students to plan their future professional careers according to their personality and interests. Develop participants’ ICT skills. This project allows us to consolidate as European citizens.

We had 6 different activities in our project:
1. Workshops (WS) for students formed a continuing process. One has to got to:
a) know oneself and where one´s emotions comes from and how one is able to cope with them. WS in Montmélo in Autumn 2015, with 40 students and 16 teachers,
b) know one’s strong and weak points, to find out how to study efficiently and what kinds of careers would be suitable for oneself. WS in Joutsa in Spring 2016, with 55 students and 17 teachers,
c) learn how to get along with other and different people, how to presents and make one´s opinions out to others. WS in Bitterfeld in Autumn 2016, with 54 students and 12 teachers,
d) have skills of mediation and the knowledge how to solve disagreements, because people are constantly interacting with each others. WS in Cambre in Spring 2017, with 72 students and 18 teachers and,
e) start to plan one’s own future career. Being an entrepreneur is nowadays a good way to provide oneself and one needs to learn skills for that. WS in Civitavecchia in Autumn 2017, with 58 students and 23 teachers.
2. Seminars for teachers were held 5 times at the same time as the student´s workshop. Two teachers from each country travelled with the students participated in them. The aim was to deepen teachers´ knowledge of the WS’s topic, they had an opportunity to observe the methods used and enhance their teacherhood.
3. There were pre-tasks in between the weeks. Some of these exercises were also done with other groups of students in our partner schools. See details in eGuide.
4. Our main product is a ”Guidance Toolbox for future orientation” called “eGuide”. All our methods and exercises are collected in it: https://horizontothefuture.eu/ The site is linked with the project´s official homepage: https://peda.net/joutsa/lukio/projektit/horizon In homepage we have documented all our reports, assessments etc. These pages are provided by Joutsa municipality and they will stay there in the future.
5. Transnational meetings were held 5 times before each workshop, in each TN there were 1-3 participants from each country. ”Project team” met and discussed the plans for next event, evaluated the former one and monitored the project’s development. Each team wrote a report after their WS which were evaluated in TNs.
6. The final event 10.-12.4.2018 summarised the Project as 15 teachers from partner schools gathered to Joutsa for the final evaluations. All outputs, video greetings from each partner school and the eGuide were presented to public in the final ceremonies in 12.4.2018.
The students and teachers have had the possibility to develop new skills and attitudes: problem solving- and debating skills. Teachers also learnt ICT- and project management skills and new methods.
Sustainability ideas are already working. Dissemination of our results was done mainly through project´s website, the eGuide, various information leaflets and the final event. All materials and results developed are to been found at all times in our project´s website. We want that everyone who is interested of our project´s topics and methods will be able to read details of it and gain practical material. Information has been given openly to different media.
The most important results will be the immaterial and long-term results, which will be seen in our students future career choices and lives and in quality of our teachers work. We hope students will become good European citizen with a strong self esteem and efficient skills to cope with different situations and with different cultures.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 250145 Eur

Project Coordinator

Joutsan lukio & Country: FI

Project Partners

• IIS “Stendhal”
• Joutsan yhtenäiskoulu
• Montmelo
• Europagymnasium “Walther Rathenau” Bitterfeld
• IES Afonso X O Sabio