Humanity first! How to teach tolerance and reduce prejudices shown by students with special needs Erasmus Project

Project Title

Humanity first! How to teach tolerance and reduce prejudices shown by students with special 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 Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Social dialogue

Project Summary

The Erasmus+-project “Humanity first – How to teach tolerance and reduce prejudice shown by students with special needs” was conducted by the Hans-Verbeek-School in Euskirchen and the OS Nad Lipom in Zagreb, Croatia. Both schools are special education schools with the focus on mental development.
In the school life of the participating schools it has been repeatedly shown by students’ statements in the classroom or during social interaction that many students with special needs are prejudiced against strangers or unknowns (such as people of certain ethnic groups, nationality or religion) too, partly from their environment or taken from media. Due to their need for support, these students are often unable to identify and critically reflect xenophobic or exclusionary comments. As a result, this group of pupils is more receptive to taking on such attitudes and to instrumentalization by groups or parties that represent and propagate such attitudes. In everyday teaching, it is often difficult to adequately meet the needs of individual students.
The main concern of the partner schools for the Erasmus + project was to meet this need and the corresponding problem in the classroom. At the partner schools “Erasmus-AG’s” were set up, in which the groups of students worked two hours a week on these topics in the classroom. The AGs worked with students from different classes at the age of 13 to 20 years. The selection of the pupils was based on the problem described above and was carried out in close consultation with the class teachers.
A central goal of the project was to help the students recognize and overcome existing prejudices and to promote the development of a tolerant attitude. The promotion of the ability to reflect was of great importance to enable the students to recognize and reject stereotypes and xenophobic attitudes that might be brought to them in the future as well. This also required a boost in self-esteem to maintain acquired tolerant positions even when confronted with contrary positions or negative influences.
In order to explain abstract concepts such as “prejudices” and “tolerance” to the pupils, the partner schools have subdivided the subject matter into sub-topics and created eight content modules. Starting with very tangible and basic content, the foundations for understanding more complex and abstract content were created and the requirements gradually increased.
A ninth module “Encounter” was held as part of the short-term teaching, training and learning activities. In each year of the project, the project groups visited the respective partner school to deepen the acquired content together. In total, four short-term teaching, training and learning activities have taken place. Here, the students, mostly for the first time, had the experience to feel like strangers in another country. Together they made excursions to memorial sites, exhibitions and museums, where the students could learn about the consequences of intolerance, hatred and war. In Croatia, commemorative sites of the Yugoslav civil war were visited, while in Germany the Holocaust memorial Buchenwald was visited. As part of these visits, supplemented by personal reports of Croatian colleagues and other contemporary witnesses, the learning content became emotionally tangible for the students.
In this way, the students could develop a basic understanding of the meaning of “prejudices” and “tolerance” during the project duration. Through learning objectives checks using worksheets and role-playing games, as well as behavioral observations in the classroom or in social interaction, it could be stated that work in the AGs strengthened the reflectivity of most students.
The teaching work in the project working groups was evaluated within the scope of three transnational project meetings. The effectiveness of the methods used to determine students’ learning prerequisites, the methods and materials selected, and the method of reviewing the learning objectives were examined.
On the basis of the results of the evaluation and the experiences from the lessons, the teachers of the partner schools have developed a teaching concept as main result of the Erasmus+-project, which offers suggestions and material to other teachers at special needs schools, who also want to execute a teaching project on the subjects “prejudices” and “tolerance” at their school.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 57100 Eur

Project Coordinator

Hans-Verbeek-Schule & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Osnovna skola Nad lipom