International Debate Competition about Education and European Issues Erasmus Project

Project Title

International Debate Competition about Education and European Issues

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 2018

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

The ‘International Debate Competition about Education and European affairs’, (INDECOM) was a KA229 Erasmus+ project, based on the exchange of good practices among 4 secondary schools from Greece, Italy, Spain and Turkey, being the Spanish the coordinator. The project started in on September 1st, 2018 and ended on the 31st of August 2020. Originally planned for four transnational activities with meetings in Nov’18 in Majadahonda (Spain), Apr’19 in Imperia (Italy), Nov’19 in Ioannina (Greece) & Apr’20 in Aydin (Turkey), because of the COVID19 outbreak in March 2020, we were forced to cancel the last meeting in Turkey. Consequently, only the Turkish team successfully completed the mobilities by the time of the cancellation as they had already travelled to the other three participant schools.

From the 36 original mobilities planned per school, involving 10 participant students and 2 accompanying teachers each, all schools except the Turkish completed only 24 mobilities (attending 2 meetings abroad).

Regarding the three transnational activities effectively carried out, all of them worked as planned. Each one was hosted by a different partner, whose 12 participants didn’t travel then. As stated in the project, ca. 40 students made up the debate teams (30 travelling and 10 hosts per meeting). An additional number of 15-20 non-travelling Special Needs Students (SNS) from the host school participated in the meeting, providing support for the members of the visiting teams and performing auxiliary tasks during each meeting: timekeeping of the debates, providing supplies for the teams to work, transmitting instructions, etc.

The first meeting (Spain), was dedicated to training activities for teachers, judges and debaters, as well as in decision-making about debate and competition format. The two following activities in Imperia and Ioannina hosted two of the original three legs planned in the International Debate Competition project.

Experience from the first meeting recommended some modifications on the original idea: instead of two parallel competitions with different motions, we decided all teams would participate in one competition with the same motion. This, on the one hand, allowed debaters, auxiliary staff and public (students from the host school) to attend more debates as spectators, and on the other hand, having one motion, the topic was studied deeper and presented from more different perspectives.

The way of composing the debating teams was also changed from national teams to international teams. This implied foreign colleagues spent longer hours together and permitted more points of view inside each of the groups. In the same way, teachers acting as counselors were not assigned to a particular team, but swapped from one team to another.

Selection of the participants was based on different criteria stated originally in the project: internal debate competitions were carried out in each school, and 20% of places were reserved for foreign origin students.

The main objective of the project was to arrange a stable two-year International Debate Competition among the four partners with 2 annual meetings, something that will have to be considered in the future as the COVID19 crisis persists in Europe.

Along the development of the project, our students, and even participating teachers (acting as trainers, counselors of the teams or judges), experienced the development of high-quality skills and competences in promoting empowerment of the young and strengthening their professional profiles as educators of our teachers. INDECOM project has contributed to improve and project their international profile and the social impact of their activities in our communities.

This project has allowed us to introduce innovative practices in education, engage students and foster their academic performance. Together with these new practices, and in the particular case of the coordinating school, it has improved our international profile so that we believe it has played a role in having been recently certified as an IB Certified School by the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO)

Teachers of different subjects (not only the ones directly involved in the project) are now using debate in their classes as an innovative methodology as specified by one of the objectives of the project.

Different products were released as a result of the project and uploaded to the Erasmus+ PRP. A practical guide for school debate organization and arrangement was made in PDF format and Power-Point presentations of the training sessions were prepared, all of them available for all schools interested in using debate as a teaching-learning tool. Some of the actual debates of the competition were recorded as it was done with some of the closing ceremonies and authorities speeches held at the end of each meeting. Those materials were uploaded to the schools’ websites

Dissemination papers were published in local media of the school’s localities, summarizing the activities (debates, closure ceremonies, cultural visits, etc.) performed in each meeting. Social networking played a role, publishing the meetings in the Twitter profile and website of the Spanish school and the websites and social media of the other three partner schools.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 112364 Eur

Project Coordinator

IES José Saramago & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Emel-Mustafa Usakli Anadolu Lisesi
• I.I.S. G. RUFFINI
• 3rd Senior High School “EPIFANIOS SCHOOL”