Learning about each other’s culture Erasmus Project

Project Title

Learning about each other’s culture

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Inclusion – equity; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

Coenecoop College, Waddinxveen would very much like to take the next step in the cooperation with IES Las Canteras, Madrid, Spain. They would like to this with a second project that ,among other activities, also contains an exchange of students between Holland and Spain. At this moment we expect that this would involve a group of around 50 third year students (aged fourteen+) from the bilingual group of both schools and two coordinators, as well as the engagement of colleagues, other students, administrative staff and parents.
The background of the project stems from the ever-changing face of what is considered to be Dutch or Spanish. Many students in the Netherlands nowadays, have a very diverse cultural background. The question is whether Spanish students have just as a diverse background and how does the influx or lack of such diversity affect their view of life and other people?
Our objective is to broaden the horizon of our students and enrich their world-view by strengthening the relationships between these two schools. This would be supported by the development of cooperative skills used by the students during the project in a second language, (English) The project would involve discovering the effects of cultural diversity, for example due to fluctuating migration of people throughout the ages, including the present day. The exchange programme would provide the students with actual first-hand experience of daily life in each other’s country, and could confirm or eradicate certain ‘pre-conceptions’ about the other’s culture compared to that of their own. For the long-term, we believe that such an exchange project would help both schools as a whole to understand Europe’s diverse and rich cultural background and be more accepting of others. By making our findings known on the school websites, through Facebook and the media, would further help in promoting the impact of the project. In short, it would pave the way for more open-mindedness and understanding for the future on both sides.

The methods would be as follows:

– The students of both schools will be involved in surveys in several subjects to learn about the other country, culture religion etc. Results of these surveys will be shared through Twinspace

Before the visit:
the involved students will gather information about the other country and one’s own ideas and prejudices + prevalent image of the other country in the media. But also teachers of several subjects provide students with information about the other country during their lessons. Furthermore, there is a project of Maths and Arts about Medieval Andalusian geometrical patterns

During the exchange visit:
– get to know each other through interviews and playing games and through sports.
– show each other one’s own environment (village, house etc), for example by way of a scavenger hunt
– visit a big city in the neighbourhood of the school and see different historic buildings, visit a museum and learn about the history of the visiting country.
– work in small groups (Dutch-Spanish mix) together on a project: involving the shared history of inclusion and exclusion of minorities in immigrant groups – comparing the past with the present; for example the expulsion of Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula to the Netherlands. Or the trade with and the exploitation of far away peoples in the 16th/17th century, compared to the present-day position of minority immigrant groups.

– Finally, give a presentation of the findings and conclusions of small groups, using video images to other members of the bilingual stream, parents and other classes at school. A local newspaper will be invited to view the presentations of the project results so as to make these findings known to the general public.

The results of this project will also be shared through Twinspace.
The coordinators of this project of both schools will assemble a summary of all these results and share this on the eTwinning platform, thus giving other schools who are looking for an international project some inspiration.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 22709,4 Eur

Project Coordinator

Stichting Coenecoop College & Country: NL

Project Partners

• INSTITUTO DE ENSEÑANZA SECUNDARIA LAS CANTERAS