Learning in a New Key. Engaging Vulnerable Young People in School Education. Erasmus Project

Project Title

Learning in a New Key. Engaging Vulnerable Young People in School Education.

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Research and innovation; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

The LINK Project strategic partnership has explored the power of therapeutic music and arts centred experiences to alter emotional states and engender the positive engagement of self with the world in the context of classrooms in 4 European countries. Through carefully planned teacher training activities / experiences, teachers have been supported in extending their professional capacities as classroom-based therapeutic practitioners who can create safe, enriched, aesthetic and transformative learning environments for vulnerable young people who risk becoming early school leavers because of their poor emotional and mental health.

Thus the project has been extending school based provisions for young people who often continue to face exclusion from social and educational opportunities due to personal conditions that result from their trauma histories. The LINK project team has found high levels of such psychological distress exist within each of the project schools. The project is called ‘Learning in a New Key’ as a reminder that this target group need to experience newly attuned ways of learning in European classrooms.

The partnership comprised 4 schools and 5 supporting institutions from 4 different European regions with a spread of proven expertise in teaching, social care, therapeutic intervention, music therapy training, educational intervention, education management and educational research. The partnership has adopted participatory action research approaches that have sustained open ended enquiries appropriate for inter professional engagement in this new professional field. The enquiries have left a legacy of relevant and usable products comprising: a school-based teacher training programme, a first step toolkit to support teachers’ continuing learning, a framework of competences that have emerged through the innovative classroom interventions and impact studies that provide evidence of teachers’ professional learning and young people’s level of engagement in non verbal music and arts-based experiences. These products have supported teachers to frame learning in a way that promotes relational health in schools.

A teacher training programme, including both taught and classroom-based elements, has run concurrently in the 4 participating schools. The use of action enquiry approaches has meant that the training programmes evolved in different ways in each country. Music has featured as main medium for creating new modes of interaction, while experiences in drama, dance and movement have also been introduced. The training teams have variously comprised music / arts-based therapists and experienced trainers / researchers from the field of education. Working with the teachers they have adapted and trialled approaches drawn from the repertoires of music and arts-based therapy in the light of young people’s responses and emerging needs during their transitions into learning. The professional learning about these innovatory routines has been supported within shared reflection sessions that have focussed both on the young people’s level of engagement and the teachers’ developing knowledge and skills and changing dispositions.

Mutual inter professional learning between the project participants have been facilitated through annual short joint staff training events. During these representatives of the whole project team have successfully shared the training approaches, resources and evidence from the impact studies in the classroom. This European-wide sharing of evidence-based learning has supported preparations for local multiplier events that have engaged a wide range of stakeholders from both education and health. The dissemination process has spread more widely to professional European networks (ECER, ECARTE, ECMT as well as BAMT and SIMCAM) that support innovation and research in these separate fields that are not commonly brought together. The inter professional reports that have been shared are timely in the light of the new UN Development Goal No 3 which outlines the need for systems thinking and integrated problem solving competences to promote good health and wellbeing for all.

Findings from the LINK Project are already published in 5 papers in a dedicated Edition of the Journal Education, Society and Culture http://www.fpce.up.pt/ciie/?q=publication/editions/292. These papers include discussion of evidence from the teacher training programmes, from teachers’ responses about their professional learning and from enquiries about young people’s sensory and relational engagement during music / arts-based activities. The new LINK Project teacher training programmes, associated resources and evidence from the impact studies are already providing a substantial base to support the development of accredited learning programmes ‘Promoting Relational Health in Schools’ in the newly funded continuation ERASMUS + project Sustaining Teachers and Learners with the Arts (STALWARTS)

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 201689 Eur

Project Coordinator

Novalis Trust & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Polskie Stowarzyszenie Terapii Przez Sztuke
• ASSOCIACAO PARA A EDUCACAO DE SEGUNDA OPORTUNIDADE
• Gimnazjum nr 1 im. Jana Pawla II
• UNIVERSIDADE DO PORTO
• Associazione MusicSpace Italy
• Istituto Comprensivo Granarolo dell’Emilia
• UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST OF ENGLAND, BRISTOL