MORAL VALUES IN PRESCHOOL EDUCATION Erasmus Project

Project Title

MORAL VALUES IN PRESCHOOL 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 Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Ethics, religion and philosophy (incl. Inter-religious dialogue)

Project Summary

The five partner schools recognised that within Early Years education there was very little, if any, explicit teaching about ethics and moral values. In order to address this issue the project ‘Moral values in preschool education’ was devised. The focus of the project was to raise the profile of ethical and moral values in a preschool setting in order for young children to have experience of quality learning activities, which would impact on their ability to develop their social skills. Through research, the project would also provide information about teachers’ and parents’ approach to the fundamental principles of ethics and moral values, in order to improve professional practice and to attempt to bridge any ‘cultural gaps’ about social behaviour between home and school.

The profiles of the partner schools were varied, ranging from settings which took children from the age of two years old, for example in Estonia, to the larger setting in Italy, which was made up of eleven settings across Lanciano, catering for children from age three to thirteen. Welford and Wickham CE primary school, a small rural school in West Berkshire, was the coordinating partner, with their executive headteacher, working across two schools, leading the project.

The main objectives of the project were to:

Work together to identify engaging learning activities which would promote an understanding of moral values in young children;
Share good pedagogical practice within and beyond our settings to support staff professional development;
Conduct research into the understanding that young children have of moral values and into the attitudes and approaches of teachers parents and carers towards this aspect of child development;
Develop new and innovative approaches to the teaching of moral values in preschool education;
Create resources and guidance for teachers parents and carers in how they might enhance the education of young children through focus on moral values.

It quickly became apparent that this was a complex and extensive project and therefore it was important to begin with a clear focus about how the project would proceed and have a shared, staged approach. The first task was to decide which moral value would be a good starting point for everyone to focus on; it was decided that this would be ‘respect’. We chose the book ‘Blue Penguin’ by Petr Horáček, as a shared stimulus for our initial ideas, asking the children to think about self-respect. We agreed some shared activities and also that we would devise our own planning meet the needs of the individuals in our settings. We discussed questions we would ask the children for delivering activities and agreed that we would repeat the questionnaire with the children once the activities have been completed in order to measure impact.

The next step was to think about respecting others.In order to engage teachers, parents and carers, we then shared and taught traditional playground games from our partner schools. Expertise from the Lithuanian team was fundamental in creating videos with subtitles as a resource which could eventually be shared with other colleagues. We also devised a questionnaire for teachers parents and carers in order to ascertain there attitudes and approaches to educating the children in a range of moral values. The results of this research was analysed in order to identify any common themes or gaps, which we could use to develop the project and enhance its sustainability.

The final phase of the project was to create the training resource online for professionals and handbooks activities the teachers and parents which they could use independently either at school or at home, in order to promote and enhance the teaching and learning about moral values. The handbooks were formatted in such a way that they will uniform to create a professional looking, user-friendly resource, which included the blue penguin project logo created by the Turkish team.

In order to capture the experience and learning, from the project, each partner school completed their own part of the final research document based on a shared model, which was standardised, and included all the common threads which had formed the solid basis of the partnership of professionals involved. This was then collated, along with all the informative PowerPoint presentations, photographs, additional documentation and the hand books onto a DVD and disseminated to each of the partner schools. Resources were also uploaded on to Twinspace, and links added to the schools websites. Each of the partner schools has committed to continuing to use the resources as part of their early years curriculum for the foreseeable future, in order to embed the teaching of moral values in preschool education.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 114085 Eur

Project Coordinator

Welford and Wickham CE Primary School & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Siauliu r.Kuziu lopselis-darzelis “Vyturelis”
• IMECE ILKOKULU
• Istituto Comprensivo Don L. Milani
• Kohtla-Järve Lasteaed Rukkilill