Popular Culture in School Erasmus Project

Project Title

Popular Culture in School

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: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

Popular culture is an inescapable force of social change and democratic practice as it incorporates every aspect of our daily life, people are exposed to popular culture in their homes, communities, and schools, friendships are built around popular themes.
Pop culture offers an opportunity for educators to meet students where they are.
Culture is a combination of moral and material bonds which distinguish a community from others. Cultural ties combine individuals into a community. Popular culture is the product of daily living, having unavailable impacts on youth as its target mass. It is clear from “Questionnaires to Research on Reasons for Failures in Students ” that popular culture causes students to avoid curricular processes.
The general aims of the project were to reduce negative effects of popular culture students, make curricular activities efficient and increase their performance, to discover new ways of learning through the accumulation of knowledge and experience at the local and European level, to offer students the chance of being creative, to introduce new teaching methods using popular culture, to improve the language skills of the students in a real context, to improve cooperation at European level.
Partnership has been established between Colegiul National Mircea cel Batran (Romania), Karabaglar Cumhuriyet Ticaret Meslek )Turkey), Lisesi Escoplapias Valencia (Spain, and Nösnas GYMNASİET (Sweden) institutions which encountered similar problems and responded to our offer for project partnership. Comprehensive questionnaires and individual interviews performed by partner institutions show that students waste most of their times by playing games and surfing the internet. Motivation for continuous consumption created by popular culture forces students to think and live instantly,making curricular activities meaningless.They hardly recognise or know their own cultures needed to resist negative influences of popular culture or even if they do they ignore them.
Activities have been designed for such problems to be solved according to requirements and capacities of partner institutions, focusing on project target groups composed of 84 students in 15- 17 age group and their parents. These target groups exposed to literature scanning on popular culture first and presented the benefit and the destruction caused by popular culture. Students provided training activities for media literacy, conscious consumerism and democratic family,the main purposes of which are for students to increase awareness of popular culture, gain skills to become conscious consumers, contemplate on social and political phenomena, and efficiently, properly use mass media skills thanks to ICT proficiency and media literacy and increase quality time spent by family members.

The results and the output of the activities were disseminated to partners and other users as well by means of the web page, facebook group, information meeting, brochures,dictionary,newsletter,youtube, media/videos,films,etc.
Project activities created the following opportunity
– To discover new ways of learning by creating a learning environment where students can gain knowledge and experience at the local and European level.
– To perform the acquired knowledge and to exchange its using new technologies and ICT
– To give the opportunity to young people to take initiative, to be creative, to use multimedia tools.
– To increase number of high quality graduates with key and cross skills from partner institutions exchange good and innovative practices between partners
– To introduce new methods of teaching using popular culture and improving curricular institutions considering their requirements on European level
– To Improve cooperation between partners on European level
– To improve foreign language skills of the participants in a real context
During two year project four transnational meetings took place in order to planning the project activities and to evaluate the project results.
Project results: lesson units, training and seminars content, learning activities, website, facebook page, brochures, newletters, dictionarry, videos, educational projects.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 108850 Eur

Project Coordinator

Colegiul National Mircea cel Batran & Country: RO

Project Partners

• Nösnäs gymnasiet
• Karabaglar Cumhuriyet Mesleki ve Teknik Anadolu Lisesi
• Fundació Escolàpies