Preventing Radicalism among European Pals Erasmus Project

Project Title

Preventing Radicalism among European Pals

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: Migrants’ issues; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

In January 2018 teachers from Gladsaxe gymnasium, Denmark, Gymnazium Myjava, Slovakia and Lovisa gymnasium, Finland met in Slovakia to discuss engaging in a common Erasmus+ project together with Fjölbrautaskóli Norðurlands Vestra school, Iceland that joined the meeting on skype. The meeting was a success and all four countries agreed on making a project together. All schools shared a common concern about how their students slowly withdrew from a European identity and tended to roam in the same circles as their local peers, being more and more scared of embracing the differences of each other. With this in mind, we chose the theme of radicalism as the pivotal point for the two-year project period. The Covid-19 situation led us to prolong the project by 12 months with hopes of being able to go through with the last mobility.

We agreed to have four mobilities where each school was responsible for preparing a mobility with focus on a sub-theme that is essential for understanding and fighting radicalism, namely: 1) “prejudism and cultural inclusion”, 2) “What is radicalism and how to fight it?”, 3) “What are the factors that could make young people radical?” and finally, 4) “Fake news and hoaxes”. The aim with the project was two-folded and deals with both empowering students to recognize and fight radicalism, but also to train teachers to recognize students that are at a risk of becoming radicalized and to obtain knowledge and tools to teach students about radicalism onwards. Unfortunately the Covid-19 situation made it impossible to carry out the last mobility in Slovakia, so the last sub-theme has not been worked with on a common basis.

Within all three mobilities the content was focussed on social skills, the cultural meeting and learning activities connected to radicalism. The reason for this focus was based on the view that radicalism thrives in cultures where open-mindedness and acceptance of differences is absent. By bringing our students together in a project with a concrete cultural meeting and a focus on social skills, the students will obtain an open mind and empathy. This in combination with an ongoing learning process about what radicalism is, how to recognize it and how to fight it, has empowered the students to fight radicalism. The focus on the three sub-themes within the mobilities was meant to create the learning process through a variety of methodologies such as expert-lectures, group discussions, visits to institutions that fight radicalism, concrete workshops to learn tools such as navigating on the social media and an array of products, e.g. films, presentations, digital folders, dramas, vlogs etc. All skills that are connected to general study skills that in combination with the working language being English will benefit the students in their academic life in general.

To ensure that the learning from mobility to mobility was passed on from student to student, but also disseminated on a larger scale, the students made presentations for their peers and parents at parent meetings before mobilities. In that way, everyone was prepared for the next mobility and giving a presentation helped in-depth learning.
Because of the missing last mobility we were not able to make the final product as planned. But we still had the small products during the mobilities and the presentations at the parents’ meetings, which were good measures to see whether the aim of giving the students knowledge and tools to fight radicalism has been a success. Vlogs were used to evaluate the personal development amongst the students during mobilities and shared only with the teachers. These tools helped the students to reflect on what they experienced. All these evaluations have been important tools for the teachers to guide them in how to work with radicalism in the coming years.

The potential longer term benefits of the project can be linked to the students, the teachers, the schools as organisations and the communities. First of all, the students have gained knowledge, skills and personal development that have empowered them to recognize and fight radicalism in the long run. Second of all, the teachers have developed new knowledge and teaching material about radicalism so they can help their students avoid being radicalized. Third, the schools as organizations will get better teachers, better students and gain expertise in internationalisation that can be used in the branding of the school. Lastly, the communities will get active young citizens that will help prevent radicalism and this will benefit minorities in all countries.

Project Website

http://project-prep.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 101266,92 Eur

Project Coordinator

Gladsaxe Gymnasium & Country: DK

Project Partners

• Fjolbrautaskoli Nordurlands vestra
• Gymnazium Myjava
• Lovisa Gymnasium