RESEARCHING FOR THE FUTURE Erasmus Project

Project Title

RESEARCHING FOR THE FUTURE

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; Natural sciences

Project Summary

The project “Researching for the Future “was carried out from September 2017 to June 2019. Four schools from Spain, Italy, Germany and Greece were involved in it. Students, teachers and staff participated actively to develop the international mobilities, while parents , local research centres and officers took part in activities and events scheduled for the transnational meetings.
The purpose of the whole project was bettering the quality of teaching in our schools, supporting the professional development of teachers, helping them to develop a scientific method of approaching topics of several fields from science to ecology and social studies. First teachers and students were given some training on the procedures and use the research method during the first meeting in Spain. Then during this initial meeting, the main topics of the researches were defined by students and gradually the projects were developed at each international meeting. Thus the students made studies, surveys and researches, collected data and elaborated their own conclusions and final results. Some posters with the completed researches were printed out and the first results were shown at the second and third meetings, as some other workshops were taken place. These workshops, moreover, set the bases of some other international researches in which the students took part. These cooperative researches dealt with different matters from the impact of mobiles on sleeping habits to a contrast analysis between 1980s and today.
In the development of these researching some of the education goals of our project were achieved: The improvement of the basic competences in STEM, language skills, ICT competences, increasing their awareness of Learning to learn,.
Coordination among the participating teachers was continuous via mail and Skype online meetings in order to exchange ideas and to share information while carrying on the project. Moreover during the LTM also the PTM took place. Teachers had many meeting hours in order to check how the wok proceeded, if there were problems to sort out and to define the next steps to take.
The results of all the researches were exhibited in a fair at the final meeting and eventually a contest was held in order to award the best research projects. Teachers and students from the four countries voted choosing the best explained the most scientifically relevant and the ones with a more relevant impact in the future.
Another important aim of our project was to disseminate its impact in the area. Thus, primary students of local schools were asked to take part in some events like workshops or special days in order to spread the method of researching and cooperation.
In the same way, during the transnational meetings, visits to different research institutions were scheduled in order to have a direct contact with centres or universities which develop and use this methodology.
The Erasmus project was visible in each school website, in the etwinning platform and in the home site of the project that was updated during the different phases of the project.
The impact of the project was important. First of all about 20 students per school could travel to another country. Also, the participating teachers had an important occasion of learning a new approach to their teaching subject, improved their teaching method and could live an international experience where they shared their teaching initiatives with other teachers, enhancing their global competences.
The local communities were also involved by hosting students or taking part in other events arranged for each meeting. Also local authorities were aware of the project since they could welcome all the delegations during their staying and learn about the aims of the international project.
The results of the project can be checked in our home site by other schools interested in learning about how to implement research on the curriculum. The development of this project has resulted in the implementation of research methodology in the department curriculums of different subjects of the participating schools and new relationships of collaborations have been opened with primary schools and research institutions of the area.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 110243 Eur

Project Coordinator

IES Victoria Kent & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Finnvedens Gymnasium
• ISTITUTO MAGISTRALE STATALE “REGINA ELENA”
• Gymnasium der Stadt Frechen
• Geniko Lykeio Makry Gialou