Sharing education and learning with families. A challenge for XXI century schools Erasmus Project

Project Title

Sharing education and learning with families. A challenge for XXI century schools

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 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; Creativity and culture; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

S.E.L.F. Project ( Sharing Education and Learning with Families. A challenge for XXI century schools)
Families and Schools towards a new Education:

Our project will deal with the idea that education shouldn´t be restricted to educational institutions. It is possible to learn in any place and within society. In order to do so, connection and cooperation between families, schools and community must exist. It is not possible to involve the family in the school dynamic if educational institutions don’t recognize them as the first strategic agent of learning. A school´s first challenge should be to articulate the necessary mechanisms to understand the reality of its families. (Education Strategy 2020).

As teachers, we should adapt ourselves to a changing world that affects us as educators, our students, and their families without knowing how much and in what ways. Nevertheless schools should offer the necessary resources so that children can adapt to a constantly changing society that requires learning to learn, learning throughout one´s lifetime, and even learning to unlearn.

Teachers have to introduce changes in methodology that support families’ proposals and students’ learning needs in order to educate children in a holistic way. We expect a global impact of every anticipated result of our project. Therefore, during and after its completion, we expect improvement in the following areas: Active familial participation in schools and the development of the curriculum, families’ acceptance as being educational agents, multidirectional joint organization between family and school (feedback),forms of communication, information channels, utilization of new technologies for the exchange of information, relationships with our social surroundings, broadcasting our schools’ work and projects through online forms of communication, opened learning communities among European early childhood educational centers.

The three infant schools in this project consider ourselves as responsible agents of change. We should favor an educational model where not only creativity and innovation are key objectives, but also where interactive, educational projects will be implemented. Within the collaborative school-family-community triangle, these new projects will point education towards developing the necessary skills that our students need to become involved and engaged citizens in the 21st century.

The S.E.L.F. project will give our families (more than 150) the opportunity to participate in educational projects, where one will be within a European dimension. Children (more than 400 from 0 to 6 years old) will have the opportunity of being active agents in their own learning process, teachers (46) will be able to use new resources and construct a new pedagogy with families to teach curricular contents and also to facilitate communication among pupils, teachers and families.

The spaces and environments from all the different educational communities that are involved in this project will enrich the learning experience of all participants. Additionally, Institutions in this project are opening their doors and promoting learning environments, which go beyond the walls of the schools, the “walls” of their cities, and the “walls” of their countries.

This project could be used as a model to share with other schools and encourage innovation in other educational communities in the near future because anybody can learn from the knowledge and experience of other schools and take advantage of other good ideas and practices. All of these efforts share the common goal to fully educate the future citizens of Europe.

To sum up, when a discussing families´ relationship with the outside world, the fundamental key is to understand how education concerns every sector of society. Our project will focus on this is a new way of understanding the learning process. This thought introduces changes in educational contexts in order to generate new challenges and educational opportunities where the family, school, and society are considered resources that, in fact, improve the quality of education.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 102620 Eur

Project Coordinator

EEI ZALEO & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Djecji vrtic Djecji svijet
• Bayonne Nursery, Pre-School & Children’s Centre