Strategies for Inclusion – Making high quality history and citizenship education more inclusive and accessible Erasmus Project

Project Title

Strategies for Inclusion – Making high quality history and citizenship education more inclusive and accessible

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Disabilities – special needs; Pedagogy and didactics

Project Summary

In light of the 4th objective of the strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training (ET2020), which states that “Educational disadvantage should be addressed through high quality inclusive and early education”, the project ‘Strategies for Inclusion – making high quality history and citizenship education more inclusive and accessible to all learners’ connected practice to policy across countries, sectors, and disciplines to address the specific challenge of how to promote and achieve inclusion in history and heritage education.

To address such challenge, and moving from the assumption that the disciplinary and pedagogical apparatus in history and citizenship education do not usually equip teachers to teach diverse classes, including students with special needs, the project (1) DOCUMENTED AND DISSEMINATED SUCCESSFUL PRACTICES and DEVELOPED TAILORED EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES and (2) concurred to the EMPOWERMENT OF HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP EDUCATORS TO MEET THE DIVERSE NEEDS OF ALL LEARNERS. In addition, it (3) RAISED THE AWARENESS ON THE POTENTIAL OF HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP TO PROMOTE EQUITY, COHESION AND DIVERSITY IN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS throughout Europe to increase the attention given to the learning of students with special needs for specific subjects and to underline the role that subject teachers should have in the development of policies on inclusive education.

Such objectives were met thanks to the engagement and cooperation of a Consortium composed of six partner:
– EUROCLIO, a non-profit CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATION that works from a core mission to support the development of responsible and innovative history, heritage, and citizenship education by promoting critical thinking, mutual respect, peace, stability and democracy.
– AEMoV (Portugal), who became a partner later in the project, replacing AECC, a school cluster experienced in teaching to diverse classrooms, including special needs students.
– CIVITAS (Armenia), leading civic and citizenship education organization in Armenia, with a long experience in civic education and professional development, civic education standards and curriculum design, textbook writing, civic education project designing and implementation.
– HvA (Netherlands), research department at the University of Amsterdam, experienced in providing clear definitions of concepts such as quality history and citizenship and of inclusive education.
– NTNU (Norway), Norwegian university aiming at the strengthening of the teaching profession and experienced in projects bringing teachers and researchers together with individuals with special needs or different cultural backgrounds.
– ZGNL (Slovenia), leading Slovenian institute for the integrated treatment of deaf and hearing impaired children, persons with speech and language disorder, and people with autistic spectrum disorder.

Together, partners pursued the following project results:
– A collection of existing recommendations and resources on inclusive education in general, relevant for the subjects of history and citizenship (O1)

– A needs assessment through surveys, focus groups and interviews, which resulted in the identification of what is needed to make high quality history and citizenship education (more) inclusive and accessible (O2).

– A collection of practices in agreed format on how history and citizenship education is currently taught in practice to diverse classes, including students with special, which resulted in 35 blog posts available for teachers to implement in their classroom (O3).

– (Multilingual) educational resources that help students to think historically and acquire civic competences and testing of these resources in practices in diverse classes, including students with special needs (O4).

– Policy recommendations on inclusive education with a specific focus on history and citizenship education (O5).

Additional activities of the project have been

(1) the organisation of transnational project meetings to plan and monitor the project and share experiences with colleagues;

(2) the training of Special Interest Group members, to enhance their ability to promote inclusive history and citizenship education;

(3) the organisation and implementation of multiplier events to disseminate the project results and build capacities of educators outside their network.

All the activities and outputs of the project had a strong long-term impact on the organisations and individuals involved, concurring to the formation of a strong network of capable actors, who have expressed the desire to further deepen their cooperation and their cooperation and their efforts in the field of inclusive history and citizenship education.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 328403,91 Eur

Project Coordinator

EUROCLIO-DE EUROPESE VERENIGING VOOR GESCHIEDENISONDERWIJSGEVENDEN & Country: NL

Project Partners

• Armenian Center for Democratic Education-CIVITAS
• NORGES TEKNISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET NTNU
• STICHTING HOGESCHOOL VAN AMSTERDAM
• Zavod za gluhe in naglusne Ljubljana
• Agrupamento de Escolas de Montemor-o-Velho
• Agrupamento de Escolas Coimbra Centro
• Zakladni skola a Materska skola Deblin okres Brno-venkov, prispevkova organizace