Traditions and Economic Challenges in two European Regions: Galicia and Baden-Württemberg: Cultural Exchanges and searches by Pupils Erasmus Project

Project Title

Traditions and Economic Challenges in two European Regions: Galicia and Baden-Württemberg: Cultural Exchanges and searches by Pupils

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The origin of the project idea was to maintain the long-term school partnership between the IES Pontepedriña in Santiago de Compostela and the Johann Philipp Reis School in Weinheim and to develop it further, especially since a new team on the Spanish side has joined the exchange.

The aim of the project was the integration of different didactic concepts and curricular requirements at both partner schools by researching and largely preparing the documentation on a subject that the pupils selected themselves to a limited extent as part of a German seminar course or Spanish teaching module “Project” during a student exchange. The students got to know the partner region and their way of life, immersed themselves in the culture and history and familiarized themselves with the economic possibilities and problems. In addition, they should use the Spanish and English languages ​​in practice. Because of the fact that a personal exchange could only take place in the first of the two school years due to the pandemic, the latter goals could not be met to our satisfaction in the second year. However, the lessons in the seminar course continued and the student teams compiled their documentation digitally. The teams also used the digital route for research, so that collaboration continued not only at the supervising teacher level, but also at the student level.

Approx. 12 participants per school year and school, as well as 2 accompanying teachers, took part in the project: At the Johann-Philipp-Reis-Schule, it was the 12 participants in the seminar course of the business high school, which started in grade 1 (corresponds to the 12th grade) takes place, the 13 participants of the IES Pontepedriña attended the second school year of the Ciclo Superior de Comercio Internacional and had to prepare a work in the teaching module “Project” that was very suitable for this ERASMUS+ project and present it to a teaching committee. A personal exchange only took place in the 2019/20 school year.

Since both the seminar course and the “Project” module have to meet curricular framework conditions, these were slightly adapted without breaking the legal framework: This did not affect the time structure of the seminar course – contrary to what had been thought – but the learning locations. We tried to incorporate eTwinning as well, which was not helpful during the project work, but when it came to compiling the work results. The students received help not only from their own teachers, but also from other participants in the project, from teachers or students from the respective partner school.

Our expectation that the changed structures will become established and that, in the case of the seminar course, a signal effect will be felt to other teachers to initiate a similarly structured school partnership with a country with a different target language has been fulfilled: For the further ERASMUS activities of the JPRS as a accreditated school, a working group has been formed that will establish contacts with schools in Austria and Italy, among others. An evaluation of our project was carried out regularly by reporting to the school management, so that corrective measures were initiated. This particularly affected the turning point caused by the pandemic. Our experience will flow into a further development of the concept beyond 2021, this time as part of the accreditation to ERASMUS + 2021-27, which the JPRS obtained in the first year of application and which the IES Pontepedriña is aiming for the following year.

Project Website

https://twinspace.etwinning.net/107322/home

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 37504 Eur

Project Coordinator

Johann-Philipp-Reis-Schule & Country: DE

Project Partners

• IES PONTEPEDRIÑA