Unity in diversity. Hidden : research on female references and sexual diversity in school methodology Erasmus Project

Project Title

Unity in diversity. Hidden : research on female references and sexual diversity in school methodology

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Gender equality / equal opportunities; Social dialogue

Project Summary

Recently, some IT companies have had to improve or fix IA algorithms that identified black people as apes or that made a similar use determining people as “women” because of appearing in a kitchen environment in the images and pictures.

Biases and prejudices have always been present in our society, but with the advancement of the information globalization and digital algorithms ,even “unintended” biases and prejudices, derived from social constructions, can end up being exponentially fatal to our modern society bases.
This project aims to invite students to make a critical assessment of how this type of bias may (or may not) affect their education, asking themselves why fewer women and people of sexual affective diversity appear in their academic books and environment than the real representation they have in the society, so that they can build their own capabilities of critical analysis to be able to detect and prevent their own (and other’s) biases, and, in this way, to be able to contribute to creating a more inclusive and egalitarian society.
During the project, students will carry out activities aimed at identifying this type of situation through “forgotten” or not-so-well-known persons from school books and disseminating their discoveries, so that they can be shared with as many people as possible; To accomplish this, students will be invited to carry out research, exhibitions, and use IT to verify its potential when it comes to spreading a message. They will also find examples of discrimination through the art of music, cinema and television, they will create role plays and they will attend and participate in seminars and open discussions with experts and people who suffered discrimination during their school life. Herewith the aim is to achieve different objectives: on the one hand, to generate aspirational references for the role of women and LGBT people who are not correctly represented in students’ academic books and environment, so that the absence of references could not be an obstacle to the talent or vocation of a student and on the other hand to generate raise awareness of this possible bias which could avoid situations of discrimination both voluntary and involuntary in the future.
To carry out this project six countries have joined with similar problems in this field because we believe that the realization of this project can be beneficial for our schools and our environment, having a satisfactory impact on our local community. Six mobilities have been prepared with
activities aimed to cover different aspects such as science, art, history, technology, including current cultural aspects, the mass media and methodological aspects. The groups which have been formed are of five people, comprising three students and two teachers. The selected students will have an age range between 14- 18 years old of the last level of secondary education. The selection processes will try to be as inclusive as possible and no student will be discriminated for academic or linguistic reasons. The main objective to be achieved is to improve the school environment, that is, to create spaces of respect and tolerance in which no student is discriminated against on the basis of gender or sexual identity depending on the collateral objectives such as improving linguistic, civic or technological competence. Moreover,different methods have been selected so that the diffusion and the impact could be the greatest possible. In this project the use of educational platforms such as eTwinning will be a useful tool for our collaboration.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 0 Eur

Project Coordinator

IES Ana María Matute & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Kiviõli 1.Keskkool
• 4th Senior High School of Xanthi
• IISS MAJORANA
• OZEL GOKCEADA RUM ORTAOKULU VE LISESI
• Professional School of Ecology and Biotechnology “Prof. Dr. Asen Zlatarov”