Values in Education: Teenagers in Action! Erasmus Project

Project Title

Values in Education: Teenagers in Action!

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: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

Values in Education: Teens in Action!” (VETA) is a two year project in which schools from eight countries of the European Union( Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Lithuania, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden) who had established a professional connection over the Internet or/and through previous personal contact, are involved.

About 250 students from Years 9, 11 and 12 and 25 teachers have taken part in this challenging project working together to reach the same goals: to improve the students’ level of English as a lingua franca within the EU, to foster positive democratic values to prepare them for an active citizenship in their adult life whithin a common Europe, to increase the students’ skills and level of competence in ICT, and Visual Literacy, and to promote cooperative work.

Since our project aims at students between 15 and 18, a very critical age, we have considered it would be highly relevant and positive to work on twelve macro topics connected with values, these being: consumerism, poverty and solidarity, Internet safety, gender quality, interculturality, European citizenship, road safety, tolerance and respect, human rights, violence and hate, health and addictions and environmental issues. We have reached the project’s aims by means of watching, subtitling and discussing short films and movies based on these values, and above all by creating, both locally and internationally, student-produced short movies, documentaries or PSA .
Therefore, we have provided students with the chance to express their own views and to be heard, and at the same time they have improved their foreign languages skills and competences in ICT and Visual Literacy, thus becoming the central elements of the teaching- learning process.
As one of the key aims of the project is to foster cooperation amongst students and teachers, our methodology has been active, cooperative as opposed to competitive, and agreed through general consensus. Students have been encouraged to improve their social and autonomy competences by cooperating in transnational teams. Furthermore, teaching guides have been collaboratively designed to foster the reutilization of the audio-visual outputs in worldwide classes.

Regarding the activities, in order to guarantee coordination, three general transnational meetings, plus a bilateral one in Germany for the two countries involved in the Long-term-study-mobility of pupils, have been held: the first one in Spain, and the other two in Norway and in Sweden, with the objective of planning the agenda, discussing key issues and monitoring and assessing the activities.
We have developed eight local activities in which students have been be asked to accomplish specific tasks on eight of the mentioned values. Finally there have been two short term exchange of students per year, in Spain and Bulgaria in 2015,and in Finland and Lithuania in 2016, to work together and create internationally team –produced outputs on the four remaining values.

Not only the students participating in this project have benefited from it, but also the teaching staff from the participating institutions, the whole educational communities of the partner schools, Local Communities and other European teachers, students and educational communities in general.

Through the production of VETA DVD, we intend to transcend the scope of our schools and share our products and results not only locally but worldwide through the Internet, thus fostering the usage of English as a Lingua Franca, together with Spanish and German, raising awareness on EU values and promoting youngsters active citizenship and participation.
We expect this project to have a pervading impact on our schools and local communities. Its expected outputs have been devised to be sustainable open access resources, which will remain accessible on the Internet, and which may be easily exploited by other schools and educational associations and institutions all over the world.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 175815 Eur

Project Coordinator

IES PÉREZ GALDÓS & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Bryne vidaregåande skole
• Prezidento V. Adamkaus gimnazija
• Langinkosken koulu
• Grennaskolan
• Agrupamento de Escolas Póvoa de Santa Iria
• Gymnasium Wildeshausen
• Yane Sandanski Profiled High School