Watch, learn, do… and never forget! Active citizenship in an open Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

Watch, learn, do… and never forget! Active citizenship in an open Europe

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

In today’s society, not only in the Belgian or Danish context but in the entire European Union, we notice a growing need for active citizenship. The pupils in our strong ASO schools should become part of the strength of our society. We noticed that although they are very intelligent and well educated, they often lack the responsibility to admit a social commitment and have too little interest in Europe. This also may limit their chances in higher education. This partnership aims to raise active citizens through the exchange of good practices in the education of STEM, history, economics and foreign language lessons, all with connection to Europe. The profile of teachers and school leaders should be strenghtened. A learning line will be established to follow up the progress of the pupils and to build further on to their knowledge and awareness. Throughout the project pupils learn to know the world in a safe environment and are thought how to commit themselves by co-operation and inspiring each other.
The Belgian partner, KA Keerbergen, has a lot of expertise in the formal education of STEM and the integration of ICT during the lessons to process the training curriculum. Their teachers also have a lot of experience with valuable interactive projects with extended teaching material about the world wars and learned how to distillate the most useful information and the best working methods to attract the full attention of the students.
Allerød Gymnasium, the Danish partner, has WIFI in the entire school. This allows the school to put the responsibility of the learning process with the pupils. Teachers partially hand over the control of learning to the pupils.
Allerød Gymnasium has a lot of expertise in human sciences with a special interest in Europe. Teachers are well grounded in opening, leading and structuring debates. They also push their students in thinking profoundly about difficult issues like the European expansion and in formulating well-founded opinions.
The partners found each other because they are secondary schools with the same type of pupils and with a similar type of education. By joining the strengths they learn from each other and make their pupils strong and active European citizens.
The heads of the working groups of the chosen courses are selected to play an active role in the project. The other teachers in the project have volunteered to join in. Both partners have chosen a group of pupils to participate in different mobilities. They are all very motivated all speak very well English to facilitate the communication. This choice makes it possible that the pupils not only learn from the expert teachers but also learn from each other which knowledge they lack and why it is useful to learn it. Teenagers sometimes are more open to learn from something they see and experience than from something they are told.
During the project, 5 transnational learning and teaching activities are planned. They are very important for the teachers as well as for the pupils because studies have proven that people only remember 10% of what they hear but almost everything of what they discover and experience themselves. The first one and the last will be joint staff training events. The participants show their teaching methods and demonstrate how they give more responsibilities to the pupils instead of strongly leading the entire learning process. They will also debate on the differences between their education systems and stress out the positive and negative elements.
The next learning activities are exchanges of groups of pupils. The active citizenship of the pupils will be raised through the education of economics (e.g. Pupils analyse reasons for success of a company, the play and economic mind game, they learn to think out of the box, ..), history (e.g. They will visit the European Parliament, they will discuss on the importance of democracy, the constitutional law, human rights, they will be asked to ‘set up a new European State, …) and STEM (computer programming , pitfalls and opportunities of social media and IT, …)
The expected impact of the project is that teachers will dispose of the competences to teach active citizenship and that they will evolve to increasingly engaged professionals. This project should also expand the commitment of the teacher.
Pupils will be more involved are engaged in today’s society by experiencing the good practices they succeed in motivating their colleague pupils. They will, by taking responsibilities, have more chances to succeed in higher education. They are given more insight in the importance of Europe and therefore also more understanding of the importance of certain courses.
The schools and group of schools want to see the force of internationalisation embedded in its policy so teachers and pupils can develop themselves to be active citizens who take their role in society and engage themselves to a dynamic and harmonious life in a world without boundaries.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 22744 Eur

Project Coordinator

GO! Koninklijk Atheuneum Keerbergen & Country: BE

Project Partners

• Allerød Gymnasium