This project intends to approach the promotion of civic and social values in a new way by enhancing family and community connections with schools as well as new pedagogical strategies, methods and materials to be used in the classroom of the partner schools to improve students’ academic achievement. Family, community and school are the three components of a troika responsible for the transmission of values. Contemporary schools are a mixture of cultures, ideals and different perceptions of reality. One of the needs that came to our attention in all the schools involved in this project is the lack of some important values in students’ lives. Many students are very intolerant at different levels. There is an excessive individualism, even egocentrism which leads students to forget the other as an individual, leading to disciplinary problems and bullying situations. We aim at making the community aware of the problem and to actively take part in the solution. In the different stages of this project, we will have the participation of stakeholders, specially the parents’ associations and the local authorities of each school. They will play an important role in international meetings, surveys and in the analysis of the results as well as in the dissemination, by working the results with other parents (parents’ association) and establishing a community plan to help future kids to acquire important civic and social values. The participating organisations aim at reinforcing cooperation between families, communities and schools in what concerns the promotion of values, decreasing levels of students' misbehaviour issues in schools and improving academic achievement in their own countries by sharing good practices in enhancing and promoting values at school in cooperation with the family and the community in a European context and applying them consistently in the practices of each school. We also aim at developing basic and transversal skills, such as entrepreneurship, digital skills and multilingualism, using innovative and student-centred pedagogical approaches. Finally we aim at involving students with special educational actively so that they have equal opportunities along with their peers. Activities were designed to achieve the objectives of the project having in mind the need to develop entrepreneurship (making videos about family and community life; news programme) autonomy (linguistic/ICT- all the task will be performed in English; making videos, PPT presentations, using Facebook, YouTube, eTwinning); citizenship (Project’s Volunteer Day); European Cultural dimension and European identity (in transnational meetings through the understanding of cultural diversity - presentation of schools, culture, traditions…). The quality of the consortium was also a requirement in order to ensure the quality of the project. The Coordinator and two partners attended a seminar on «Project management for cross-cultural exchange projects in Europe». The Coordinator also has a degree in Management of Educational Training and Administration and his expertise will improve the quality of the partnership. The expertise of the partners selected was complementary to the needs of the project. All the work of this partnership is based on an ongoing effective cooperation and communication between partners using different communication technology. Monitoring and evaluation will be used in the continuous process of assessing the progress made towards stated objectives, so that gaps between the original project plan and the actual achievements can be identified and corrected. An external evaluator will be invited as a “critical friend” to add positive value and to contribute to the credibility of the evaluation process. A detailed dissemination plan was designed to promote an ongoing exchange of information. In the creation of a shared resources section in our website and the posting of the outputs of the project activities it is anticipated that the project will help to raise awareness of the contribution of enhancing family, community and school values across Europe. Other institutions and stakeholders and people interested will get their information as well as open access to resources developed through the project via website and Web 2.0 networking tools created by the Partnership. Other channels of dissemination will be used (newsletters, workshops, conferences, newspapers, a Multicultural Lesson Plans Guide to support the practice of professionals and a scientific article supervised by a Coimbra University Professor which will be publish in the Open Access Scientific Repository of Portugal and in the online library (B-on) which can be accessed by all investigators worldwide. The visibility and sustainability of the project will be assured by all the dissemination activities (maintaining and updating the project website and the Facebook page). The scientific article will trigger future investigations in this field.
This project intended to approach the promotion of civic and social values in a new way by enhancing family and community connections with schools as well as new pedagogical strategies, methods and materials to be used in the classroom of the partner schools to improve students’ academic achievement. Family, community and school are the three components of a troika responsible for the transmission of values. Contemporary schools are a mixture of cultures, ideals and different perceptions of reality. One of the needs that came to our attention in all the schools involved in this project is the lack of some important values in students’ lives. Many students are very intolerant at different levels. There is an excessive individualism, even egocentrism which leads students to forget the other as an individual, leading to disciplinary problems and bullying situations. We aimed at making the community aware of the problem and to actively take part in the solution. In the different stages of this project, we had the participation of stakeholders, specially the parents’ associations and the local authorities of each school. They played an important role in international meetings, surveys and in the analysis of the results as well as in the dissemination, by working the results with other parents (parents’ association) and establishing a community plan to help future kids to acquire important civic and social values. The participating organisations aimed at reinforcing cooperation between families, communities and schools in what concerns the promotion of values, decreasing levels of students' misbehaviour issues in schools and improving academic achievement in their own countries by sharing good practices in enhancing and promoting values at school in cooperation with the family and the community in a European context and applying them consistently in the practices of each school. We also aimed at developing basic and transversal skills, such as entrepreneurship, digital skills and multilingualism, using innovative and student-centred pedagogical approaches. Finally we aimed at involving students with special educational actively so that they have equal opportunities along with their peers. Activities were designed to achieve the objectives of the project having in mind the need to develop entrepreneurship (making videos about family and community life; news programme) autonomy (linguistic/ICT- all the task were performed in English; making videos, PPT presentations, using Facebook, YouTube, eTwinning); citizenship (Project’s Volunteer Day); European Cultural dimension and European identity (in transnational meetings through the understanding of cultural diversity - presentation of schools, culture, traditions…). The quality of the consortium was also a requirement in order to ensure the quality of the project. The Coordinator and two partners attended a seminar on «Project management for cross-cultural exchange projects in Europe». The Coordinator also has a degree in Management of Educational Training and Administration and his expertise will improve the quality of the partnership. The expertise of the partners selected was complementary to the needs of the project. Austria - Very good expertise on working with ICT, european collaboration and working about Values at School. Belgium - very good expertise on working about Values. Greece - Great Expertise on integration of minorities, ICT experts and work about Values. Romania - Very good expertise on working about Values and ICT use in the classroom. Slovenia - Very good expertise on working about values, using active methodologies. Turkey - Very good Expertise on working about Values in the Classroom. The main activities of the project were the Questionnaires about Vaues and about Stereotypes, the Scientific Article, the Students Exchanges, the staff trainning, the Project Volunteer day and the Newsletters. The project had direct impacts on the students and on their results. They became much more tolerant to the differences and they have improved thei English. But also the families and the Communities felt the impact of the project, during the exchanges, but also during the preparation and the oher activities, like the volunteer day. The visibility and sustainability of the project was assured by all the dissemination activities (project website, twinspace, Facebook page, news articles, conferences, Multicultural Lesson Plans, workshops). The scientific article will trigger future investigations in this field. During the following months of the projects, more articles will be written by the teachers involved and some more workshops will also be prepared at the University of Coimbra.