The IMPACT-project is a project in which five primary schools in five different countries work together with the University of Saxion, Enschede. Saxion University will be responsible for project coordination and provide the expertise and experience needed to execute a project of this scale succesfully. Partner University:Saxion University, Enschede, the Netherlands Partner primary schools are:Escola Joan Sallares i Pla, Sabadell, Spain Sinav Koleji , Bursa, Turkey Obs Stedeke, Diepenheim, the Netherlands Istituto Comprensivo “R. Montano”, Stigliano, Italy Trongårdsskolen, Lyngby, DenmarkThe schools will share good practices in order to work on three principal aims: 1. To inspire children through their participation in concrete projects that challenge them by working together with children from other countries in Europe. 2. To improve education in schools that join the IMPACT-project. 3. To develop school policy on internationalisation. They will use an assessment instrument called the "internationalisation scale". We wil achieve those goals by organising five teacher training weeks (TTW) for teachers of primary schools, each held in one of the five European Union partner school countries. The training weeks will be prepared during 3 steering group meetings (SGM):Date, Activity, Location, Number of participants 2016, October, SGM 1, The Netherlands, 62017 March, TTW 1, Spain, 152017 May, SGM 2, Denmark, 62017 October, TTW 2, Denmark, 202018 March, TTW 3, Turkey, 252018 May, SGM 3, Italy, 62018 October, TTW 4, Italy, 252019 March, TTW 5, The Netherlands, 30Each teacher training week will have two central themes:TTW 1: European Professionalism and MultilingualismTTW 2: European Identity and Immigration TTW 3: European Citizenship and Early Childhood EducationTTW 4: European Professionalism and New Teacher EducationTTW 5: European Diversity and MultilingualismContents of a teacher training week:We want to inspire children to be active European citizens when they grow-up and empower them in being entrepreneurial human beings, when they face the challenges society has in store for them now and later on in their lives. By participating in concrete projects with children from other countries, they will gain knowledge about the diversity that exists in Europe and the differences in social-economic perspective. By doing this they will be able to seek out opportunities all over Europe to be successful. All the participants will prepare a presentation in the form of short movie of their schools' situation to be shown to the rest of the teachers at the start of the week. In that way schools can profit from the strengths of other schools to cope with the challenges that lay in front of them. During the training weeks there will be time to set up partnerships on developing the professional and educational environment in the schools. We want to steer towards sound policy on internationalisation, anchored within the school policy, this is to make the yields of this project sustainable towards the future. That is why teachers joining each teacher training week will assess their current school's level of internationalisation with a tool, the internationalisation scale. The result of this assessment will help them to decide what the next step for their school will be and progress can be measured during the project. The IMPACT-project is cyclical, to show that teachers and schools continue improving on becoming entrepreneurial teachers in Europe working in schools with a sound internationalisation policy. This way make sure we have the most impact on the children. Participating schools will make use of a digital portfolio:During the course of the project, all participating schools will show their development in a digital portfolio. The portfolio contains:1. Short movie of their challenges and strengths.2. Summary of how they have worked on their challenges, with help of the strengths of the project partners.3. Summary of how they have used their strengths to help other schools cope with their challenges4. List of concrete projects executed with the children.5. Results of internationalisation toolThe IMPACT-project will use a public Twinspace. In this Twinspace schools can present themselves, the activities they have done during the project. They can use their digital portfolio's and publish out of these on the projects public Twinspace.The steering group will make sure that the project's progress will be made visible on Twinspace too. They will make sure that all concrete projects will be available on the public Twinspace. That way it is easy to access for other schools and teachers in Europe.During the project partner schools will actively approach other schools to join a training week. The aim is to welcome teachers of ten more schools and two more countries at the teacher training weeks.
Context/background of the project: Against a background of a more globalizing world and at the same time upcoming nationalism in several European countries, perhaps threatening the core values of the EU, this project not only acknowledges the importance of European cooperation, but strengthened the realisation that no longer you are a citizen of your village, city or country, but that you are a European citizen. The future of Europe lies in the way we raise its leaders of the future. They happen to be in primary school at the moment. It is very difficult to get every politician of today on board on the European ideology, but with the leaders of tomorrow we have a chance. This project stressed the added value of European cooperation by creating joint concrete projects to be executed in their classes, improving education by learning from each other and developing sustainable internationalisation policy in schools. In order to achieve this, we organized every Teacher Training Week (TTW) based on two topics/thematic fields. These thematic fields are based on the European Teacher Competences, developed by Michael Schratz (http://www.sdcentras.lt/pla/res/Schratz.pdf). Objectives: 1. To inspire children through their participation in concrete projects that challenge them by working with children from other countries in Europe. 2. To improve education in schools that join the IMPACT-project. 3. To develop school policy on internationalisation. They will use an assessment instrument called the "internationalisation scale". Number and profile of participating organisations: This application was the first joint application of a teacher training university (Saxion University) and a primary school (Obs Stedeke) in the Netherlands. The project started with 6 partners from 5 countries. One primary school from every country and Saxion University from the Netherlands. During the project the number of participating primary schools gradually expanded up to 15 primary schools, 3 schools from every partner country. A primary school from Finland also joined the project for the final 3 TTWs, which made the total of participating schools 16. Description of undertaken main activities; We achieved our principal objectives by having organised five Teacher Training Weeks (TTW) for teachers of primary schools, The training weeks will be prepared during 3 steering group meetings (SGM): Date, Activity, Location, Number of participants 2016 October, Steering Group Meeting 1, The Netherlands, 6 2017 March, Teacher Training Week 1, Spain, 15 2017 November, Teacher Training Week 2, Portugal, 20 2017 November, Steering Group Meeting 2, Portugal, 6 2018 March, Teacher Training Week 3, The Netherlands, 25 2018 November, Teacher Training Week 4, Italy, 25 2018 November, Steering Group Meeting 3, Italy, 6 2019 March, Teacher Training Week 5, The Netherlands, 30 Main activities during a TTW were: - Writing improving education plan. - Writing developing internationalization policy with long and short term goals. - Setting up a mini-project - School and cultural visits - Filling in internationalization barometer - Key-note speakers and lectures about topics TTW Results and impact attained: During the almost 3 years of the IMPACT project, 2140 children have been actively involved in the project by participating in different mini projects made public on Twinspace. IMPACT Facebook page was active during the project development, allowing dissemination of good practises from mini projects and the spreading of the message of European friendship and cooperation between partner schools. On 10th June 2019 the Facebook IMPACT page records 859 likes, 871 followers and a range of up to 2500 people in more than 14 countries reached in each message. For further information see the specific report. 34 mini-projects were run by 16 different schools in 6 countries. All school have made educational changes to improve their teaching. All school have made progress on their level of internationalisation and possess a European network and knowledge about eTwinning and Twinspace that they can use the coming years. Longer-term benefits: 1. School managements started with implementing the internationalisation policies in their school. The project was for most of them the starting point. 2. Teachers see the value of international cooperation. After executing the mini-projects teacher will work together again in the next schoolyear. Contact between schools will stay. 3. Mini-project will be used as good practices for the students of the teacher training college at Saxion university. For students a perfect opertunity to start thinking about their on ideas on internationalisation in schools. 4. Forms and good practices stay availeble for all who are interested on our Twinspace page. If they have questions they can contact Saxion university. 5. Endresults of the project will be presented during national and international meetings or conferences.