In recent years, a consensus has grown across the European Union that the acquisition of transversal skills and key competences – including foreign language (FL) and entrepreneurial skills – is vital to the economic success of the European Union and of its citizens. National governments have agreed that the teaching of these transversal skills should begin from primary school, yet teaching time and school budgets are already stretched. Member States recognise that the attainment of additional learning outcomes requires innovative and more efficient teaching, yet there is little understanding of what this might mean in practice. We will design an innovative teaching methodology for use in primary schools that enables the concurrent acquisition of FL and entrepreneurial skills through more efficient – as opposed to through additional – teaching. The methodology will rely on ‘generalist’ teachers’ knowledge of foreign languages, thereby enabling the use of this often disregarded asset. We will pilot the CRADLE methodology over one school year, with nine teachers and c. 180 pupils aged 8-12 in six schools in three countries: Belgium (3 public schools), Greece (2 private schools) and Bulgaria (1 private school). Foreign languages taught at primary level include French, German and English. The aim of this pilot will be to assess the efficacy and efficiency of the CRADLE methodology. We will also create tools to facilitate the mainstreaming of this methodology: - The CRADLE Teacher Training Course, to train teachers in the CRADLE methodology; - The CRADLE Toolbox, to support classroom implementation; - Practical Implementation Recommendations, addressed to School Directors, to support school-wide adoption. Finally through a programme of workshops with over 500 stakeholders, we will develop a Mainstreaming Strategy, which we will implement in the post-project phase to generalise the use of the CRADLE methodology in primary schools. As a result of this project: - We will have demonstrated the effectiveness, efficacy, and added-value of the CRADLE methodology as well as the feasibility of its practical implementation in primary schools. - We will have developed the tools (TTC, Toolbox, Practical Implementation Recommendations) that will enable the wider implementation of the CRADLE methodology in primary schools; - We will have created a community of practice specialised in the CRADLE methodology, together with a Mainstreaming Strategy which we will implement in the post-project phase. This Mainstreaming Strategy will also be made publicly available, thereby facilitating the transfer from “pilot” to “common practice” of any proven innovative teaching methodology in general. Expected impacts: - Support to the development of transversal skills from an early age: we expect that students’ achievements, interest and attitudes with respect to the use of a FL will be increased, and that they will demonstrate greater resilience, self-efficacy and entrepreneurial skills than their peers who will not have participated in the project. - Strengthening of teacher profiles: the TTC and Toolbox will support teachers in adopting collaborative and innovative practices. We also expect that that the value and importance given to their FL skills – even if they are not FL teachers – will be empowering to them (and beneficial to their students and schools). - School leadership: The Practical Implementation Recommendations will support school leaders and teachers in their adoption of this innovative teaching methodology as a common practice in their schools, thereby strengthening school leadership and distributed leadership. The CRADLE methodology will firmly place students’ interest, curiosity and sense of initiative at the centre of the learning process. Beyond this, it will focus on the intentional development of entrepreneurial skills, which at a basic level are life skills: problem-solving, personal responsibility, social responsibility, curiosity, communication and cooperation (among others), all resulting in self-efficacy and value creation. Through the use of the CRADLE methodology, students will therefore acquire these life skills both in the process of learning, and as a result of their learning – and at the same time will acquire language skills and increase their understanding of languages as a tool for communication in subject-specific settings. Therefore once mainstreamed, the CRADLE Methodology will have the potential to equip all young learners “with a broad range of skills which opens doors to personal fulfilment and development, social inclusion, active citizenship and employment” (“A New Skills Agenda for Europe, COM(2016) 381 final), not through more teaching but rather through more efficient, empowering and active teaching and learning.
The project has produced a range of resources through careful planning, team-building, training, piloting, evaluating, collaborative writing, and reporting. The resources received great attention from Headteachers and teachers, education policymakers and planners, academics and teacher trainers. A handbook available includes all three deliverables of the project: the cradle methodology, a toolbox composed of resources for teachers and classroom activities, and practical implementation recommendations. All outputs are available on the project's webpage along with an online teacher training course. The CRADLE project is ambitious as it brought together different educational approaches (Entrepreneurship / Enterprise Education, CLIL, Design Thinking) in an interconnected way. The partners were from diverse academic backgrounds and educational systems and target audience was primary-aged pupils and their teachers/schools. This project consisted of a partnership between organizations with diverse skills and attributes, such as developing teacher training materials, expertise in entrepreneurial education, and foreign language teaching. Goethe-Institut was the co-ordinating partner. It brings expertise in German language teaching, in the development of training materials, in teacher and trainer development, experience in using Action Research and the CLIL methodology, and an extensive and international network of contacts for dissemination. Shumen University specializes in teacher training. The University of Athens contributed a rigorous evaluation of the project outcomes and impacts. The Danish Foundation for Entrepreneurship (FFE) is a knowledge center on entrepreneurship education. It brings a valuable contribution to the entrepreneurship aspects of the teacher-training course. Bantani Education contributed experience in policy design and building networks/partnerships across Europe. GO! Scholengroep Brussel is a group of schools, including 32 primary schools. It got involved many stakeholders in the discussions on the mainstreaming of the CRADLE methodology and teacher training course. Six schools formally participated in this project as testbeds representing different socio-economic and educational contexts as well as various foreign language specializations: Uwekind – an international school in Bulgaria, with an FL focus on English and German; Ellinogermaniki Agogi – a private Greek school with an FL focus on English and German; Neue Schule Athen – a newly established Greek school, with an FL focus on German; Unescoschool, De Toverfluit, and De Iris (members of the GO! Scholengroep Brussel) – all state schools situated in Brussels, with students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. Their foreign language focus is French and, to a lesser extent, English. Up until March 2020, all the activities took place as planned, with occasional allowances for flexibility; once the COVID-19 virus pandemic took hold, live events and school-based activities as well as physical lessons were canceled as there was mainly online schooling. Also the last partner meeting planned for May 2020 in Athens, was canceled and took place online.