This (sports-)project aims at the strengthening of personal skills as a basis for the European strategic goal of life-long learning. It can be noticed that many students, especially from socially-disadvantaged and uneducated families, are very passive at school. They often don’t participate actively, focus on dealing with problems, work constantly or show self-initiative. Working on projects or ideas with commitment is therefore hard for them and makes a participation in the lessons nearly impossible. So these students are at a high risk of truancy. Especially in PE it can be seen that these students leave their passivity behind and work ambitiously. It can be followed that PE is a subject that enables these students to reach personal goals, that are hard for them to achieve in other (academic) subjects. Although PE is part of the curriculum, it does not seem comparable to more academic subjects. The athletic achievements of these students are therefore less appreciated since future-oriented competences are not tied to this subject. This project should on the one hand show how key competences can be fostered in this subject and on the other hand point out how extracuricular activities that are run by students can lead to a rise in general commitment and motivation of the students from this group. The focus lies on the key competence self-initiative. By fostering self-initiative an identification with the school and by this a higher motivation in learning is expected. In this 2-year project students are asked to create workshops in a local sport. Every country presents a different local sport: Denmark: Langbold, Cyprus: Ligri/Pirilli, Poland: Smolball, Germany: Korbball. During the first semester a group of students from every school, which was identified as the target group, focuses on their local sport.These groups work in project groups or in their PE classes at this project and develop a workshop-concept for their local sport. The teachers start of as teachers in the classical sense and then change into learning coaches/facilitators in order to improve the students activity. During the second and third semester students pass over into the workshop-phase. In the transnational work meeting selected students present their workshops to the students from the other countries. They also participate in the 3 other workshops. Back home they are asked to present these new sports to the members of their project group, to create new workshops and design a longlasting extracuricular activity which they’ll lead in the next school terms. To reach this goal students are asked to use their competences and to work cooperatively. In the final semester they’ll continue working in their extracuricular activity, form school teams and train these teams. For this a lot of commitment, sense of responsibility and self-initiative is needed. The students are asked to commit themselves on a very high level to their school and by this will bond with this institution more closely. This development can be fostered by additional projects like designing school jerseys. In a final tournament the school teams will compete with each other in the 4 local sports. This tournament is a big source of motivation and the mutual goal the students pursue in the course oft he project. Athletic events lead to a higher/stronger identification with a specific group (in this case with their own school). This identification can in turn cause a positive association with the institution (school) and therefore foster a willingness to learn. Alongside several competences that are animated in this project, the final tournament is an important part of the cultural work. It helps create an openess towards other cultures and living in the multicultural society, in which we live.
This (sports) project, which aimed at strengthening personal competences as a basis for the European project objective of lifelong learning, focused in particular on supporting disadvantaged pupils. The sporting aspect of the project was used to motivate the pupils involved. The project showed a temporary increase in the pupils' willingness to learn and perform as well as their own initiative through the methodical conception and increase in responsibility of these pupils. In the first year of the two-year project, the participants developed workshops in previously unknown sports with increasing self-responsibility. These sports were presented to delegations of pupils during the first so-called workshop meeting in Poland. The interdependence resulting from the unknown sports and especially from the planned tournament at the end of the project provided a great motivation for the pupils. In the second year of the project this new learned sport was brought back to the home school and passed on in workshops. The pupils were responsible for passing on their newly acquired knowledge. The success of their group in the further course of the project depended on this. At the final meeting, this was to be measured in competitions. Even though this could not be carried out as planned, because due to the renovation of the sports facilities, there was no venue available for a large tournament, an increase in willingness to take responsibility and initiative could be observed in the project groups. The pupils, who had seldomly signed up for additional tasks before, were more active for their school, regardless of project activities, in the last phase of the project. Therefore a result of the project, which will be used for further general school and teaching development initiatives at the project schools, is to have students take responsibility for their own learning process by including them into the process of teaching.