The Strategic Partnership project stems from a three-year-old joint observation by our four countries (France, Italy, Luxembourg, and the United Kingdom), regarding the so-called education crisis. Within different cultural and national contexts, a loss of authority, of bearings, and of moral values, inducing new relationships between generations and within education, is acknowledged, whereas the school as agent of transmission of the knowledge is questioned (School inequalities, dropping out, problematic school inclusion, lack of integration of migrant children, school/family tensions). There is also the expression of particularisms against the backdrop of a receding secular principle, bringing new communitarian claims into the public realm of education that are liable to threaten children’s integration in the educative system and to draw them away from school. Contemporary uneasiness regarding education resonates strongly within our societies, especially as we cannot but witness the concurrent absence of prospects for our youth. Socio-cultural determinism seems more powerful than ever. Educators are often distraught, even professionally suffering, and deplore the lack of training adapted to this context, especially as they intervene with very vulnerable and precarious populations. Anxious not to spread a vision of education marked by declinism, our project is to understand this multiform crisis and to better train educators in these new educational configurations. * Objectives: to better understand the crisis and to reinforce professionalism through meta-competences. Composed of five university staff (Paris 8 and Paris-Nanterre; Milano-Bicocca; Luxembourg; Institute of Education, University College London), three socio-educational institutions (Valdocco [Fr.], Duepuntiacapo Cooperativa Sociale [Ital.] and partners), the EducEurope Partnership is working on elucidating the notion of crisis in education through the crossed collection of narratives of practices and their analysis. This work will be used as a basis for the conception of training which will aim to support the processes of professional drop-in and to develop meta-competences: diagnostic, creation and carrying of reflexive work, mediation especially with families, cultural and geographical mobility, coordination of partnerships at various scales (local, regional, national and European authorities). The ambition is to define a new profile of stakeholders able to act at a meta-level to assist professionals in their evolution towards a new professionalism at the border between education, teaching and care, integrating a three-level analysis of situations: subjective, institutional and social dimensions operating in educational ties. * Methodology and progress of the project From the first year of Partnership a comparative transnational reflection is set up (Workshops and visits to educational institutions), bringing together teams of academics and social partners. This reflection allows us to confront the different realities and national figures of the crisis and lays the first basis for the production of a Thesaurus, ‘Educations in crisis in Europe, what are we talking about?’ Taking up this same apparatus and complementing it, the second year will allow to discuss and consolidate the first results during study days, to design and co-animate transnational virtual classes. Students of the existing Masters and our socio-educational partners will be constantly involved in the pedagogical experimentation. The prospect is to create an experimental training module which will be integrated within existing trainings in the respective countries (third year). A virtual workspace will be set up from the first year, providing a pedagogical support for our experiments, as well as for the diffusion and dissemination of our work and for transnational exchanges. The objective at the end of the three years is to build an experimental training system (in the form of a diploma certificate or a Certificate of Advanced Studies), first step towards the construction of a European Master. * Results and impacts The impact for the participants is the transformation of professionalism through the critical confrontation of representations related to educational practices, the renewal of common understandings and the elaboration of modalities of action. This project is a factor of involvement and motivation for the participants. Over the course of these three years, professional partners will be involved in the thinking process and will welcome students. Impact for organizations: engagement in a European partnership will help to increase their attractiveness to potential audiences, while at the level of university staff, an impact is expected in terms of improving the pedagogical and didactic quality of the courses, with perennial achievements, such as the Joint Master.
From 2017 to 2020, the EducEurope Partnership brought together 21 academics, administrative staff and education professionals from 4 countries (France, Italy, Luxembourg, United Kingdom): - Université Paris 8 (coordinator): 6 academics and 2 administrative staff from the International Relations Department - Università Milano-Bicocca: 4 academics - University of Luxembourg: 1 academic, 1 administrative assistant - University College of London: 2 academics - University of Paris-Nanterre: 3 academics - Cooperativa Duepuntiacapo, Milan: 1 director - Valdocco Association: Valdocco Argenteuil, Valdocco Lyon and Valdocco Training: 1 general manager + 3 school directors. - Ecole Nationale pour adultes , Luxembourg: 2 successive assistant directors Around 100 students and 124 health and education professionals (France, Luxembourg, Italy, United Kingdom) have also been involved at certain stages. Context and theme of the Partnership: This trilingual partnership (French, Italian, English) was born from shared observations during the 3 years preceding the project that the Partnership brought together under the theme of the “education crisis” to explore some contemporary issues of education and transmission: 1) Thinking on a transnational scale about the manifestations of this multiform crisis, which is singularized by the respective cultures, histories and educational policies, and the ways to designate them in the different languages 2) Identify the points of convergence by considering the crisis as an inherent dimension of education/training (socio-cognitive and subjective conflict of learning, conflict of transmission that links and cuts between generations) ; pay attention to the clinical dimensions of the observed phenomena to address the “crisis” for the educator, at the crossroads of different fields of practice. Goals: 1) Reflection on “transnational metaskills” enabling educators to identify in/through transnational otherness a meta-level of analysis of their practices 2) Design and experiment a training process whose contents and forms aim to support the professional drop-out/drop-in phenomena of educators. 3) Consider this joint experiment as a step towards the medium-term creation of a European training course or European Master. Stages of implementation: 1) Creating Collaborative and Dissemination Tools (2018-19): - Document storage and collaborative work space (Google Drive) - EducEurope website 2) Sharing our experiences of the education crisis through 4 meetings -workshops associated with visits - with a collection of practical stories, analysis of situations with our professional partners (Paris, London, Milan in 2018; Luxembourg in 2019), leading to production: - of a synthesis document (2019) on the socio-historical dimensions of the multidimensional concept of the “education crisis” and a document on the state of Italian educational institutions; - a conceptual repository of shared concepts that illuminate the education process in crisis situations. 3) Creation of 4 virtual classes (2019-20) covering the processes selected among the concepts previously identified from the creation of 4 transnational thematic groups within the Partnership: - design and audiovisual recording of virtual classrooms; - collaboration with groups of students and/or education professionals: in the form of feedback on the knowledge offered by the Partnership and in the form of contributions of content based on the knowledge of their practices. 4) Creation of the Training Module (2020) and posting on the EducEurope website: - de-rushing/mounting clips; - Articulated construction of the inputs of each virtual class to identify stable benchmarks in ways of thinking and acting in crisis situations; Outcomes and impact - Development of the European perspective in university practices, in the work of socio-educational teams, and for associate students. Various collaborations and productions (co-signed scientific publications; symposium in colloquia; dialogues between institutions; supervision of joint dissertations, doctoral projects, etc). already attest to the sustainibility of this fallout. - Use of the training module as a teaching aid for the training (face-to-face or distance-learning) of 40 students and/or professionals. At the end of 2020, the supporting university has created within its model of Master of Education Sciences a course that continues the experimentation of EducEurope supports over the next 5 years and maintains the partnership dynamic. - Experimentation with an open consultation on the website with an interactive device (chat).