The “Learning to Disagree” project is designed to empower teacher professionals to enable students acquire social and civic competences through debates, dialogue and discussion on contested issues as part of their formal education. The project responds to the needs of those educators who experience difficulties in addressing sensitive and controversial issues in their classroom, - in responding to students who express extreme opinions, or in assessing students’ social and civic competences. The project offers training and support materials to educators to overcome these difficulties and enable them to facilitate debate, dialogue and discussion in their educational practice. The core idea is that students acquire those social and civic competences that enable them to interact with people that they (fundamentally) disagree with, in a constructive manner. The project will help students to acquire skills such as the ability to listen, to respond to what others are saying, to use neutral language, and to considering alternative interpretations. These are important life skills that will have a positive impact on students, also beyond the school environment. The project will be implemented by a team of schools, universities and associations, selected for their unique expertise and network that they bring to the project. The consortium will work together with a core group of 12 educators from different countries, who will be selected on the basis of their motivation and ability to contribute to the development of high-quality educational resources for learning history, heritage and citizenship (see EUROCLIO Manifesto). The project will result in several educational resources that are directly applicable by teachers and will remain freely accessible after the project has ended. The educational resources consist of 12 sets of content for dialogue, debate and discussion on contested issues (including the historical context, a description of the issues, a variety of viewpoints and questions that make students think), a teacher’s guide on debate, dialogue and discussions (introducing a range of teaching methods), a teacher’s guide on assessing social and civic competences (including a set of assessment tools), and a training package (to be used to train other teachers on how to use these resources in practice). These educational resources respond to the needs that are identified in the needs assessment in the beginning of the project, and a review of existing teacher’s guides, and assessment tools. The teacher’s guides that are developed in this project will be published in 12 European languages. An ambitious training and development programme with 6 international trainings and 12 multiplier events will contribute to the professional development of at least 350 educators, who together will reach over 70.000 students on an annual basis. In the first international training, a group of 50 teachers who are now teaching in schools, will be trained using a selection of existing resources and assessment tools, which they will critically review. In the next four international training, the core group of educators will be trained in the development of educational resources, through a process of collaborative development, testing and peer-review. The educational resources that are developed in the project, will be launched during the final international training, that will coincide with EUROCLIO’s Annual Conference, to have maximum impact. The project will end with a series of national multiplier events that are organised by the core group members of this project in 12 different countries. Having contributed to the collaborative design of the educational resources, the core group members will be best suited to share these ideas with colleagues on a national level, and pick those resources for the trainings that are most suited to the local contexts. For these national multiplier events, the core team members will make use of a training package, designed to transfer the knowledge, expertise and outputs build in the project so far, to educators who are not yet familiar with the project. This training package will include hands on training materials that are directly applicable by peers. They will help provide practical suggestion on issues like: how to collect various viewpoints on contested issues, how to decide what teaching methods is best suited to dialogue, discuss or debate on a particular contested issue, how to create a safe environment where students can express themselves, how to communicate to students what they should be able to do in order to demonstrate that they are competent, and how to assess the level of social and civic competences of their students. All the outputs of the project will remain freely available for use, also after the duration of the project.
The Learning to Disagree project was initiated to address the needs of those teachers whose students are exposed to extremist ideologies, populism and ‘alternative’ facts on the internet, and whose classrooms (and national contexts) are becoming increasingly diverse and are teeming with opposing and diverging views on controversial and sensitive topics. In response to these societal developments, the Learning to Disagree project was designed to provide educators with the tools to help enable students acquire social and civic competences through debates, dialogue and discussion on contested issues as part of their formal education. The project consortium was composed of: (1) EuroClio (NL), an International NGO which has 30 years of experience in project leadership and management, as well as a large network that includes relevant stakeholder and members of the target group of the project; (2) Georg Eckert Institute (DE) an internationally renowned textbook research institute, who authored the needs assessment (O1) and policy recommendations (O5); (3) Maynooth National University Ireland (IR), who developed the Teachers Guide on Assessing Social and Civic Competences (O4); (4) Mount School York (UK), who tested teaching strategies developed for this project (O3) in practice and oversaw the developing and editing the educational material (O2); (5) Education for the 21st Century (RS), an organisation experienced in developing educational resources, especially with regard to dialogue, debate and discussion. Additionally, a core team of 17 volunteer educators was formed to create 13 “variety of viewpoints” and 15 lesson plans as part of the Exemplar content for dialogue, debate, and discussion (O2). During the reporting period there have been 5 transnational partner meetings. The first meeting (M1) served as an introduction to the project, and helped partners develop a common vision on all Intellectual Outputs, including the roles and responsibilities and the time path, and a common understanding of the specific terms and language used in the project. The purpose of the second meeting (M2) was to prepare future joint sessions, and in particular the programme for the first short term staff training (C1) . The third partner meeting (M3) focused on the analysis of the Exemplar Content developed by team members, in particular of the Lesson Plans developed to show how the content can be used in an educational context. The fourth partner meeting (M4) focused on preparing the Exemplar Content (referred to as “variety of viewpoints”) for finalisation. The fifth meeting (M5) was used to discuss how to proceed with the project during the COVID-19 pandemic. There also have been 6 short term staff trainings (STST). Serbia in March of 2018 (C1) ; Germany in August of 2018 (C2); Ireland in January of 2019 (C3); The Netherlands in August of 2019 (C4); Germany in December of 2019 (C5); and lastly in November of 2020 (C6). The last meeting was held online to facilitate participation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additional one-on-one meetings between partners and team members were held throughout the project. Finally, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit the project at the moment when national multiplier events (E1-E12) were set to begin, some of the core team members were able to host “Learning to Disagree” Professional Training and Development Courses in Bulgaria (E3), Italy (E7), Hungary (E5), and Slovakia (E9). These trainings were designed to support history educators to use the Exemplar Content (O2), Needs Assessment (O1), Teacher's guide on dialogue, debate and discussion (O3), Training package on how to use the educational resources (O5), and Teachers guide on assessing social and civic competences (O4). The project produced a variety of intellectual outputs: a Needs Assessment (O1), a Teachers’ Guide on Dialogue, Debate and Discussion (O3), a Teachers’ Guide on Assessing Social and Civic Competences (O4), Policy Recommendations (O6). Lastly, it produced Educational Resources (O2); 15 Lesson Plans, 13 Variety of Viewpoints, 3 Source Collections, all revolving around the 4 main topics (people on the move, borders, and surviving under pressure)that enable students and educators to dialogue, debate and discuss contested issues.