The European societies and educational systems are becoming increasingly multicultural and multilingual due to the increased mobility and migration from European and non-European countries. Within migrant groups, there are 32% of adults with basic literacy skills and only 13,9% of them are familiar with the language of the host country (Eurostat, EU-LFS (2014). The educational institutions and educators are facing two challenges: to provide the newcomer students the possibility to acquire the language of the education as soon as possible, and to help them to maintain their native language. Even though these challenges are usually resolved at the policy level, they are not always effectively met in the teaching practice. That situation can lead to decreased access to education, early leaving from the educational system, and a missed opportunity to fully develop potentials of the students with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds (migrants, asylum seekers, national minorities such as the Roma minority etc.) and because of it they can be perceived as a distinct group of disadvantaged young learners (DYL). In order to make the education of the DYL more effective, it is necessary to provide students with more learning opportunities and educators with additional training. A great potential for a more effective education of students lies in the opportunities to help the students to develop literacy and language skills not only in formal learning situations but also in non-formal and informal situations. The proposed project addresses this opportunity and by inclusion of all types of learning it encourages cross-sectorial connections (schools, and universities). The innovative approach in this project comes from its transdisciplinarity and its focus on formal, non-formal and informal learning. The project will focus on the design of transdisciplinary materials for the development of literacy and language skills for disadvantaged young learners (age 5-11) by using non-formal, informal and formal learning situations more effectively. The project has four expected outcomes: Report of the activities of good practice (O1), transdisciplinary literacy developing activities (O2), database with transdisciplinary prompts for literacy developing activities (O3), manual for teachers/educators (O4). The project partners are four institutions form 3 countries: Croatia - University of Zagreb, Faculty of Teacher Education and Elementary school Ivan Gundulic Zagreb, Slovenia - University of Maribor and Macedonia –Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. Since the partner institutions participate in education at different levels and since there are considerable differences in the educational systems between the countries, exchange of knowledge and experience of the project team members will bring a new perspective to the topic of literacy development of DYL. The created transdisciplinary materials and activities for the development of literacy, which will be available on the website of the project, will be implemented in teaching process in both primary and higher education level. Through its dissemination activities (seminar, workshops, database, medias), the project will provide teachers and educators with new, innovative and more effective learning and teaching materials and with guidance material for literacy development and language skills. The project will also enable stakeholders in the field of education to get insights into models of inclusion of disadvantaged students in different countries, which might initiate changes at the level of educational policies. Overall, the project will increase teachers/educators competences and awareness of the importance of informal and non-formal learning situations for more effective education of disadvantaged groups of learners in schools and other learning environments.
In multicultural and multilingual societies, educational systems should help students with different cultural and linguistic background (e.g. migrants, asylum seekers, national minorities etc.) to acquire a language of schooling. In all partner countries (Croatia, Slovenia and North Macedonia), the legislation on that issue is adopted, yet its implementation is not sufficiently effective. Lacking knowledge of the language of schooling leads to unequal educational opportunities, so children with different cultural and linguistic background can be perceived as disadvantaged young learners (DYL). The main aim of the project DEAL was to enhance learning opportunities of DYL by: 1) using all learning context (formal, informal and non-formal) more effectively for language learning and literacy development; 2) connecting language learning with the development of other competencies, since the language is a prerequisite for learning. The main underlying principles of all project activities were: literacy development, multilingualism, intercultural competence, transdisciplinarity, transferability, language awareness, innovation, creativity, and gameplay. At the project 4 intellectual outcomes (IO) were developed. The Report of the activities of good practice (IO1) was created to map existing educational practices in partner countries that have positive influence to literacy development and language learning of DYLs. The Report revealed effective, innovative and inclusive education of DYLs in all partner countries, as well as country specific challenges and issues. The goal of the project was to develop learning materials that would foster language development while developing other competences. For that purpose 80 transdisciplinary literacy developing activities (IO2) were created. The designed activities aimed at clearly defined linguistic-communicative outcome while at the same time developing other types of literacies. The activities encourage language and literacy development in various learning context (formal, non-formal and informal), and can easily be transferred from one learning context to another. Users of IO2 are provided with all ready-to-be-used materials required to perform the activities, in a form of a Database with transdisciplinary prompts for literacy developing activities (IO3). The Database reduces the educators’ preparation time, ensures that all educators can properly and effectively facilitate the proposed learning activities in order to outcomes of each activity to be achieved by children. The Database contains: different types of visual materials, verbal prompts to be used by children and/or educators, audio materials, memos on activity performance etc. The design of the Database, as a searchable open surce digital base, allows its transferability - its content can be used beyond the activities for which it was created. The Manual for teachers/educators (IO4) explains theoretical principles on which the project is grounded. It also contains detailed description of the designed activities and the database, with the guidelines for their usage. The main goal of the Manual is to help teachers implement language learning and literacy development activities to formal, non-formal and informal learning situation, and to provide professional support to educators with no training in language teaching. Through the dissemination activities carried out on the project web site, Facebook, project partners web, eTwinning, media, via email and created newsletters, as well as by participation of the project team members in conferences, seminars for continuous teacher education, visit to partner institutions, transnational project meetings etc. it is estimated that project activities and results reached at least 5000 persons from the target group (pre-school teachers, teachers, principals, school psychologist, pedagogues, volunteers working with NGOs, parents other stakeholders in education) at local, national and international level. The impact of the project is expected on three levels: (i) the target group is provided with new, innovative and more effective learning and teaching materials and with guidance for its use; (ii) new teaching practice will increase the quality of DYL education; and (iii) the project will give more input to stakeholders in the field of education on the education of DYL, which might initiate changes at the level of educational policies. Overall, the project will increase teachers/educators competences and awareness of the importance of informal and non-formal learning situations for more effective education of disadvantaged groups of learners in schools and other learning environments.