In most European Member States racist violence in the form of verbal abuse or graffiti or harassment or vandalism or physical assault or even murder remains common and persistent.This is is also reflected in education as according to evidence, racism in class is a persistent issue, in particular in areas where majority and minority social groups co-exist. Existing interventions to prevent and address racism in schools are based on punishment, which is ineffective according to experimental and applied behavior analysis. Specifically: 1. When intervention programs are implemented the racist behavior has already been established since the shaping of the behavior starts even before our birth. 2. The measures taken against racist violence and racist discourse are not consistent and are not based on scientific laws of behavior. They are "tricks" which are employed randomly because we think that it is logical to work or because they have worked in other cases of undesired behaviors. The usefulness of our approach in overcoming these drawbacks is the fact that all kinds of behaviors can be explained, investigated, predicted and altered based on the same principles. 3. According to our approach punishment is partly the cause of racism and it might intensify it. Our approach is based on shaping desirable behavior by employing techniques which are based on the principle of reinforcement. The consortium consists of 6 partners from 4 countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal, Norway ) - 2 Universities (Panteion University, Greece, OSLOMET - STORBYUNIVERSITETET, Norway ), 1 public entity branch of the Greek Ministry of Education (Western Attica Administrative Office) and 3 NGO's (OXFAM ITALIA ONLUS, Italy, ACTION AID HELLAS ASTIKI MI KERDOSKOPIKI ETAIRIA, Greece, 4CHANGE COOPERATIVA CULTURAL E DE SOLIDARIEDADE SOCIAL CRL, Portugal). Partners were chosen based on their research and educational expertise in the field of behaviour analysis, inclusive education, violence prevention, specialized training and educational materials development with the aim to equip the team with the skills required to bring the project to fruitful completion. A mix of Universities, non-for-profit institutions, direct service recipient facilitates knowledge transfer making scientific applications readily available for use in the wider community. The project will involve 3 transnational meetings: the kick-off meeting, during the Mid Term Conference and during the Final Conference. These meetings will serve to coordinate work distributed among partners, monitor progress on assigned tasks, manage time and completion of targets according to agreed timeframe and plan ahead for the following stage of the project. An interim report will be produced by the Leader Organization in month 18. The results of the project which aims at the promotion of the enjoyment of interacting with people from diverse background, through the employment of techniques based on scientific research and basic principles of behavior will be: • Results of desk and field research • Teacher training curriculum developed during the first months of the project • Students and parents training curriculum developed during the first months of the project • Materials developed to train teachers on behaviour analysis and inclusion and specific techniques • Materials developed to train parents and students by teachers on inclusion and videos used by teachers to train students and specific techniques • Results of teacher, parents and students training assessment • Assessment of the project • Website •Registry of trained teachers. Pre and post-assessment of teachers skills will be used to issue certification based on Europass criteria and create registry of certified teachers •e-book Training events for teachers (including 2 transnational training activities) , parents and students will also take place. All training events will take place at convenient places and times for participants (e.g., at schools during working hours or weekends). Attendance will be encouraged and monitored by keeping regular contact with enrolled teachers, parents and students. The training will provide opportunities for trainees to actively engage with contents and obtain hands-on experience, therefore will be presented with an interactive format. Direct beneficiaries of the project will be teachers, students and parents. Teachers and parents will benefit from receiving direct training on behaviour analysis which will allow them to respond effectively to a wide range of situations, create an inclusive school and community overall, develop solidary behaviours and prevent or reduce racist violent acts. This project will lead to the development of best practice in the fields of inclusive education informed by the science of behaviour analysis. Gained expertise will have a direct impact on policies and strategies adopted for the prevention of racist violence and promotion of inclusive education.
The results of the project which aims at the promotion of the enjoyment of interacting with people from diverse background, through the employment of techniques based on scientific research and basic principles of behavior are: • Results of desk and field research • Teachers' training curriculum. • Students' and parents' training curriculum • Materials developed to train teachers on behaviour analysis and inclusion and specific techniques • Materials developed to train parents and students by teachers on inclusion and videos used by teachers to train students and specific techniques • Results of teacher, parents and students training assessment • Assessment of the project • Website •Registry of trained teachers. Pre and post-assessment of teachers skills will be used to issue certification based on Europass criteria and create registry of certified teachers Training events for teachers (including 2 transnational training activities) , parents and students. All training events would take place at times convenient for participants (e.g., at schools during working hours or weekends or online using zoom platform). Attendance would be encouraged and monitored by keeping regular contact with enrolled teachers, parents and students. The training would provide opportunities for trainees to actively engage with contents and obtain hands-on experience, therefore it would be presented in an interactive format. Direct beneficiaries of the project would be teachers, students and parents. Teachers and parents and students would benefite from receiving direct training on behaviour analysis which will allow them to respond effectively to a wide range of situations, create an inclusive school and community overall, develop solidarity behaviours and prevent or reduce racist violent acts. This project would lead to the development of best practice in the fields of inclusive education informed by the science of behaviour analysis. Gained expertise will have a direct impact on policies and strategies adopted for the prevention of racist violence and promotion of inclusive education.
In most European Member States racist violence in the form of verbal abuse or graffiti or harassment or vandalism or physical assault or even murder remains common and persistent.This is also reflected in education as according to evidence, racism in class is a persistent issue, in particular in areas where majority and minority social groups co-exist. Existing interventions to prevent and address racism in schools are based on punishment, which is ineffective according to experimental and applied behavior analysis. Specifically: 1. When intervention programs are implemented the racist behavior has already been established since the shaping of the behavior starts even before our birth. 2. The measures taken against racist violence and racist discourse are not consistent and are not based on scientific laws of behavior. They are "tricks" which are employed randomly because we think that it is logical to work or because they have worked in other cases of undesired behaviors. The usefulness of our approach in overcoming these drawbacks is the fact that all kinds of behaviors can be explained, investigated, predicted and altered based on the same principles. 3. According to our approach punishment is partly the cause of racism and it might intensify it. Our approach is based on shaping desirable behavior by employing techniques which are based on the principle of reinforcement. The consortium consists of 6 partners from 4 countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal, Norway ) - 2 Universities (Panteion University, Greece, OSLOMET - STORBYUNIVERSITETET, Norway ), 1 public entity branch of the Greek Ministry of Education (Western Attica Administrative Office) and 3 NGO's (OXFAM ITALIA ONLUS, Italy, ACTION AID HELLAS ASTIKI MI KERDOSKOPIKI ETAIRIA, Greece, 4CHANGE COOPERATIVA CULTURAL E DE SOLIDARIEDADE SOCIAL CRL, Portugal). Partners were chosen based on their research and educational expertise in the field of behaviour analysis, inclusive education, violence prevention, specialized training and educational materials development with the aim to equip the team with the skills required to bring the project to fruitful completion. A mix of Universities, non-for-profit institutions, direct service recipient facilitates knowledge transfer making scientific applications readily available for use in the wider community. In order to attain the goal of preventing and addressing racism in primary schools we have created material for the teachers to use in the classes to train students and material for the teachers to be trained. These materials include a booklet, supplementary material, bank of activities and 52 videos. All materials are available in Greek, English, Portuguese, Italian and Norwegian in the site of the project. Moreover, our material has been approved by the Ministry of Education and the Institute of Educational Policy (the scientific agency which provides support to the Ministry of Education for curriculum, policy, and pedagogical issues) which have launched in a pilot base the program “Platform 21+: Competencies Workshops”. From the school year 2021-22 the workshops will be fully integrated organically to all the schools of the country. The educational material that was produced through the Pro-Difference project is deeply aligned with the one of the 4 pillars which is “Human Rights and Inclusion”. Following this approval the produced material is one of the training materials on the platform's repository and is accessible to all the educators all over Greece. Finally, the produced material has been approved by the Italian Ministry of Education and in January 2022 it will be uploaded on SOFIA which is the platform for the Italian teachers of the Ministry of Education. So, it will be accessible to all Italian teachers. In parallel with the development and implementation of this program, our international partnership has developed an observational study documenting correlations between the frequency of children’s exposure to negative reinforcement and punishment contingencies while doing schoolwork with their parents and the children’s frequency of emission of aggressive acts directed at other children and an extended video presentation illustrating the acquisition of a generalized discrimination of racial characteristics in laboratory pigeons.