Read4Succeed is a transnational cooperation project developed by a consortium of 10 partners, including universities, schools, non-profit associations and Reading Education Assistance Dogs (R.E.A.D.) teams from six European countries (Portugal, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Spain). The objective of the project is to meet the objectives set by the European Union and the partner countries, as it aims to make schools more inclusive, ie to develop strategies in order to properly host in their communities’ children with multicultural and multilingual differences. In the last decades, European societies have become increasingly diverse, mainly due to intra-European mobility and immigration flows from third countries, particularly from African countries. By 2015, about 10% of the EU population were migrants, 5% of whom were under 15 years of age. Sudden migratory flows can have a negative impact on education systems, jeopardizing the integration process of migrant and refugee children and creating tensions between host communities. On the other hand, teachers face new challenges and seek appropriate strategies and responses to these new realities. Moreover, children have to face negative prejudices related to their migratory condition, low reading skills in the language of the host country, psychological barriers, or insufficient family and community support, which translate into higher rates of failure and early school leaving. However, children from deprived socio-economic backgrounds may have even lower school outcomes than those coming from a migratory context. Education plays a very important role in society because of its benefits. It contributes not only to how citizens understand the society in which they live, but also to empower children with skills that will help them to take advantage of opportunities to break cycles of chronic poverty. The integration of these children into the education system thus plays an important role for social inclusion in the host community, not only for themselves but also for their families. Among the main barriers that determines this integration is the lack of knowledge of the host country language, since it significantly limits communication. Some children undergo negative experiences regarding their difficulties and may have developed fears, expectations of failure, and negative feelings about the tasks they are seeking. Including a therapy dog when children read aloud promotes a more enjoyable reading environment, which will have positive impacts on self-confidence and self-esteem, an increase in reading fluency, and an increase in motivation to learn. Read4Succeed intends to evaluate the use of Animal Assisted Education, on the enhancement of reading skills acquisition of migrant, refugee and from deprived neighbourhood children between the ages of 7 and 10, enrolled in primary schools, with reading difficulties identified by their teachers. They will benefit from Dog Assisted Reading sessions, led by R.E.A.D. teams. Using a specially trained dog, the R.E.A.D. promotes an innovative concept in a school environment: children can be the dog's "teachers" and teach them how to overcome their difficulties. Each child reads individually to "someone" who does not judge or criticize them. On the contrary, the dog is always happy to see the child, prepared to listen to her read at her own pace and is less intimidating than an adult. At the end of a year of intervention, the reading skills of these children will be assessed through an instrument created by the consortium to be applied in all the countries involved. This will allow a comparison of the results that will serve as the basis for the writing of a scientific article one intellectual output of the project. In addition, a short story book and an interactive game will be available at the end of the project so that children can continue to improve their skills outside of school. The project is expected to show that holistic approaches, that combine formal and non-formal education, can be useful when solutions need to be found, for complex situations such as those of the children from the target groups. These solutions will be discussed on the eHandbook about Animal Assisted Education, another intellectual output on this project.
The main objectives of Read4Succeed are: • To establish synergies and complementarities between formal and non-formal education • To show the potential of animal assisted therapies to help children with difficulties acquire reading skills in the language of the host country • To contribute to the reduction of early school leaving by accelerating the process of acquiring reading skills • To produce digital content teaching materials and instruments • To create networks of schools that welcome children from these target groups, within which the sharing of experiences and good practices will be possible • To contribute to the development of a tools designed to assess the acquisition of reading skills in particular in children who are not native speakers of the language of schooling, which can be applied in all the partner countries to allow the comparison of results Sharing good practices and new approaches to help migrant and refugee children to overcome lack of knowledge of the language of the host society, which represents one of the main barriers to their integration, and children from disadvantaged neighborhoods to overcome reading difficulties we expect to contribute to their successful integtration in the school.
European societies are increasingly diversified as a result of migratory flows that can have a negative effect on education systems, putting at risk the process of integration of migrant and refugee children and creating tensions within the host communities. Teachers face new challenges arising from the diversity of cultural, socio-economic and linguistic contexts and need new approaches to address them. The R.E.A.D. program will be used to improve the reading skills of the target groups and its effectiveness will be assessed. The project objectives are related to the national goals of partner countries to develop an even more inclusive education system. The consortium aims at supporting processes that strengthen the capacity of the education systems to reach out to all learners and to help schools to become more inclusive, which means to become better at educating all children in their communities. By helping children with poor reading skills, Read4Succeed will also contribute to the fulfillment of European policies, namely the goals set out in the Strategic Framework "Education and Training for 2020" (ET 2020): “the dropout rate for education and training must be less than 10%”.