The European Pillar of Social Rights has defined education as the first priority for equal opportunities and labour market access. The phrasing of this priority: "Everyone has the right to quality and inclusive education, training and life-long learning to maintain and acquire skills that enable them to participate fully in society and manage successful transitions to the labour market" (Principle 1) indicates that the European Union is committed to a holistic vision of education that puts skills, competences and knowledge at the centre. As such the main emphasis of all education policy effort in the EU has been inclusion. The Covid-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented threat to this ambition illuminating existing inequalities and creating new vulnerabilities as communities struggle to cope with sudden, unprecedented changes to economic and social life. UNICEF reports that an estimated 1.5 billion children across 190 countries were confined to learning in their homes during Covid-19 school closures (KardefeltWinther et al, 2020). UNESCO have identified wide-ranging, adverse educational, social, health and economic consequences for children, parents and teachers including ‘confusion and stress for teachers’, and the unpreparedness of parents for distance and home schooling (UNESCO, 2020, para. 2). The Co-MAP project responds to the urgent need to understand these impacts in relation to the most vulnerable young people, including refugees, and to ensure that school leaders, teachers and parents are equipped to respond to their recovery needs. Co-MAP will work with a social justice theory of education (Tikly 2011) that understands education practice as constituted through the complex interplay of policy, the school environment and family and wider community. As such Co-MAP will bring these three key constituencies into dialogue. Co-MAP will work with school leaders in 25 schools (5 in each country) to build a state of the art comparative case study of national and local policies for schooling during the pandemic. This will include a study of how definitions of vulnerability and categories of ‘at risk of exclusion’ have shifted as a result of the social and economic precarity created by the pandemic and how schools have attempted to adapt pedagogies and practices to meet the needs of the ‘newly vulnerable’. Examples of inspiring practices will be collected through this process and shared via the online learning platform developed through the project. Co-MAP will then make use of participatory, arts based methods bringing into dialogue young people (100), teachers (50) and parents (50) from 10 schools in five participating countries (Greece, Germany, The Netherlands, Hungary and the UK). These inter-generational, cross sector groups will work together to undertake collaborative, community mappings of lived experiences of learning through the pandemic. Mapping will focus on identifying barriers and enablers and consider the roles and functions of people, resources, materials, spaces and places as well as opportunities for young people’s agency and self-mediation of learning. This will be followed by a series of artist led ‘Maker Space’ encounters that will teach young people new creative skills in comic-making and animation and “provide the freedom to play, experiment, tinker and exchange ideas” (Rowsell, 2020:14 drawing on Marsh). As an outcome of these encounters young people will narrate the outcomes of community mapping through creation of a range of artefacts that will be shared with the wider community and general public (as the third key constituent in education practice) through well-established street papers The Big Issue in the UK, Shedia in Greece and Fedél Nélkül in Hungary who are Associate Partners in Co-MAP. This will open up and shape public discussions about the experiences of schooling for young people at risk of exclusion during the Covid-19 crisis and inform a series of policy briefings in all five project languages for school leaders and policy makers to inform future strategic decision making about policy and resource allocation. A short face to face learning programme for teachers and an online learning platform will provide continuing professional development. A collaborative ‘digital conversation’ space designed for ongoing conversations between teachers, young people, parents and artists and will facilitate up-scaling of the project outcomes and an Advocacy Toolkit will secure the sustainability of the project with all beneficiary groups beyond the period of funding. Whilst primarily focussed on young people’s learning Co-MAP will secure a legacy for the creative community by enabling participant artists and publishers with the opportunity to experience collaborative work in school settings with teachers, leaders and young people and build entrepreneurial models of practice that will enable them to grow new markets for their work in the education sector
To explore school leadership (SL) experiences during COVID19 through a comparative case study of local/national policies. By exploring shifting definitions of vulnerability resulting from socio-economic precarity created by COVID19 and how schools adapted for the ‘newly vulnerable’, we wanted to provide practice examples towards creative SL. Highlighting the vital roles of schools to respond to educational disruption toward understanding the support needed for SL. CoMap wanted to understand lived experiences of young people's (YP), teachers'/parents' learning during COVID19 and implications for pedagogy/policy through arts-based methods (community mapping) to ensure YP could share experiences in inter-generational groups in accessible, fun, supportive ways, identifying barriers/enablers to learning and the roles/functions of people/resources and opportunities for YP’s agency/self-mediation of learning. Through artist-led ‘Maker Spaces’ (providing work/.entreprenurial opportunities for artists), YP would learn new art skills. sharing through public events/digital platform. We wanted teachers' continuing professional development to up-scale project outcomes/sustainability beyond funding via the digital platform/Advocacy Toolkit.
CoMap responded to the Covid19 pandemic which disrupted learning and young people's access to inclusive education, in particular students who were already marginalised in education systems across Europe. UNICEF estimated that 1.5 billion children across 190 countries were confined to learning at home during school closures (KardefeltWinther et al, 2020) and identified wide-ranging, adverse educational, social, health and economic consequences for children, parents, teachers including ‘confusion and stress for teachers’, and the unpreparedness for distance and home schooling (UNESCO, 2020). CoMAP responded to the need to understand these impacts in relation to the most vulnerable young people and to ensure that school leaders, teachers and parents were better equipped to respond to their recovery needs. It did this through developing a flexible arts based methodology for working with trauma/disruption and created tools for teachers, schools and other stakeholders to use in response to disruption which are available for longterm educational use through the project's digital platform. CoMap responded to ongoing traumas of disruption/displacement throughout and post pandemic, including further disruptive events such as war in Ukraine.