Our Erasmus + project provided an opportunity to discuss our organisations, which are very specific given our particularities, our innovative teaching practices, our reflections and analyses of our practices around 3 axes: - How can we help pupils suffering from psychopathology and anxiety to better grasp abstraction and a more conceptual way of thinking? - How can we help these young people to speak up and assert their opinions out loud? - How can physical engagement and body language be better integrated into teaching and learning? The framework for this reflection has been chosen to integrate all the dimensions of communication and involve all colleagues, whatever their subject. The diversity of cultures, medical and educational organisations, resources and national programmes is a source of intense reflection on our own professional practices. All these discoveries and, above all, these exchanges were an opportunity to come up with innovative teaching methods or simply to question our profession and our approaches, but also to work as hard as possible to help our pupils achieve better academic results, or a calmer school climate within an inclusive framework.
The four partner structures take in special-needs pupils aged between 16 and 22. These pupils, who suffer from psychopathological disorders, are educated either in hospital-based schools, as in France, Austria and Finland, or in an immersion programme in Italy. The problems faced by our young people are numerous: somatic, psychiatric, major social or academic anxieties. As a result, many of them find their progress at school hindered, or even drop out. We wanted to focus on their difficulties at school and how, through our specific and varied teaching approaches, we could find ways and strategies to help our pupils progress. Through this exchange of practices, we have initiated a process of reflection within the teams of professionals in our establishments around the issue: "A better understanding of the mechanisms of communication (body, conceptualisation, speech) to contribute to more inclusive schooling for hospitalised pupils".