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Description
The project partners will use their experience in the field of inclusion, social entrepreneurship and innovation training and education to increase primary and secondary school teachers’ classroom-based skills in inclusive training of youth (15-18 years old) in entrepreneurship and social innovation. The project team will create a high quality open and on-line educational resources for entrepreneurship training of youth which will also help with character building and empowerment of disadvantaged groups of students/pupils and enhancement of teachers’ skills in training for social entrepreneurship, based upon pupils’ personal strengths, culture and value system. The project team will cooperate with the local Pedagogical-Psychologist Counseling Center and 10 schools.
All the project outputs will be published as Open Education Resources in both Czech and English so that all primary and secondary schools can benefit from them. The partners will also design and set up an open teaching platform using open source like Google Classroom that teachers can duplicate and adapt to their classroom.
The partners believe that this project will have an impact not only on those teachers and schools directly involved, but also on communities and stakeholders linked with the project and benefitting from pupil´s participation and social innovation enterprises. Through the project, the partners will have a unique opportunity to exchange best practices which will no doubt have a lasting effect on their operations and projects as well as on the continuing cooperation in the given field.
Summary of project results
"Everyone deserves the opportunity to succeed, regardless of their background". This could serve as the motto of the project, which specifically targeted disadvantaged (including Roma) pupils on the cusp of adulthood. Despite often being perceived as "lost" cases with limited potential, these individuals possess numerous talents – that warrant identification and sensitive support. This was the core objective of the project team, comprising experts from Czechia, Norway, and Iceland, each bringing extensive experience in youth engagement. Their focus was primarily on Czech teachers entrusted with educating diverse groups of students.
The project team has devised a comprehensive teaching module brimming with innovative methods and activities designed for teachers working with pupils. A common thread among these methods and activities is their emphasis on fostering pupils’ self-development and nurturing their intrinsic motivation. Consequently, pupils (including those from disadvantaged backgrounds who may have harboured self-doubt, neglected their education or faced exclusion from social groups) learn to assess their possibilities and cultivate them.
Through gradual and sensitive engagement with the class as a whole, barriers between individual pupils are dismantled, facilitating greater openness among them. This results in improved relationships within the classroom, even in cases where conflictual situations previously existed. Consequently, these new methods cultivate an inclusive environment that enhances the potential of all pupils, irrespective of their cultural, economic, or social backgrounds.
The project team concentrated its efforts on North Moravia, recognised as one of the most economically disadvantaged regions of Czechia. Experts fostered close collaboration with several schools in the region, allowing them to directly implement and evaluate the teaching modules within their classrooms. Feedback from these schools was positive, with some even integrating the modules into their official curricula. Furthermore, the project’s outcomes are readily accessible to the public, and the beneficiary continues to actively distribute and disseminate them to other schools.
Summary of bilateral results
Through collaboration with partners from Norway and Iceland, we have exchanged valuable techniques and methodologies that we can effectively apply within our respective organisations. By jointly working on intellectual outputs during their development phase, we have created a cohesive set of modules that seamlessly build upon and complement one another. Each partner organisation has a distinct focus, enabling us to approach the topic under investigation from a comprehensive and multifaceted perspective. This broader outlook has enriched the material, providing diverse insights and enhancing its overall quality.