Center for Educational Initiatives

PROJECT AIMS

• To create, develop and promote a new pedagogical and teaching approach, based on emotional intelligence
• To implement programs in some school programs based on social and emotional learning (Social and Emotional Learning - SEL)
• To experiment it in two curricula (“Intercultural understanding” and “The development of the religion in Europe”)
• To provide teacher and students new tools and instruments (ICT) to teach and learn emotional intelligence in the curricula

PROJECT MAIN OBJECTIVES

• To develop teaching strategies in order to support European intercultural understanding and to increase an European civic conscience;
• To improve professional development of teachers and the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom;
• To provide teachers with a wide range of perspectives, teaching ideas and materials concerning the introduction of the emotional intelligence as a new pedagogical method and as a topic matched with some experimental curricula realized with new interesting ICT tools
• To give pedagogical instruments to create a collaborative classroom environment in which children can sort out their feelings, put aside their hassles, and appreciate the joy of learning
• To give more emphasis on active e-learning techniques linked to the emotional intelligence pedagogical method
• To develop teacher networks, coaches, or mentors; and providing workshop time that allows teachers to figure out how to infuse SEL method within the context of revised academic curriculum or content demands.

Bridging Insula Europae main objectives are:

• to encourage teachers throughout Europe to adopt a new didactical approach based on Active Learning that improves their professional development and the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom, in particular by introducing a wider European dimension
• to encourage pupils involvement in the education by the adoption of a training methodology that increases the values of their efforts and award them the responsibility on what and on how they learn
• to define a way to make an effective use of the new communication technologies as teaching and learning tools, that could be economically, financially and technologically sustainable for the European Schools
• to develop the teaching strategies in order to support European culture of tolerance into curricula and to increase an European civic conscience

The framework of EUCLIDES proposal is the promotion and the enhancement of the dialogue between science and society -  a good number of scientific studies concern the quality of life of the European citizens. The objective is from the one side to get a knowledge society where democracy is guaranteed, from the other side to set up a reserve of professionals, which will be able to contribute to the knowledge-based economic development. EUCLIDES foresees a series of applications that may support policy makers to develop new educational strategies for the scientific subjects learning, such as: i)  the characterisation of a ODL platform for the implementation and evaluation of a Learning Team Centred Model for teaching sciences; ii) the research of efficient environments for building up knowledge and communication exchange; iii) the evaluation of the efficacy of the science-learning methodology through the Problem Based learning Model; iv) the setting up of on-line curricula, which are at the base of PBL model, v) the study of the acquired technical-professional competencies and of the interest degree by the students, as result of the experimentation phase.

The project wants to develop a learning community of children and parents, by involving them all together in a learning path. On this project proposal children teach to their parents how to use the ICT tools, while the adults will single out some contents based on their knowledge, to be inserted on the multimedia on-line learning application. Parents and children together will realize multimedia e-learning paths, enriching their knowledge and acquiring new strategic competences. The learning path will be organized through the use of a on-line learning game that will involve the users on the community activities.

The project has the following goals:

1.    To identify the definitions of the “national” and the “civic” as practical orientations of self-experience and social action;
2.    To identify the interdependences and tensions between the practically effective definitions of the “national” and the “civic”;
3.    To measure the “strengths” of institutions and non-institutionalized groups in defining the “national” and the “civic,” and correlating them;
4.    To map the possible points of contact between “citizenry” and “nation,” i.e., the possible ways out of the separation of discourses and hence, out of the contradiction between the idea of individual autonomy and the idea of sharedness