This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

JUSTIFICATION OF THE NEED OF OUR PROJECT

We based our Project on the following ideas:

• Pupils in a disadvantageous situation, if we revise their school results and adaptation, don´t compensate these disadvantages only “being” in the school. Unfortunately, although last years in several countries, the educational administration has tried to include in the educational laws strategies to make a compensation and help these pupils to gain the objectives, the reality is that the system isn´t able to be effective in this mission.

• We base our Project on the following ideas:

  • We have to search why these pupils have more difficulties to gain some educational objectives. This task is very important due to we know that the more training and school adaptation, the more likely is to get a good job and a good adaptation to the life in general.

  • The neurosciences and last researches about some inclusive methodologies allow us to conclude with a hypothesis: “if we get to implement some inclusive methodologies, these pupils could prevent the early school leaving and the school failure”, because these methodologies and strategies: 1- increase their motivation; 2- allow them to learn using their prefered way to learn (from the respect of their prefered information processing and from the approach of the multiple intelligences);

  • On the other hand, in several countries, there is enough knowledge about the last researches findings about how to include in the educational system ICT or methodologies that take into account the neurosciences ideas, but teachers have some barriers and problems to implement these methodologies into the educational processes.

  • Too much schools have a traditional system, focusing on some parts of the intelligences and developing only some competences, leaving those competences like creativity, emotional and social skills, executive functioning, etc.

  • In addition to that, in several countries too much families aren´t involved enough in the educational processes and this is other of the main disadvantage to some kind of pupils to gain the educational objectives.

• In our countries, day by day we have more heterogenerous groups of pupils with some disadvantages to gain the educational objectives. If the system don´t take into account this extreme, finally, we have too much early school leaving and high school failure, specially in those pupils with a difficult situation.

• So, we think that if we design a more diverse educational process: include different ways to show the information or educational contents, different activities, using multiple intelligences and focusing on what each pupil has as strong point and not only as weak point, we use more types of materials, design more active and different activities (focused on the pupils) and we are able to help families to be more involved in this processes, we could answer better to the different pupils needs, specially those that have specific problems and then, prevent early school leaving and school failure.

• We want to collect and reflect about these inclusive methodologies, including: the educational use of TIC, searching ways to implement them to favor these pupils learning (helping to their families in this process taking into account their specific difficulties); the implementation of the approach of multiple intelligences, specilly those less used in the educational system: kinestesic, emotional, social, creativity, executive functioning, gammification and more active learning for pupils. On the other hand, we want to explore new methos to help to teachers and families to collaborate in a more efficient way. So, we want to reflect, among other, the application of the approach “learning communities”.

• So, we need to share experiences, to analyse strong and weaks points, to know better good practices in several countries and to find how to fight, at least, some of the barriers or problems that teachers and families have to introduce these strategies, apply new methos (teachers) and work together (teachers and families).

• And we need to reflect on how to implement these strategies, to know how our teachers in our schools receive our docuemnts with ideas about the inclusion of these strategies, how they implement them with our help: the problems and the good points and to collect all the ideas in a guide of good practices.

OBJECTIVES

Objectives:

A- To reflect at a European level on:

1- The teachers barriers, needs and problems using inclusive methodologies as way to prevent early school leaving and school failure and search ways to break them and help teachers to implement successful methodologies to answer to the needs of the diversity of pupils.

2- The families involvement as a way to increase the educational processes quality and reflect on families needs, especially those families who are in a disadvantageous situation.

3-The situation of pupils in a disadvantageous situation and find new and specific solutions to help them to gain the educational objectives and the development of all the competences, focusing on what teachers and families can make in the educational process.

4- To analyze our educational systems, laws and daily practices, in all our countries, about the implementation of inclusive methodologies as a way to prevent early school leaving and school failure, to know our strong and weak points.

B- To find new strategies to prevent the early school leaving and school failure:

5- To improve our knowledge about the inclusive methodologies (as way of preventing early school leaving and school failure) and to implement some of them in several schools, to find out, in a deeper and realistic way, what are the usual problems and search, next to teachers, new strategies to prevent problems.

6- To reflect on new strategies to improve the families involvement in their children schooling, helping them and teachers to collaborate to prevent early school leaving and school failure. Explore the applicability of the approach “learning communities”.

FINAL ACTIVITY TO GAIN ALL OUR OBJECTIVES: A GOOD PRACTICE GUIDE where we are going to collect all our findings, the good practices, the elements we have to include in our schools and educational systems to guarantee that all kind of pupils can gain all kind of competences.

Contents of the guide:

1. Summary of the situation of the different educational systems in the prevention of early school leaving and school failure;

2. Statistical research about: 2.1. Pupils in a disadvantageous situation; 2.2. Parents involvement: problems, barriers and needs; 2.3. Barriers, needs and problems for teachers to implement inclusive methodologies, in all our countries.

3. Inclusive methodologies. Strategies for teachers. 3.1. Multiple intelligences conceptualization; 3.2. Emotional intelligence: activities for develop it from 3 to 16 years old; 3.3. Social skills: activities; 3.4. Kinestesic or corporal intelligence; 3.5. Creativity; 3.6. Other multiple intelligences; 3.7. Executive funcions; 3.8. The contribution of ICT and gammification.

4. Strategies to improve the families collaboration with teachers in the prevention of the early school leaving and school failure. The contribution of the “Learning communities”.

5. Implementation of these strategies in our schools and analysis of the experience. Evaluation from teachers and parents.

6. Resources to know more about these contents.

ACTIVITIES

1-Each country makes a document about educational laws related to the answer to pupils with disadvantages. Diagram about strong and weak points.

2-We share this information and write the good practices in a document that will be used in the process of creation of our final guide of good practices.

3-We make a document in each country about the families involvement and about our pupils in a disadvantageous situation.

4-We share this information and make reflections to be included in the guide.

5-We celebrate, in each country, periodic meetings with some teachers and parents associations (who voluntarily have agreed to participate) to reflect with them about the results of the questionnaires and to collect their ideas to design the training activities.

6-We celebrate periodic meetings with local -even, in some cases, regional- associations who work with groups of families or pupils with disadvantages to agree on how involve to specific groups, what activities to develop and other decisions. We are going to invite them to participate in the training activities in some cases.

7-We collect all these informations and start the design of the training activities and workshops, keeping some meetings with our target groups in order to have continuos feedback about the best structure, contents, time.. to develop these training activities. The training activities will be:

7.1. Courses for teachers about: a- how to answer to special groups of pupils in disadvantage: general strategies and specific programs per country, the content of the educational laws related to this topic, etc; b- specific approaches that we called “inclusive methodologies” to gain the objective to answer all kind of pupils needs and to adapt the way they learn: gamification and other contribution of ICT, multiple intelligences, holistic educational approaches, the special contribution of the creativity, emotional and social competences, specially, how to implement them in the classroom;

7.2. Workshops for families about their better involvement in the school. We want to improve their basic skills like communication skills and to make them feel more confortable participating in the school activities; we want to prepare to a small group of parents to be “Revitalizing parent or mother” to make the impact wider in the future;

7.3. Workshops for teachers and parents about the approach “Learning communities”

8-In each transnational meeting, we will organize several Teaching -Learning activities to have the chance to observe good practices (see these activities later, but a summary is:workshops about creativity in Portugal; visits of centres with good practices in inclusive methodologies in Spain and some workshops; the expertise in ICT in Greece; workshops between families and pupils in Bulgaria), and while we make these activities, we will write a report about these practices in order to reflect all together and to have ideas to create the final guide of good practices about the prevention of the early school leaving and school failure.

9- After the celebration of these T-L activities, we will have seminars with our target groups and in our own institutions to inform to the other colleagues about our visits, share the reports made and reflect all together about the good practices observed. Then, we make a summary of ideas to be included in our guide of good practices with their contributions.

10-While we celebrate these activities, we start to create the European inclusive schools net, with parents, professionals of associations and parents associations, collecting interests, contact data, etc. We will agree later about what platform will be the best to keep the contact and create this net, but with teachers, we are going to promote the use of e-twinning platform.

11-While we are developing these activities, we continue giving information to our target groups and our legal representatives, specially the local or regional educational authorities.

12-After the celebration of these training activities, we will organize the implementation of the approaches we have worked in. We will make this in our two schools (partners) in a deeper way, and even in some of the schools where the other partners (psychopedagogical or expert institutions) work, at least, 4 schools per country. We organize this next to the teachers and we prepare an instrument to control all the steps and some questionnaires to evaluate it.

13- When this process has finished, we make a common reflection about all our findings preventing early school leaving and create the good practice guide with these contents: Need analysis; Materials about how to implement the inclusive methodologies and Learning communities; Strategies about how to answer to specific groups; Resources (associations, laws, etc) and how to participate in the European net, among other contents;

14- The final version of the guide and other documents result of the project, will be uploaded in our webs.