<< Objectives >>This project will explore and develop professional knowledges and practices enhancing inclusion, participation and democratic engagement developed post Covid-19 in the area of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). The project is designed around peer-to-peer exchange where researchers and professionals meet to exchange experiences with post Covid-19 pedagogy in ECEC centres in three participating countries: Ireland, Norway and Denmark. Practice will be documented through video material.<< Implementation >>The project will consist of four main activities, two virtual engagements over a period of time and two mobility meetings in two of the participating countries with substantial preparation work. The main activities consist of professional dialogues on inclusive, democratic ECEC practices during and post-Covid-19. These will be recorded and transcribed. Relevant practices as identified by ECEC professionals will be recorded in ECEC centres and form the basis for the professional dialogues.<< Results >>3 central results of the project are:- Exchanges and systematisations of knowledge about professional practice and knowledges developed during Covid-19 that enhance pedagogical quality and values of equality, inclusion, democratic and civic engagement- Development of educational materials addressing the above mentioned theme- The production of a white paper addressing how to politically support and develop high quality ECEC practice providing equality, inclusion and democracy

The project ’Connecting EQ to Leadership Development’ (ConnEQt) has developed an up-to-date and sustainable concept for an educational opportunity for adults, consisting of a 12 weeks long blended learning course that is unique in delivering personal (leadership) development opportunities for individuals in the purpose of raising awareness of the combination of leadership activity in relation to Emotional Intelligence, both as a competency element of the leader, and the leader's awareness of and alignment of leadership style according to emotional contexts or situations of the follower(s).Taking into account the busy time for leaders as well as the ongoing plead for sustainability, the period of learning is 12 weeks, of which only one is dedicated as a residential on-site course for the attendants. All other learning activities, including supervision, coaching, and networking, is intended to be remote, either online or offline, still in close connection to a personal coach, mentor, or supervisor. This should leave time for each learner to read. practice, digest, and reflect in the most convenient time and place - as an optimized learning environment. However, the project also aimed at exploring how a sensitive topic like Emotional Intelligence could be handled through (partly) remote and virtual learning media.The project was aiming at using a thorough literature study about the combination of leadership activities and emotional intelligence to invent, describe and pilot learning activities that can assist the holistic personal development about emotional intelligence. The additional aspect of human senses to support the full body learning can be made possible through physical, visual, olfactory, and auditive activity development. The initial time of this project has therefore been spent on theoretical literature studies, resulting in 2 publications: 1) a reference framework describing the connections between Emotional Intelligence and the skills of an emotional intelligent leader living out a relational leadership, and 2) a compilation of short theoretical articles covering the main topics included in the blended learning course. These 2 publications are meant to support interested individuals and institutions in exploring the topic, and can be used for future blended learning courses of this kind. Before piloting the concept, all involved staff, facilitators, coaches, and lecturers, went through an intense staff training in Italy in May 2018, in order both to create the concept and to practice potential activities in the aim of refining and prioritizing the learning activities. This lead to a thorough curriculum for a 12 week blended learning course, including description of methodologies, learning, practicing, and mindfulness activities, and a suggestion for setting up a similar course. The curriculum was piloted February through May 2019 with remote, online webinars before and after a 5 day on-site residential course in Spain, with 17 participants from different working environments throughout Europe. Along with this, the activities have been piloted during several national multiplier events in Spain, Italy, Austria, and Denmark.The products of the project are the mentioned Curriculum and artcles, joined by a descriptive reference framework publication for stakeholders and interest organizations. Along with this, an interactive I-book is set up as a (self-)learning and materials platform for future blended learning courses. Publications, I-book, and concept description will be accessible through the European network and through the information channels of the partner organizations.University College South Denmark (UCSYD) was the lead partner of the 23 months project, with the 3 partners alp (Austria), Euroaccion (Spain), and Kamaleonte (Italy).

"The project ""LADECI – Language Acquisition within Democratic Citizenship Education"" has developed an in-service teacher training programme that combines methodological insights on language instruction and promotion and education for democratic citizenship in order to qualify in-service teachers to foster their students’ effective language acquisition while raising their awareness towards democratic values and processes at the same time. The project is an important contribution to the qualification of in-service teachers who have to organize their daily professional life in a world prone to continuous change and further differentiation which permanently generates new and altered contents to be approached in modified ways. Teachers need to be provided with support and advice to keep flexible and open towards this complex reality in order to create learning arrangements that allow their students to recognize this reality and, even more important, to participate in it. In times of globalization, which can be mainly characterized by movement, a great deal of which is actual migration of people for diverse reasons, teachers face many new challenges when dealing with heterogeneous, multilingual and multicultural target groups. Their major aim must be to realize successful inclusion of all their students into the teaching and learning processes and into school life. This also means that obstacles impeding inclusion have to be overcome. By providing an in-service teacher training programme that fosters language promotion, the LADECI-project focuses on helping to remove one of the most fundamental such obstacle, namely the one that many students have severe disadvantages since they do not know or speak the language of academic instruction of a certain country well enough to follow the lessons offered by this very same academic instruction. They do not have equal opportunities to make achievements but have much more difficulties to make a certain school career leading to an appropriate and successful professional career later on. The project provides in-service teachers with means to reduce this disparity by offering didactic clues, guidelines and material with the help of which the linguistic performance of students can be considerably improved. Embedding learning arrangements in education for democratic citizenship at the same time can make an important impact on equity and social cohesion. The complex world we all face can sometimes be felt as too much to be taken in. Easy explanations and short-term solutions may be desired, but they are often one-sided or partial. If teachers enable their students to speak up and discuss, to negotiate and balance whatever they perceive and how they see their peers and people around in particular, and to come up with more intricate answers that will not always be complete ones, they can have a hand in the development of a reflective, self-responsible and open future generation and thus in real sustainability. The LADECI training programme – properly implemented in school’s individual in-service training concepts is an important milestone on our way there."

BackgroundTeacher educators normally don’t teach children and practicing teachers frequently forget the academic fundamentals of education. This has caused a gap between academic teacher education and the competences needed in education school practice. School adoption is a way to bridge this gap between schools and teacher education institutions by training student teachers for several weeks to adopt a school for one week. This while they are still learning themselves - using theory in practice and using practice experiences in theoretical reflection. School adoption offers win-win initiatives for both student teachers, schools and teacher education institutions. Also, school teachers and teacher educators need to revise their educational paradigms. They have to consider flexible and innovative learning approaches and methods to improve quality and relevance of the teaching profession. 'School' and 'teacher education' as systems get much more linked up through the use of school adoption. They form a strong consistency between higher education, research and professional practice in schools which will strengthen the quality of teacher education. Both teacher students and teacher educators (and teachers!) will very probably profit from this new model for cooperation with schools. The project provides strengthened performance skills to students and teacher educators and higher efficiency in teacher education and training. The presence of student teachers in schools for one week gives school teachers the opportunity to participate in professional development classes/team work outside school meanwhile. This model initiates innovation and new ways of thinking and acting in teacher education. School teachers get the possibility to develop their academic qualification and core competences through better communication between systems and through closer links between theory and practice. Teacher educators thus close the gap between their academic activities and the real needs of school development. School adoption is an efficient way to strengthen and focus on a practice oriented approach to teacher education. The school adoption project SATE is meant to be the beginning of an ongoing and integrated part of the future teacher education, and a strong partnership across countries will help to ensure the exchange of good practices. ObjectivesThe aim of the SATE project was to bridge the existing gap between schools and teacher education by the development of an effective and innovative model for internships that strengthens collaboration between practice and the academic world. School adoption has shown to be a win-win situation. Student teachers take over a school for one week and learn by doing. They get the opportunity to test in practice their academic knowledge supported by a mentor and they take care of all tasks of a teacher (teaching, administration, relationships with parents etc) during the week, which is different from traditional internships. School teachers participate in professional development classes during this week in order to strengthen their skills and competences. They learn how to act as co-educators for student teachers in close collaboration with teacher educators. Participating organisationFive higher education institutions from DK, N, D, and Ru with a strong tradition for teacher education have been full partners in the project as well as one Danish Elementary School, the latter with the aim to ensure the crucial link to practice in all project activities. Before project start, all partner institutions designated a local stakeholder school to act as a test partner during the project, which means that these elementary schools were fully or partly taken over by teacher students at least once during the project period. Main activities All partner or stakeholder schools have been taken over by student teachers from the partner institutions at least once during the project period. In relation to these school takeovers the project group has evaluated the experiences through focus group interviews and video interviews with pupils, student teachers, school teachers and teacher edcators (mentors) (IO2 + IO3). As a result of transational discussions with exchange of good knowledge within the partner institutions, the project group has elaborated a set of generic guidelines for school adoption with the aim to inspire more teacher education institutions and schools to try school adoption (IO1). Also, a report/book has been produced with articles from all partner institutions and their different ways of dealing with school adoption (IO4). Furthermore, a web site is available with all relevant information (except from the videos as pupils cannot be shown publicly) - http://www.school-adoption.com/ Results and impactFollowing products have been elaborated:1. Guidelines for school adoption2. Video clips as testimonials3. Evaluation report4. Book/report with articles from all partners

"The FUTE project is a collaboration project with partners from Denmark, UK, Finland, Belgium and France, which runs from September 2017 to August 2020. The overall aim of the project is to contribute to a modernization of the European school through the use of design processes and methods, and hereby tackle challenges such as lack of preparation time for teachers which can translate into unmotivated students, who get tired of schooling, and risk to drop out before having reached qualifying youth education.The FUTE project has produced the following concrete material1) The FUTE Needs analysis 2) The FUTE Design Process model2) The FUTE method cards3) The FUTE training material4) The FUTE didactive learning platform5) The Good Practice and Recommendations reportAfter having carried through the needs analysis, the 6C model has as planned been adapted into a process map with 5 categories; 1) Process, 2) Analyse, 3) Ideate, 4) Research and 5) Create. The model is cyclic in nature, meaning that one can go through it multiple times to find the best way to work with the design challenge at hand. It is not a linear process, which means you can shift back and forward between steps as needed. The model is founded on two axes of knowledge; 1) going from producing knowledge about what is to producing knowledge about what could be and 2) going from producing knowledge through thinking to producing knowledge through experience. Instead of app. 100 method cards in the original set of method cards, that was based on the 6C model, the new set of FUTE method cards now contains 42 method cards, all of them specifically focusing on education, teaching and school related situations. There are 18 cards that can be used to facilitate the design process and e.g. establish the team rules, the success criteria and the way to communicate. These cards are designed to be used throughout the entire process. Six methods concentrate on collaboration and the dynamics within the team; six methods are about framing a challenge and evaluating the information and ideas, and six methods focus on communication and visual tracking within the team and on presenting to people outside the team. There are twelve method cards related to understanding “what is”. These methods focus on gathering and visually analysing information and inspiration in order to create learning and insights. Last but not least, twelve method cards can be used to help creating ideas about “what could be”. These cards can be used after you have completed the research, analysed the informa¬tion and decided what you want to focus on, because then you have a base from which you can ideate and create.This Teacher Training Module is designed to help school managers and teachers use the FUTE cards and the FUTE Design Process Method within the school, in collaboration with colleagues and pupils, and concretely within the teaching situation. The Teacher Training Module contains background information on design thinking, shows the potential of design thinking in an educational setting and provides several exercises to get acquainted with the method. Design thinking can be used in different educational settings: teachers can use this method to solve challenges in their organisation (teacher design teams), while teachers can also use design thinking as a teaching method that fosters creative and active learning (pupil design teams).After having developed all the FUTE material, all partners worked together with local schools and teachers, providing training and facilitated the implementation of local pilot projects, where the FUTE material was used in local schools and in concrete teaching and / or innovation situations. There are 4 areas where it has proven to be especially useful;a) the planning and development of learning and teaching processes, b) the creation of collaborative processes to discuss complex dilemmas in the school in general, c) reaching consensus between different groups in order to find concrete solutions to concrete challenges within the school environment or d) animating or facilitating concrete teaching processes with the pupils (best suited for pupils in lower and higher secondary education, or students in higher education)All the experiences and good practices that were gathered from the testing phase have been presented in the good experiences and recommendations report, where promoting factors as well as barriers for the implementation and application of the FUTE material. The report also contains a list of the top recommendations.The FUTE material has been evaluated by project partners and external pilot stakeholders to be innovative, easy to use and ""handy"", and the FUTE dadactive learning platform, that is accessible on www.fute-project.be, presents all the material both as printable material and an online version, which can be used directly from the platform."