"Backround and objectives:Pupils with special needs are often extremely vulnerable when trying to build realistic picture of themselves and the world around them. Media affects them in multisensory ways. Without proper guidance, strong resilience and much needed multiliteracy skills it can lead to many types of challenges and put these pupils in a risk of marginalization and seclusion. With the help of project RISE we wanted to empower hospitalized pupils and help them become true subjects of their own lives and future. We wanted to make sure that our SEN pupils have the means and skills to exploit all the opportunities they will possibly have and to participate fully, but sustainably in future society.With this project we hoped to add courage of our pupils to communicate with others in similar circumstances with foreign languages. We provided various platforms to raise intercultural awareness and build bridges between European nations. During this project our pupils were able to get much needed peer support and make new friends. The main goal of this project for the pupils was to gain more resilience to lead a happier and fuller future life. Participants:Tierna School's Hospital School Unit in Oulu, Finland is a special school that provides education for the compulsory education aged children who are treated in Oulu University Hospital for both somatic and/or psychiatric causes. Pupils come from a large geographical area in Northern Finland.ZSO Nr 9 in Gdansk, Poland is a school at psychiatric hospital and provides education, therapy and other activities for children and youth suffering different mental diseases.Linn Dara School in Dublin, Ireland is a school based in an Inpatient unit of child and adolescent mental health unit. They also work in the connecting day hospital programme. They are a designated special school in the category of Severe Emotional Behavioural Disturbance. Their students present with various mental health difficulties.Children Hospital School of Istituto Comprensivo ""Giacomo Ferrari"" in Parma, Italy is made of a primary and a junior secondary school for pupils who are unable to attend school because of chronic, acute or other medical health needs. Activities and methods:Pupils worked with themes of multiliteracy and resilience in various practices. They became familiar with the goals of United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and learned media criticism, the correct use of social media and netiquette. They explored experiential learning methods by processing stories in multiliteracy ways, and producing games, stories and art for their peers.Staff training events were organized as workshops for learning new methods and approaches regarding multiliteracy and resilience skills. In order to be able to use new learning methods with pupils the teachers went through the same experiential learning process themselves. Results and impact:All staff from each partner school had possibilities to build their professional skills through this project. Not every staff member felt they were fluent with English language, ICT skills or even mastering all the multiliteracy skills needed themselves. During the project we learned different kinds of methods and ways to tackle various obstacles which are common to our SEN pupils. Emphasis being on the resilience strengthening working methods was expected to promote the prevention of social exclusion.We exchanged ideas and opinions and were able to compare our school systems, and based on the good practices we shared, we can continue developing our schools.The work well-being was seen rising and we were able to further develop our team teaching and planning skills through this project. During the visits we added our knowledge of partner countries and their cultures. Longer term benefits:Pupils in hospital schools will feel less isolated through finding out that there are pupils with similar experiences and challenges also in other countries. Sharing potential solutions to their problems, when exchanging experiences with each other, has had and will have positive effects on their self-esteem and help strengthen their resilience.Exchanging ideas and experiences with European colleagues and finding out the differences as well as the similarities in different countries' schooling systems has broadened staff's perspective and helped develop our teaching skills. The aim was to create better possibilities for disadvantaged children and youth to gain greater sense of belonging into European cultural heritage and its multicultural community. Having possibilities to visit and work with each other in their schools and by this improve both teachers' and students' confidence about working together across languages and cultures has given us tools and methods for future teaching and development work. This also gives the staff better possibilities in developing a greater sense of belonging into European teaching community."

ContextThe schools involved in the project were building on at least five years of input and previous experience through other collaborative EU projects and training by specialists and experts. They had been involved in previous Comenius projects and the school leading and coordinating from London, had also participated in the Connecting Classrooms programme, a scheme developed through Global Learning - a partnership between the British Council and the U.K Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and, as such had experience of supporting and working with schools in Africa. The schools in this Erasmus scheme were an exemplary range of primary, secondary, and special educational needs facilities and we found that the differences in both the culture and educational abilities of the different schools, provided an immensely important strength to the project's validity. Each partner had worked with at least one of the schools involved and, as we knew of each other, it meant that we were much clearer from the outset as to what we were aiming to achieve and the hurdles that might face us.What nobody could have foreseen was the global Covid pandemic which severely delayed our timetable and the impact this had on people being able to travel and physically attend meetings and the ability to deliver projects in school. All participant schools turned to on-line virtual teaching and for a while our Erasmus project had to take a back burner. We were able to get an extension of 6 months to complete the project and once travel reopened, we worked very hard to complete all the physical mobilities and where staff were unable to travel, we delivered CPD virtually. ObjectivesDuring the project timeline, we spent a lot of time looking at each other’s curriculum models, sharing best practice and exchanging ideas. As the project developed, we identified that a project based learning approach worked very well across all the different ability groups, especially increasing motivation and participation in learning for those with Special Needs.One consequence of the project was that we were able to implement, evidence and evaluate a collaborative project that all schools participated in which enabled pupils from different cultures and backgrounds to watch and learn from each other. This was done through physical on and off site training events and the use of digital resources - which we had trialled throughout the project. Training and evaluation of workshops were led by project coordinators supported by external inputs with specialist expertise in relevant theoretical fields. We included a wide audience of key stakeholders, including school Governors, neighbouring schools and sharing with other teachers involved in other Erasmus projects.The rationale behind our training was based on the theories of positive psychology (recognising strengths and building resilience) and intrinsic motivation (requiring autonomous, related and competence) so were able to deliver engaging learning (flow) that hosted and excelled engagement in conceptualizing academic learning and 21st century skills to individuals’ futures. As the pandemic continued, all the schools found that a focus on wellbeing and social and emotional development became a key focus and we looked to build on learning and development in this area to support pupils' return to school.MethodologyAs the project unfolded, we made a big effort in ensuring there was always transparency in aim, understanding and commitment from the start and across all mediums. Transnational meetings were used as an opportunity to take part in high quality professional collaboration; sharing and planning further the project’s digital resources and action plans for next steps.We used the coordinator meetings for the schools to gather and feedback data from any baseline and teacher assessment tools, curriculum approach and how classroom applicable they were. We had coaching sessions as a form of ‘train the coordinator’ including looking at the use of online training tools. The coordinators learnt together and shared expertise thus professionally developing their role as disseminators to their own staff, encouraging the embedding of best practice in their own schools. The teacher training mobility sessions were organised in such a way that consolidated and shared good practice across staff teams both in our own institutions and across the partner schools.Results and ImpactAs the project developed, it became clear that social and emotional learning with a focus on wellbeing was vital in helping staff and pupils deal with the challenges being faced by the pandemic, and that people with strong social-emotional skills were better able to cope with the situation. We were aiming at the outset to facilitate pupil-led (and therefore autonomous and related) meaningful challenges that would allow them to apply their strengths, deal with setbacks and see real success applying creative, innovative skills in order to problem solve.From the perspective of the students, after three years of working with particular groups with focus on developing emotional intelligence, social skills and elements of PBL we witnessed differences in behaviour, relationships and motivation between the groups staff worked with at the same level three years ago. Pupils were beginning to develop increasing independence and motivation, developing better cooperation and understanding of each other, and that growing engagement, especially in projects, was having an impact on attendance, behaviour and attitude to learning. Through the teacher CPD sessions, we started to develop a transnational key language around wellbeing, PBL and SEL and this was used across the participant schools.All of the partner schools shared positive results with each other, e.g. The Polish school showed us a film about a healthy food project they had involved pupils in and After School club activities focussed on wellbeing which they delivered to families via zoom. The American Academy Junior school in Cyprus talked with students about their feelings having lost a year and missing out on graduation/end of year closure activities and how, through digital media, they were able to express and share their thoughts in the form of a film made by the pupils themselves. The students at Red Balloon Educational Centre also took the opportunity to make a film about their educational establishment, which using ideas developed through Circle Time (based on social and emotional learning) they were able to ‘front up’, speaking in front of the camera showing increased self confidence and belief. Shaftesbury High School changed its curriculum offer and embedded wellbeing and project based learning into the heart of the school, using SEL at the core with an ethos of Positivity, Wellbeing and EmpowermentThe sharing of ideas around staff wellbeing had an impact in the schools too, leading to a better work-life balance between work and private time, improved relationships between members of the staff helped foster mutual support in the staff meetings and across curriculum planning and sharing resources.

Background: Emotional and social skills play an important role in building one's self-awareness, sef-esteem and identity. Pupils with special needs tend to have challenges particularly in these areas, as well as in the area of reading and writing skills, which can increase their risk to drift to social exclusion. Hereby, this project would work preventively when it comes to the risk of marginalization of the pupils with special needs.Project objectives:To promote reading skills and more importantly the habit of reading as it seems to be disappearing amongst children and youth. To get to know other countries’ national stories (folk stories, national epics) and find similarities in them. To recognize and name emotions, first by finding the feelings in the stories and then gradually (depending on the students’ abilities) in their own lives.To enable students to practise and value collective working both in their own schools and wider communities and through international partnership and by this promote the sense of equality.To increase both the students’ and the staffs’ language and ICT skills and the use of technology and various teaching approaches.Participants: Kajaanintullin koulu - Sairaalakoulun yksikkö (Oulu Hospital School) is a special education school that provides education for the compulsory education aged children who are treated in the Oulu University Hospital for both somatic and/or psychiatric causes. Pupils come from a large geographical area in Northern Finland. ZKPiG No 32 in Gdansk is a school at mental hospital and provides education, therapy and other activities for children, teenagers and young adults suffering from different mental diseases. Hayriye-Kemal KUSUN Özel Eğitim Uygulama Okulu ve İş Uygulama Okulu is a school for mentally handicapped children. School focuses on trying to make the pupils self sufficient and teach them simple academic abilities. Scoala Gimnaziala Speciala nr. 10, Bucuresti is a special education school for mentally disordered (some of them autistic and L-Down) children. School collaborates with regular schools through specialists that offer support for integrated SEN students.In our partnership we want our pupils to be able to communicate with other pupils and realize their own feelings as a result of this project. We will compare teaching methods and improve our ways by working together to exchange experience, learn and create a new methodology and build new tools to work more effectively with our pupils. Activities and methods:Pupils will collaborate in each school to work with the stories – each partner school will choose a story from their national literature and translate it into English. Pupils will work with the stories using different methods and approaches: e.g. making theatre of one story, illustrating another and so on according to their abilities and school possibilities. The working process is documented and shared with partner schools via e-mail and website. Along the working process pupils will be working with the themes of emotions and equality. All work will be adapted to the pupils' age and abilities. Experiential approach will be used throughout the activities. Staff training events will be organized for learning new methods and approaches, this is done by working with the pupils.Results and impact:At the end of the project the documentation of the working process will be collected to make a book of all the stories and a DVD showcasing the project work, as well as the guidebook of the methods used in the project.Pupils are expected to increase positive attitudes towards learning in general and especially towards reading, as well as to learn recognising and naming of the emotions, this hoping to benefit the emotional resilience.Longer term benefits:Exchanging ideas and experiences with European colleagues and finding out the differences as well as the similarities in different countries' schooling systems will broaden our perspective and help develop our teaching skills. The aim is to create better possibilities for disadvantaged children and youth to gain greater sense of belonging into European cultural heritage and its multicultural community.Pupils in hospital and special schools will feel less isolated through finding out that there are pupils with similar problems also in other countries. They can also share potential solutions to their problems when exchanging experiences with each other and this will have positive effects on their self-esteem. There is no better way to exchange ideas and experiences on teaching than actually meeting colleagues face to face. Thus it is of great importance to have possibilities to visit and work with each other in their schools and by this improve teachers' confidence about working together across languages and cultures. This also gives the teachers better possibilities in developing a greater sense of belonging into European teachers community.

The project continued the idea of inclusive education development in the system of general education of European countries. The conducted scientific research revealed that all the European countries sought to establish inclusive education systems and to ensure equal opportunities for each learner to experience learning success. In some countries there were schools applying systems of inclusive education; however, efforts towards the universal change in educational systems faced a complicated inertia of traditional educational systems. The Project team had set a goal to create a Transformative Educational Methodology based on the Universal Design for Learning, inclusive values, and child’s wellbeing. Having introduced the methodology, teachers would master and apply the didactics that facilitates the overcoming of learning obstacles for each learner, the children’s motivation to learn would grow in the environment of successful education, and the teachers’ attitude towards the diversity of learners would also change. The Project was implemented by teams from four European countries. Each country had a different experience and relevant issues in inclusive education. Finland had achieved high educational results but sought to further reduce the practice of special education. Austria had introduced universal inclusive education into its system but was facing inclusion issues for immigrants and refugees. Lithuania had been educating more than 80% of SEN children in general education schools but education differentiation remained one of the areas to be improved the most. Poland had been applying its specific system of inclusive education but aimed at increasing its efficiency and universal application in education. The Project team consisted of university researchers and general education school teachers from four European countries: University of Lapland and Aleksanteri Kena School (Finland), University of Vienna and Stadtschulrat fur Wien School (Austria), Pedagogical University of Cracow and Szkola Podstawowa z Oddzialami Integracyjnymi No. 12 (Poland), and Vytautas Magnus University and Balsiai Pro-gymnasium (Lithuania). The Project team (researchers and teachers) designed a Transformative Educational Methodology that promotes development of inclusive education. The school communities participating in the Project activities introduced the methodology in their schools. The university researchers, conducting the scientific research, analysed the efficiency of the methodology and continuously improved it on the grounds of the research results. Webinars held during the whole period of Project implementation by the specialists of the Universal Design for Learning from CAST organisation helped to achieve the efficiency of the methodology under development. Participating in seminars, the school communities and researchers from the universities reflected on the success in the implementation of the Universal Design for Learning every month. The sustainability of the methodology under development was ensured through the participation of experts, who are globally acknowledged researchers, in the international researcher colloquiums, which focused on analysing the research data and improving the Transformative Educational Methodology.