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Building democracy and cultural understanding thro..
Building democracy and cultural understanding through children's literature
Start date: Sep 1, 2014,
End date: Aug 31, 2016
PROJECT
FINISHED
One of the great challenges in school is to create teaching situations where children may meet other nations, languages, cultures and religions that they otherwise had not met. Our traditional teaching aids are not enough. We need to create new forums where children will be able to build relationships, to feel fellowship and responsibility, and to work together towards common goals. We would like to give our children the best of conditions to gain a positive attitude towards things that break the norms or are unfamiliar. We would like to give them the conditions to feel curiosity and solidarity to people, both in their own community and outside.
Participating countries: Sweden, Estonia, Bulgaria, Turkey
We will be working with issues related to our local environment looking back, present and ahead. The children need to feel pride and responsibility for our local community which is a basis for a sustainable future. In the process of working with the local community we believe that it is important to have the opportunity to view contrasts, to gain perspective and to become aware of what is unique for us, how it is in other places, what is similar and what is different. Literature is a carrier of linguistic and cultural traditions and therefore it suits us very well to use as a tool in our project.
The goal of these international efforts should give students:
- an interest and an increased understanding for the cultural diversity.
- a commitment and greater understanding for social, financial and organic sustainable future.
- an increased solidarity commitment.
- possibilities to work from a thematic perspective where the entrepreneurial ability may be challenged and developed.
The goal with the international activities will give teachers and school leaders:
- the possibility to exchange experiences between teachers and school leaders in other countries, which may lead to reflection about their own teaching and about school development with new ways of teaching. A teacher will gain perspective of everyday classes and tasks, meeting other teachers and moreover, seeing their own business through them.
We are planning to work with literature for children from different parts of Europe. We believe that children can learn a lot from history and culture through the various books and authors.
The stages of progression of the project and activity plan:
1) Work with children's literature and authors in the home country - past and present time.
2) Take part in and work with children's literature in other countries and their presentations of the same. To interpret, compare and understand.
3) Work together with partner schools in creating stories about the future. Using digital technology we will be able to be updated with our common project. The conditions may vary depending on age in the storytelling. Most important is that through their writing they will create common images of the future.
4) As a result of our work we will disseminate our commonly made stories and visions to stakeholders in our local community. There might be reasons to try to influent, for example: media, politicians, parents to reach a sustainable future.
During project we will communicate the frames of the project, expectations, commitments, reporting of finances, evaluations and analysis of results. Meetings are set to facilitate the different parts of the project
Participating staff during meetings are headmasters, contact persons and teachers.
Expected impacts:
• To gain a positive belief in the future
• To feel proud of our own culture
• To learn and to feel interested in other cultures
• To gain greater understanding and tolerans for cultural diversities
• To affect living situations now and for sustainable future
• To increase the entrepreneurial ways of thinking and working
• To gain new perspective and experiences towards EU and Europe
• To develope our teaching leading to good results and committed students.
• To increase our ability in teaching thematically
• To increase our ability in working with ICT
We believe that through this project we will gain wider perspective in other cultures. This will also have some effect on the solidarity towards people in Europe. Each school will gain an impact in the local community by their visions and positive believes in the future. Each school will have gained a greater understanding and tolerance for cultural diversities which will benefit citisens in the local community.