-
Home
-
European Projects
-
Quality through Exchange: Environmental and Politi..
Quality through Exchange: Environmental and Political Education
Start date: Jan 1, 2013,
The project "Quality through Exchange: Environmental and Political Education", lasting from January 1st to December 31st 2013, brings together multipliers in political and civic education with multipliers in environmental education and nature pedagogy, to - learn from everyone's teaching experience and methods and adapt methods from one educational field to the other - discuss synergies and common themes between the two education fields, such as education for sustainable development, innovative forms of civic education e.g. with troubled young people, and the exploitation of popular subjects like nature protection by the extreme right.The seven partners, coming from six countries (Austria, Germany, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania), represent three organisations from each educational field, plus WWF Austria who essentially mixes both fields already. All of them have a distinguished focus, methods and experiences, such as - working with and /or producing media- working with socially/educationally disadvantaged young people- using youth sub-cultures as educational tool- nature interpretation using all senses- public participation processes as practical learning field- education for sustainable development The partnership therefore allows a deep experience- and method exchange. The trainig course is set up in a way that each promoter sends between 2 and 5 persons, out of which one or two then also act as the experts providing the training, while also being participants during the rest of the course.During the five-day training course in Apetlon (Austria) from 15th to 19th May 2013 (indicative date), all partners will present and transfer methods from their daily work to the other participants, and moderate a discussion on implications for both educational fields and/or the joint adaptation process to the respective other educational field. Additionally, an introduction session prepares joint definitions and goals for the training course, and an evaluation session will give opportunity for reflection, as well as discussion of planned application of lessons learnt and possible follow-up projects. Methods applied will be interactive workshop methods (e.g. sociometric methods, group works, methods focusing on group dynamics, etc) that should be explained and tried out, as well as various discussion, brainstorming, group work and reflection methods as a follow-up to each of the interactive workshop methods presented.The promoters will invite also participants from other organizations (so the numbers given for each promoter do not only refer to their own staff but also cooperation partners), in order to build liaisons and spread the methods and experiences further than just the promoters. The places were distributed with the aim of keeping a geographical balance, however they also respect the wishes and operational possibilities of the promoters, which is why small differences do occur.At the end of the course, each participant will have learned several new workshop and youth-work methods that are also adapted already to his/her working field, and will have gained additional know-how on the respective other educational field as well as an understanding for possible synergies and overlapping themes. These learning outcomes will be summarized in a training course protocol to be distributed to participants within one month after the training course and to be published online.As an additional evaluation (complementing the interactive reflection session and the formal feedback form at the end of the training course), a questionnaire will be sent out approximately 6 months after the training course, to evaluate in how far experiences and methods learnt during the course have been used in participants daily work life, and in how far the training course succeeded in establishing bonds between environmental and political education organizations (e.g. through continued contact and exchange, through joint projects, etc). The project will be accompanied by several communication tools: All promoters will inform the public about the project on their websites and/or in their newsletters and facebook pages; wherever foreseen, promoters will invite people from their network to the training course; both the training course protocol as well as the analysis of feedback forms will be made publicly accessible at the lead partners website. Some partner, e.g. Sapere Aude, have already planned a follow-up project with additional cooperation partners and testing the adapted methods with young people.