MenSI

The Mentoring for School Improvement (MenSI) project aims to mobilise 120 schools in six countries [Belgium/Flanders, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Portugal] to advance whole-school digital innovation to address both the general challenge of mainstreaming ICT at an institutional level as well as a set of more specific common challenges faced by national ministries of education, for example related to small/rural schools, social disadvantaged students, or challenges associated with personalising learning. Over 28 months project partners will: • Investigate and assess mentoring theories and practices (WP2); • Build and animate communities of practice based on 4 digitally advanced schools in each country, each mentoring four developing schools using a range of support models (WP3); • Support and train advanced schools in whole-school mentoring (WP4); • Document and analyse mentoring practices, scalability and effectiveness (WP5); • and Disseminate and sustain the networks through the Mentoring Policy Exchange awareness-raising platform and a Whole School Mentoring Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) (WP6). The foundations of the project will build mostly upon qualitative investigations of models of mentoring theory and practice and an analysis of policy related to whole school mentoring approaches mainstreaming ICT practices. Subsequently, partners will leverage their extended networks of schools for a “bottom-up diffusion of innovation through school-to-school peer learning” in regional hubs activated by the MenSI project. This knowledge on policy and practice will lead to recommendations and guidelines for mainstreaming mentoring practices which will be exploited by the Mentoring Policy Exchange and a MOOC for teachers. By the end of the project an inclusive European network of school leaders and teachers will engage in different stages of a whole school approach to embedding innovative pedagogical practice involving ICT.