BE-IN: Best Innovative Practices for an Inclusive and Emotional Education to face early school leaving in Europe

<< Background >>Social inequalities developing in the EU school environment is a central issue for our welfare system, present and future.Early school leaving is most often the result of a combination of personal, social, economic, educational and family-related factors, strongly intertwined and leading to cumulative disadvantage. In many cases early school leaving is the result of a process of progressive disengagement from education, linked to underachievement, whose roots may lie in early years. The average of Early school leaving is growing, with the risk of increase the number drop out and of more vulnerability and exclusion of disadvantages students and children. The schools play a key role to prevent and face the effects of early school leaving and the consequences for the youth future. Teachers need to manage the less of cognitive skills and socio emotional competences and the multicultural dimension of the school environment. The BE-IN project played a key role to renew the teaching and learning approaches for secondary school teachers to work in cross-disciplinary areas and to identify the better learning approaches to address personal formative needs of students, tackling educational disadvantage and preventing drop-out. << Objectives >>The complexity and multi-faceted dimension of early leaving is widely acknowledged and requires an equally multi- dimensional approach to adequately address its diverse causes. The BE-IN project aimed to increase the capacity of the EU education system to face early school leaving by innovative and inclusive educational program and curriculum where learner is at the center of the teaching and learning experiences and teaching is addressed to the personal formative needs. The outputs achieved by the project focused on: - creation of an innovative EU training program and pedagogical resources for teacher to promote wellbeing and tackle in effective way early school leaving;- production of digital pedagogical resources and tools for inclusive and socioemotional education to support vulnerable students with cumulative disadvantage;- enrichment of the competences and talents of each students valuing cognitive and emotional skills to prevent exclusion and failure at school;- development of an EU community of practiones( teachers, educators, and experts from the field of the SCO) to exchange inclusive good practices to tackle early school leaving, to elaborate personal learning program for students in vulnerable situation<< Implementation >>R1: With the coordination of the Sudwin partner the international report on the state of the art of innovative and inclusive pedagogical methodologies and practices has been realized. The research activities included for each partner country a:desk research on European system, policy, connected to early school leaving on diversity of learning style of students, of the multiple intelligences and on the motivation and recognition of non-formal competences; a focus group and a online survey with teachers, educators and students to exchange practices, formative needs, and to collect feedback on the well-being at school, positive and negative aspect of Dad, needs of vulnerable students; Interviews with selected stakeholders and a shadowing activity, to observe people in their daily context; A international report and Road Map has been realized to summary the evidences of the qualitative and quantitative research activities to develop the curriculum;R2: With the coordination of Oxfam Italia Intercultural Inclusive and emotional Curriculum e induction training program and testing with teachers has been developed and tested. At the first step a common framework to apply at the educational subject matters the inclusive approach has been designed. Than an intensive training of partner trainers to share methodologies and guidelines to realize pedagogical units in an inclusive prospective has been done; than Oxfam developed the Curriculum contents on inclusive and emotional dimension, designed the framework of tools for the assessment of the course and the related guidelines. Oxfam worked very closed with the Citizenship in power partner for the digitalization of all material and for the creation of the inclusive Platform for the e-learning course. In each partner country a testing activity of the training program has been done involving successfully teachers. R3: With the coordination of Forum for freedom partner, inclusive and emotional curriculum workshop with classrooms has been tested and implemented. Each partner engaged 3 hub classrooms to test the curriculum program and the inclusive pedagogical material and adopted monitoring tools to investigate the student’s socio emotional skills and problem solving ability. Evidences and suggestions from the students and the teachers to improve the curriculum program have been taken in consideration. R4: With the coordination of Citizenship in power partner, the digital European inclusive and emotional platform has been developed and disseminated. From a dedicated section of the platform teachers are provided the training program to acquire the competences and skills to innovate the curriculum with the approach of inclusive and socio emotional education. The platform provided also, by different section, all tools and resources developed by the project: theorical documents and materials, digital resources, pedagogical kits for teachers and educators to enrich the teaching methods to tailored formative needs of vulnerable students. R5: With the coordination of Antropolis international publication has been realized and disseminated. The publication collects all the main results of the research activities, the results of the testing teachers e- learning course and the testing with the hub schools and the modeling of innovative learning methodology designed by the Be-In project. During the project life-cycle cross-activities have been led by the partners. OII coordinated the project from the management, timing and financial aspects designing a Management Plan, a Quality Assurance, Monitoring and Evaluation Plan and a Communication and Dissemination plan<< Results >>In order to build an education system more equitable and inclusive the BE-IN project developed and tested the innovative Inclusive and Emotional e-learning program for secondary schools with pedagogical practices and tools specifically tailored on students’ personal learning processes and skills. Thanks to the results achieved with the project, the Consortium developed a specific training course and tools to overcome some barriers (cognitive, social, linguistic and emotional) in learning environment, to promote a more inclusive space for students at school and reduce early school leaving with an innovative approach. In specific, the concrete output realized are: - R1: 5 National and 1 International Report realized with the action and research approach. The report focused on: state of the art on early school leaving in the EU secondary schools, the effects of Covid19 pandemic and lockdown on wellbeing of students and their motivation to be engaged at the school life, the main formative needs of teachers and students to improve the teaching and learning processes and methods, recommendation to design an inclusive learning course for teachers; 95 teachers and 120 students involved in the qualitative research, 22 key experts and relevant stakeholders involved; 5 country research report and 1 international report; 1 road maps with the main results of the research activities at EU level; - R2: Inclusive and emotional e-training program created, tested and disseminated in 5 Eu country. The e learning course, based on the inclusive and socio emotional paradigm, provided to teachers and educators theorical framework, digital resources and tools to put in practices into the classroom to innovate the teaching methods to tackle early school leaving and promote wellbeing. The training course provided also multilevel units created by each partner and some teachers to integrate the school curriculum and support better vulnerable students; 281 teachers enrolled at the training and 149 teachers trained (at 31st december 2023); 10 pedagogical materials- multilevel units created;-R3: Coaching activities at school to test the inclusive and emotional training program and tools designed in the R2 was conducted in 5 countries on groups of 325 students and 27 teachers from 13 schools involved. The coaching activities investigated the effects and impacts of educational intervention based on socio-emotional and collaborative learning (applied in the classrooms). The research evaluated the impact on students´ perceptions, such as feelings of safety and inclusion in the classroom, motivation, cooperation and the relationship with the teacher. Also, the research measured teachers' experiences of the intervention: -R4: Digital European inclusive and emotional platform has been designed and disseminated. The platform has been a tool that gathered all the project outputs and documents, digital pedagogical tools and materials, stakeholder’s contribution and hosted the e-learning course for teachers developed in the R2; - R5: International publication that collected all the efforts and results developed during the life of the project has been designed and disseminated. The publication gathered: an introduction on the weaknesses of the EU educational system, overview of the formative needs of teachers and students with a focus on vulnerable students, the theorical framework of the inclusive and socioemotional education adopted by the project to develop the e- learning course, the main information and results of the testing activities with teachers and students and recommendations for sustainability of the project. The publication has been translated in 5 language.