Exploring the Past in the Present: Learning Civics through History

"<< Background >>The project was developed by a consortium of four organisations: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, European Solidarity Centre, CEDIN, and Sofia Platform. All four organisations are deeply engaged in teaching about the communist past, promoting innovative ways of teaching, and training teachers in the fields of history and/or civics. As the consortium have experience in developing teaching materials focused either on the constructivist approach to pedagogy, public history, or civic values, we gradually came to the conclusion that although there are plenty of materials and high quality platforms that work with or promote the competencies we regard so highly, there is no platform that is fully focused on the teacher training itself. Teachers are usually offered either the already developed materials, or the methodology, but there are no courses that connect the two to both help teachers develop these competencies and provide them with exemplary material to use in their own work. The need for such courses has become even more important with the pandemic crisis, which greatly increased demand for distance learning and online education tools. This project intended to address all of these challenges. << Objectives >>The project was conceived as a platform for teacher training in the relevant grant category (KA220). The project partners were Sofia Platform Foundation, CEDIN and European Solidarity Centre. The output of the project was to be the launch of a new tested online platform (website) for further education of teachers and educators, especially in their competence to update history teaching through the use of civic values, or to add relevance to the outcomes of civic education through history teaching. << Implementation >>Activities were connected to project management and coordination and creating of the project results (Activities - Phase 1 and Modules - Phase 2) and one multiplier event (ID1)<< Results >>The concrete outputs were to be the set of 16 exercises grouped into 4 ""axes"", with accompanying multiplier events and a Teacher-training Programme: Learning Through Teaching."