Schools for active citizenship – European inspirations

Type of proposal: applied project

Session type: single lecture

Schools for active citizenship – European inspirations

Eszter Salamon, Parents International – director@parentsinternational.org

Decreasing participation, especially of younger generations as active citizens in community, elections and civic life is a worldwide phenomenon. Participatory practices in schools, engaging parents, children, teachers and others are an effective for school stakeholders to experience active citizenship in a safe environment, and also the consequences of opting out. Both parental engagement and child participation also have a direct positive effect on learning outcomes of the children, but also support the lifelong learning of parents and teachers. In the framework of some successful European transnational projects the necessary training frameworks for teachers, parents, children and other stakeholders were developed and piloted, and in some cases upscaled. Some of our previous or ongoing projects have focused on inclusion of those parents and their children that are traditionally more difficult to engage. In this lecture a short teaser of the following projects will be delivered: ELICIT+, FamilyEduNet, ParentHelp, Open School Doors, ELPIDA. In the European context some of the specific target groups were migrants, Roma, parents of disabled children, parents of low and very high socio-economic status. The project experiences show that similar methodologies work well for different target groups. A theoretical model based on Paolo Freire’s model further developed by Janet Goodall EdD is used to show the similarities and set a framework.

Janet Goodall (2017): Learning-centred parental engagement: Freire reimagined, Educational Review

Alex Kendall, Eszter Salamon et al. (2018): Developing diverse School/ Parents communities through innovative partnerships, Open School Doors