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Building up Bridges towards Autonomy
Start date: Sep 1, 2014, End date: Aug 31, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The main objective of the project is the development of a partnership among four schools in Portugal, United Kingdom, Poland and Spain that want to create a new methodology in which the students will be the center of the whole teaching / learning process. The partner schools have already been using strategies and practices concerning the development of independent work, problem-solving and critical thinking. Thus, they have been allowing the students to take their own decisions upon their knowledge acquisition process and partly assume the control of their learning. All these institutions want to share their best practices in this field and they will also like to work closely, with the aim of setting up a more advanced, coherent and innovative pedagogical system. Throughout the development of the referred system, we intend to involve higher education institutions, such as the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences from the University of Coimbra and the School of Higher Education in Portugal and the Polish Association of Mathematics Teachers. These scientific institutions will significantly enrich our pedagogical options and strategies and invest the whole system with a bigger scientific consistency. With this project we want to give the students the necessary tools, such as autonomy, responsibility, critical thinking and sense of initiative, for them to face the world of work today and entrepreneurship, thus fighting unemployment. The project will be developed in three phases: During the first year, all the activities will be centered on the development of specific competences that will lead to independent work, language and ICT mastery. Having acquired the necessary tools, during the second phase of the project (second year), they will develop projects in certain curriculum areas, such as Mathematics, Experimental or Social Sciences, all by themselves. Finally, in their third year the students will leap into entrepreneurship and set up their own projects in different areas of interest, in mixed nationalities groups, from the planning, through the development, the evaluation, the advertising, final impact and dissemination. As this project is based on the development of individual and collaborative work and autonomy, the final results will entirely depend on the students’ decisions. However, all of them will be shared and stored in the e-twinning platform as well as in the different schools’ websites. Throughout this third year, the students will have the possibility of undergoing professional internships in the areas of their own interests. This way they will have a first possibility of getting in touch with the world of work and of enterprises. At the same time, a coherent teacher training program will be carried out and developed by the whole group of international schools under the above mentioned pedagogical themes. Each school will offer the other partners specific teacher training sessions in their own area of expertise. From all this contributes a new, completely innovative and effective methodology will emerge. The expected impact will be enormous and will completely change the traditional teaching/ learning paradigm adopted in most schools, until now: The teachers will have to change their practices becoming the facilitators of the whole process; The students will understand that they are the only ones who shall and will control their learning processes; The participating schools, through continuous observation, comparison and analysis will have to change their organizations and practices; The other relevant stakeholders will closely collaborate with the involved schools, so that together they will help them prepare the students to face and to enter the world of work in a fruitful way. Two kits, both in paper and in digital form, will be elaborated as final products. These will be available to all the schools wanting to implement them. The first will consist in the description of the new methodology created by the project, together with the most relevant materials for its implementation; the second will be a practical example in one of the curriculum areas: Maths. The latter will also contain the necessary materials. In what the longer terms benefits are concerned, a close connection among all the schools will emerge and common working platforms and working nets will be created as well as new partnerships will be established to give answers to common concerns regarding education, new methodologies and strategies. The teachers involved will establish close connections with their partners in the project’s schools, continuing to develop common activities with their students throughout Europe and establishing common working platforms, which will go on beyond the end of the project. The students’ early mobilities will certainly continue in the future in the form of prospective academic studies, careers or in the development of projects.
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