Empowering teachers to foster inclusive and democratic classroom environments and to promote shared collaboration, increasing students’ and community well-being.
Context
Teachers are often faced with an abundance of obstacles and challenges as a result of the different cultural, social, and philosophical backgrounds of their students in the fast-changing global context. These difficulties can take many different forms such as handling tensions and conflicts in the classroom or modifying teaching methods in the face of COVID-19 pandemic, continuing discussions about racism in society, the impending threat of climate change, and the unsettling spectre of recent conflicts.
In the face of these urgent concern, there is pressing need to provide teachers with the knowledge and abilities they need to successfully manage these complexities. The necessity of addressing these criticalities is further reinforced by the changing role that education plays in promoting social cohesion and active citizenship in the face of societal transitions. In addition to navigating the complexities of different students, teachers are essential in raising a new generation of engaged, compassionate, and resilient global citizens. By taking a comprehensive strategy that puts an emphasis on creating inclusive and democratic classroom environment, it is possible to address the fundamental problems and needs in education and open to door for significant social change.
Objectives
- To empower teachers in secondary education by providing tools for democratic dialogue and decision making, and by strengthening their meta-skills.
- To enable teachers to integrate these tools and skills into their daily classroom practices and curricula.
- To promote teachers as role model for active, engaged, and critical citizenship as an example of their students aged 12 to 18.
- To teach life-skills to students including expressing themselves, listening to diverse opinions, navigating tensions from differences, and using arts for connections.
- To foster greater self-awareness, empathy, and compassion among both students and teachers.
Activities
- Development of a training programme, the CARB toolkit, composed of deep democracy tools, instructional videos, and a comprehensive manual to support teachers and schools.
- Implementation of the training programme in 12 schools among the partners’ countries with the aim to professionalize around 50 teachers to become more confident to use the developed tools and to address tension and difficult topics in the classroom, while teaching life-skills to 240 students.
- Supervision in the classroom and online supervision over the implementation process of the contents of the toolkit.
Resources
- CARB toolkit
- CARB e-book
Impact
- Proficiency in the use of tools for democratic dialogue and decision making for teachers.
- Increased use and proficiency in like skills for students, and consequent enhanced well-being of the community at school and beyond.
- Improved skills in empowerment, mental health, and creativity for both teachers and students.
- Informal exchange and passing through of the CARB-tools, and free access to the toolkit among teachers.
- Enhanced involvement of families, neighbourhood, and society at large.
Partners
- UC Leuven (Coordinator, Belgium)
- Goesthing BV (Belgium)
- Deep:black London (United Kingdom)
- LAUREA-AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU OY (Finland)
- CESIE (Italy)
- Someron Iukio (Finland)
- IPSSEOA Pietro Piazza (Italy)
- GO! Atheneum Unescoschool Koekelberg (Belgium)
- Haringey Learning Partnership (United Kingdom)