<< Background >>The changing needs of 21st century society and related recuring challenges (economic recession, poverty, social inequalities, climate crisis, health crisis) are having a significant impact on the world of education, requiring a shift from ‘learning to know’ to ‘learning to be, to do and live together’ approaches (Council Recommendation on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning, 2018). Thus, the traditional formal education approach (‘learning to know’), focusing on the verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences, is considered a rather limited one in addressing the enhanced social and emotional needs of 21st century individuals, namely creative thinking, resilience, and creativity (NESET II, 2018). Although most Member States recognize the importance of Social and Emotional Education (SEE), national policies lack a clear set of goals, schools miss concrete plans and practical paradigms to teach and apply it, and educators often do not have sufficient training, experience, or motivation to embrace and deliver sustainable SEE programs (H2020 Boost policy brief 2020, JRC 2019). There is also a documented knowledge gap on evidence-based pedagogical guidelines and teaching approaches that would help educators to enhance students’ social and emotional skills (OECD, 2015). Despite the available research demonstrating that arts-based learning leads to improvement in student engagement and positive school culture and climate (DeMoss, 2002; Camille, 2019) and has strong correlation with the objectives of SEE (Karen, 2014), cross curricular arts-based school learning in Europe is rather limited. Simultaneously, Covid-19 impact on mental health and emotional wellbeing of school communities, with emphasis on children facing social and economic exclusion (Moroni et al., 2020, Hamedani et. al, 2015), overemphasizes the afore-mentioned needs, considering the long-lasted school lockdown measures and distance learning (JRC, EC, 2020). Based on the above, the REIMAGINED project aims to jointly address the EU-wide needs: a) of providing pedagogies, frameworks and tools to support educators to apply SEE on a cross-curricular approach, building on lower secondary educators’ collaboration, as it has been documented by the Greek Institute of Educational Policy and evidenced by University of Jyväskylä; b) of supporting adolescents’ social and emotional skills development to successfully respond to recurring crises and shocks (JRC, LifeComp 2020, OECD 2020), with a focus on those coming from vulnerable socio-economic environments heavily impacted by Covid-19 measures.<< Objectives >>The REIMAGINED project aims to: a) equip 75 lower secondary schools’ educators and directors with the necessary competences, pedagogic Social and Emotional Education methodologies and tools to embrace and deliver arts-based techniques into their disciplines, following a cross- and extra-curricular collaborative approach; b) to enhance the social and emotional skills of 180 adolescents aged 11-15 years old, with a focus on those facing social and economic exclusion, supporting their recovery from COVID-19, and enabling them to become resilient, responsible and active citizens at community level; and c) to contribute to evidence-based educational policy change, by proving a pilot tested paradigm and its learnings in order to institutionalize the correlation of arts education with SEE at secondary school level in Europe. Built based on the logic that improvements in learning practices do not necessarily require major reforms, but rather connections, REIMAGINED aims to provide the processes and methodological means for the development of a practical educational integrated paradigm correlating SEE with arts education through a cross- and extra-curricular approach, targeting lower secondary educators and students. It therefore seeks to connect: a) educators and school directors to collaborative apply arts-integrated techniques across the school curriculum using creativity as a lens to promote SEE within the classroom; b) educators, local CSOs already engaged in non-formal education, parents and community members, in order to promote learning-by-doing through extracurricular activities that build social and emotional skills through application at community level, enhancing the association between the school classroom and local realities.<< Implementation >>To achieve the REIMAGINED’s objectives, the following activities will be implemented: A desk research focusing on: a) overview of current status of SEE in EU, with a focus on partner countries, b) the interrelation between SEE and arts education, c) identification of arts-integrated best practices in a cross-curricular approach, and d) merging formal with non-formal education initiatives to promote application of skills. An online survey targeting educators and directors of lower secondary education in Greece, Italy and Hungary to document their training needs on SEE and arts-integrated methodologies. Focus groups with national educational public authorities, CSOs, and students aged 11-15 years old in Greece, Italy and Hungary to identify their needs and challenges in terms of national educational policy context, curricular and extra-curricular collaboration, and socio-emotional skill needs. Based on the above needs analysis, the REIMAGINED whole-school Intervention Framework for enhancing social and emotional education in lower secondary schools will be developed, guiding the next project’s Results. The REIMAGINED pedagogic methodology and training material will be specified, promoting learning-by-doing and arts-based practices. A cooperation framework will be developed to promote cross-curricular collaboration among diverse educators and extra-curricular collaboration with local CSOs. The organisation of national adaptation workshops with educational public authorities and experts will ensure applicability into partner countries’ national school and policy contexts. The developed training material will be hosted in an Open Training Course to be developed on SEE targeting educators, directors of schools and CSOs’ trainers. The online course will be delivered and evaluated by transnational participants form Greece, Italy and Hungary, who will form an EU working group on enhancing SEE across curricula in lower secondary education. Selected educators and directors of schools, who will be later involved in the pilot testing of the REIMAGINED Intervention Framework in their school context, will participate in a training workshop in Finland, and following their return will form a multi-disciplinary team per school (6 in total). The trained educators will deliver disciplinary sessions through arts-integrated practices based on the developed training materials. Partner CSOs will cooperate with the involved schools to co-design extra-curricular activities at community level in the form of artistic school projects at community level. JYU will provide continuous mentoring to trained educators from other countries throughout the pilot testing process. An impact assessment exercise will be implemented to assess the impact of REIMAGINED Intervention Framework on educators and students’ learning outcomes achievement. The impact assessment will feed evidence-based EU policy recommendations for educational public authorities and CSOs on the re-imagination of SEE in the school environment, which will be formed in the context of national and an EU policy roundtables with the participation of key EU policy stakeholders.Info days will be organised in Greece, Italy, and Hungary in which the key project results will be disseminated.During the final EU Conference, selected students from partner countries who have been actively involved in the local artistic school projects, will visit Athens to share their experiences, and be involved in the delivery of a transnational / EU artistic school project.<< Results >>REIMAGINED aspires to re-imagine education in lower secondary schools in Greece, Italy and Hungary through SEE mainstreaming, using arts-integrated practices in a cross-curricular approach. To achieve this, the following results will be developed: A whole-school intervention framework for enhancing social and emotional skills in secondary schools through arts-integrated practices and based on cross-curricular and extra-curricular collaboration. A cross-curricular social and emotional education pedagogic methodology equipping educators of lower secondary education with appropriate tools and training material. A cooperation framework, including processes to be followed by educators and directors of schools to establish effective multi-disciplinary teams within the school environment, and extra-curricular collaborations with agents at community level.An open online SEE training for educators, directors of lower secondary schools and CSO’s trainers with open educational resources and pedagogic methodologies to support them to design and deliver effective and sustainable SEE programmes, integrating arts-based practices across curricula, while associating them with extra-curricular community activities (75 trained educators and CSO’s training staff).An EU cooperation group with the participation of the 75 trained stakeholders, acting as a community of practice. 7 artistic school projects designed and delivered at community level in Greece, Italy and Hungary, developed in continuation of the in-class cross-curricular educational sessions (180 students involved in schools’ sessions), enabling students aged 11-15 years old to apply the newly acquired socio-emotional skills, through extra-curricular activities in cooperation with partner CSO, while engaging with parents and community members. 90 students will actively be involved in leading and designing the local artistic school projects. An EU artistic school project will be implemented as a celebration of students’ achievement during the final EU Conference.Evidenced-based policy recommendations on the re-imagination of lower secondary school education through SEE mainstreaming, using arts-integrated practices in a cross-curricular approach, will be co-developed by national and EU educational public authorities, based on the pilot-tested and assessed REIMAGINED Intervention Framework. Overall, it is expected that educators and directors of lower secondary schools across disciplines in GR, IT, HU will benefit from the REIMAGINED pedagogic methodology and online course, acquiring new skills, learning-by-doing methodologies and tools to enhance SEE in the school curriculum through collaborative multi-disciplinary teams of educators and arts-integrated practices. At the same time, students, with a focus on adolescents aged 11-15 years old from vulnerable socio-economic environments heavily impacted by Covid-19, will enhance their socio-emotional skills through their development within the school system and their application at community context in the form of artistic projects. Educational policy makers at national, regional and EU level will benefit from the evidence-based REIMAGINED policy recommendations, acquiring knowledge and strategies for mainstreaming SEE in secondary schools to support adolescents recover from Covid-19 crisis and become resilient citizens. Community members and parents of involved students from Greece, Italy and Hungary will enhance their life skills through their involvement in artistic community projects, reconnecting with their community, and enhancing their sense of belonging. Lastly, CSOs working on life skills development and active citizenship at EU level will benefit from the pilot-tested intervention framework, connecting curricular- (formal education) with extra-curricular activities (non-formal learning) to develop socio-emotional skills of students at community level.

The ENTICING project aims at seamlessly blending the benefits of Crowdsourcing with the need to upgrade the levels of digital readiness of secondary school teachers in humanities by empowering them with competences and tools that will improve the quality of their teaching and at the same time will render them ready to respond quickly in circumstances of crisis. To this end, the project will develop an innovative, tailored and co-designed training programme to educate teachers on Digital Humanities Crowdsourcing and support them in improving the quality of their teaching. Many studies demonstrate the benefits of crowdsourcing in the teaching process as it increases the engagement of the student rendering them active content developers and contributors in the teaching process. Although at academic level, there has been a significant progress in Digital Humanities, established as a distinct discipline and on crowdsourcing methodologies, still there is an evident lack in the availability of training for teachers and the transfer of scholarly knowledge in the design of tailored training for the professional development of humanities school teachers.ENTICING's specific objectives are the following: 1. Develop a tailored training course for teachers on Digital Humanities Crowdsourcing2. Equip teachers with skills on applying Digital Humanities concepts and approaches in their teaching3. Design and maintain a repository of Digital humanities Resources Crowdsourcing initiatives and tools that will increase teachers’ knowledge capital and the availability of quality resources 4. Develop a digital platform to serve as a transnational tool for teachers to host their crowdsourcing initiatives 5. Elaborate guidelines and recommendations on the integration and application of digital technologies in Humanities in secondary schools6. Contribute to transnational cooperation among teachers and relevant stakeholders

The ICD-4TVET project’s main objective is to develop an open innovation concept and an approach to optimize and accelerate the process of creating curricula in the technical VET sector, in order to: (a) enable Europe’s VET institutions to keep up with the demands of the labour market and (b) enable VET Learners/ Graduates and workers to pursue a successful career in terms of school and profession;(c) foster quality improvements, innovation excellence and internationalisation at the level of education and training institutions, in particular through enhanced transnational cooperation between education and training providers and other stakeholders.This practical contribution is expected to be achieved by suggesting an Interactive Methodology for VET Curricula development able to incorporate market trends/needs, and respond to them in a fairly limited amount of time. This will be implemented through a digital platform with the appropriate tools to modify the curricula automatically. The digital platform developed in the context of the project will enable the labour market actors to define their needs as they occur on the basis of ESCO, so the other stakeholders–ranging from national authorities to individual VET schools–can adapt swiftly to these needs with the creation of adequate, flexible curricula and training programs. The project’s target groups include stakeholders involved in the process of VET education provision, i.e. VET Graduates-Learners, VET Providers, National Authorities, and businesses that employ VET graduates.Throughout the project’s outputs, it is expected that:- The communication between different stakeholders in creating VET curricula will be simplified and accelerated;- An innovative methodology on developing VET curricula corresponding to the labour market’s needs and demands will be created; - A systematic approach to create and manage VET curricula will be developed-within a modular, segmented, digital system;- The individual validation process concerning competences and qualification through a standardized - but adaptable - assessment system will be supported (based on ESCO, the multilingual classification of European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations)- The ICD-4TVET Methodology and platform will be pilot tested in the fields of plastic industry, metal industry and ICT;- Future trends and promising recent technologies and innovations will be identified.

<< Background >>Social inclusion has always been a consideration in Europe, which is grounded on the European vision of democracy within a pluralistic society composed of people of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. According to UNESCO “the costs of intercultural incompetence are so high, including all the dangers of conflict and war . . . just as our future depends upon our ability to gain and demonstrate intercultural competence today”. It seems that the development of intercultural skills, today, is more essential than ever in order to avoid conflict and the marginalization of citizens on the basis of their cultural identity. In this direction, education and lifelong training should play an active role. Insufficient school capacity in terms of limited resources, luck of relevant education materials and staff equipped to cope with students’ diverse needs and to promote openness to diversity, are some of the barriers that influence students' academic performance and well-being and are in need to be overcome.As European Commission highlights, the lack of professional training and professional development of teachers can be a key source for any dissatisfaction in the quality of their teaching to form competent students with the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes. Also, studies on teaching practice in culturally heterogeneous settings, showed that teachers are either unable to cope adequately, or feel insecure while dealing with students from various cultural background. Teachers are the key to improving learners' performance and thus, a continuously upgrade of competences they need for life, should be made, while being in constant contact with research for teaching innovations and incorporate new research findings in their teaching practices. Finally, teachers are the key-factors in implementing new curricula effectively. While technology has become a superior vehicle for transmitting knowledge, digital skills should be scaled up while the relational aspects of teaching – be a good mentor – should remain as human capacities of enduring value.Pupils are, also, playing an important role in the effort of teachers’ for activating innovative teaching and inclusion methods, and the improvement the quality of teaching. Pupils’ active participation and engagement with the learning process, co-creation and collaboration, are essential elements that the curricula should encourage and teachers should reinforce.<< Objectives >>In accordance with the above, PETIC is a comprehensive project aimed to equip Physical Education (PE) teachers of primary and secondary education with the appropriate knowledge and skills for raising their own and pupils’ intercultural competence level. By the designing of a Learning Management System and through a Digital Education ecosystem, project attempts to upscale PE teachers’ learning and teaching competences for designing and implemented competence based didactic scenarios tailored made to the needs of their multicultural pupils.Additionally, project aims to ensure equal opportunities for all and attemps to encourage and involve schools and teachers with no experience in European projects, work in schools with high rate of migrant and refugee students and in remote and urban areas, that are most reluctant, or face various participation difficulties.PETIC intends to convert PE into a setting of exploratory learning, research, and expression, and lead all students, regardless of their cultural background, to achieve intercultural understanding, communication and sensitivity. Finally, project takes advantage of the diverse cultural perspectives of all partners and through the exchanging of experience and good practices aims to promote innovative, inclusive and multilingual pedagogies, to support national reforms and promote social inclusion.<< Implementation >>In order to achieve the aims of the project, partners will design and operate a Learning Management System and a Digital Education ecosystem. PE teachers’ training will be implemented based on the blended e-learning principle, both synchronous and asynchronous. PE teachers will be trained on the framework of the Intercultural PE e-guide composed by partners and evaluated by PE teachers-participants to the awareness raising event, taken place in each partners’ country. After training, PE teachers will reflect and deepen the gained knowledge and skills and design their own didactic scenarios tailored made to the needs of their students and schools, and implement them during PE classes.For the evaluation of the objectives and the impact that project have, partners will design relevant assessment tools. Specifically, an intercultural competence evaluation instrument will measure teachers’ knowledge, skills and attitudes on intercultural understanding, awareness and sensitivity prior training and after didactic scenarios’ implementation. Simultaneously, a students’ questionnaire will be designed in order to evaluate the acute effect from their active involvement to teachers’ didactic scenarios. Assessments tools for the evaluation of the LMS system will also be designed.Finally, an audiovisual material will be made. The best three practices of each partners’ country will be recorded by 360o camera and complete the education material.<< Results >>PETIC’s results are multidimensional and refers to the knowledge, skills and attitudes that all involvers will gain. Specifically, as far as it concerns PE teachers, the enrichment and strengthen of their knowledge and skills concerning intercultural communication, sensitivity and awareness, new approaches and methodologies of teaching, and digital teaching will occur. Project will enable teachers to explore and reflect on their own intercultural competence level, demonstrate intercultural understanding and sensitivity with their pupils, elicit curiosity and openness to innovative educational materials and new methodologies of teaching, cope effectively with diversity in a multicultural context, and feel confidence while negotiating meaningful interaction with students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, reflect on their own cultural beliefs, practices and values, demonstrating intercultural understanding and sensitivity in other social environments, and enhance their ability to assess and validate key competences and to design and implement innovative educational activities complemented by ICT and new technologies. Additionally, teachers’ active participation in a collaborative project with other teachers from their country or other countries will enhance their professional moral and work attitude in order of becoming ambassadors of societal change in their school, local and national community by attracting fellow teachers and colleagues in similar endeavors. Regarding to participant students, project will result in acquiring knowledge and understanding on intercultural competence. Pupils will be aware about other cultures and intercultural interaction, feel confident in communicating and cooperating effectively with peers from diverse cultures, show interest in participating in similar intercultural PE lessons.In a school level, project will reinforce an inclusive school climate where all pupils are treated as equals and develop communication channels among school, students, participant students’ families, their immediate background, and the local community. Moreover, project will offer schools the opportunity to expand their horizons and perspectives of collaboration with other schools in a local, national and transnational level, and to apply, implement and adopt nontraditional educational methods and activities.Participants of the multiplier events will gain the necessary knowledge and arise curiosity and openness, in order to explore intercultural competence and implement social inclusion actions in the school environment.Also, project will equip National, European and International PE teachers with a high-quality teacher's e-guide and didactic scenarios material (e-book and 360 videos) for teaching pupils intercultural understanding, communication and sensitivity, according to the new, innovative teaching methods and approaches, as well as the relevant assessment tools.Additionally, the LMS, designed and tested during project’s lifetime, will provide all educators and stakeholders with a useful practice guide for lifelong training. Finally, the Conclusions and recommendations for future use guide, as the overall framework of the project, will be used in the participating states as a basis to launch programs aiming methodological development in the field of social inclusion inside and outside formal education. Local and National authorities of the partner's country, as well as other EU member states, will have a valid evaluation instrument to use, and assess intercultural competence level and make invariant comparisons in a national and transnational level.

The project: “Teaching Signed Languages as a First Language” (SIGN FIRST) is based on the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Universal Design for Learning, the Paris Declaration, data driven results and recent best practices for the development of literacy in students with hearing impairments.International studies show that the vast majority (90-95%) of deaf children have hearing parents and they grow up without having access to the language of their parents or caretakers. With minimal signed and/or spoken linguistic input in the early years, the children are deprived the opportunity to acquire a first language and hence to adequately develop communicative and world knowledge.The most recent study of Hrastinski & Wilbur (2016) on the effects of sign language proficiency on reading comprehension skills and academic achievement of deaf and hard of hearing students suggested that students highly proficient in sign language outperformed their less proficient peers in nationally standardized measures of reading comprehension, English language use, and mathematics. They showed that sign language proficiency was the single variable significantly predicting results on all outcome measures. This study strongly supports the aims of our implemented project by focusing on sign language fluency.Our implemented project aimed at achieving the bilingual literacy development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing children so they can be educated in an effective inclusive school environment.The SIGN FIRST project specifically aimed and achieved to fill existing skills' gaps by the development of a teaching curriculum and educational materials for teaching European Sign Languages to deaf students as a first language. Additionally, the project aimed and developed sign language assessment instruments for this target group.The age group of the students that the implemented project targets are children that attend Kindergarten to 2nd grade of primary school (K-2), ages from 4 to 7 years old. However the programme can be and was implemented with deaf children in higher grades as well.Seven participants from four countries are part of the Project. One Educational policy Institute, one Research and Development Center, two Universities, two Schools of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and one private sector company, all experts in the education of the deaf and Sign Language, constituted the Strategic Partnership: 1. The Institute of Educational Policy (IEP), Greece. 2. The Dutch Sign Centre, Nederlands Gebarencentrum (NGC), Nederlands. 3. The University of Applied Sciences of Special Needs Education Zurich (HfH), Switzerland. 4. European University (EUN), Cyprus. 5. Kindergarten for the Deaf and hard of hearing of Argyroupolis (KindArg), Greece. 6. Kindergarten and Special elementary school for the Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing of Likovrisi- Pefki (ElemLP), Greece. 7. Habilis (HB), Greece.A wide and flexible range of activities and innovative practices have been implemented: 1. Sign Language curricula, common modules (including e-modules). 2. Learning, teaching, training, materials and methods, pedagogical approaches and tools for teaching European Sign Languages as a first language. 3. Peer-learning, workshops in three countries. 4. Information, guidance, coaching and counselling activities for parents and teachers. 5. Surveys, comparative analyses, evidence-gathering for state of the art SL teaching. 6. Networking, promotion and awareness-raising activities in the EU and internationally. The activities are based on participatory methods that:• Offered space for interaction of participants (deaf and hearing), sharing of ideas, avoiding passive listening / seeing.• Empowered the participants to contribute to the activities with their own knowledge and skills.• Ensured that participants had influence over project decisions, not just involvement.• Offered participants the opportunity to identify common values with persons from different cultures (Deaf and Hearing, different countries) • Promoted the respect of cultural diversity of Deaf and Hearing, signed and spoken languages. By the end of the 29 months project, the following outcomes have been obtained in alignment with project objectives: 1. Collected and document European Best Practices and are available to all in the project's web site www.sign1st.eu . 2. Developed evidence based tools to raise the quality of Sign Language teaching. 3. Developed systematic transfer of knowledge in teaching European Signed Languages as a first language. 4. Shared common teaching strategies, practices and educational material locally as well as internationally. The implementation of the project “Sign First” had an impact on teaching Greek Sign Language to deaf students as a public law with Government Gazette 2103, issue B ' published on 19.06.2017.