"<< Background >>The need to test new ways of helping school children and teachers to develop key competences is widely recognised by education policy makers and international institutions like the EU, OECD, UNESCO and the Council of Europe. The recent Conferences on ""Supporting key competences development"" (Brussels, 12-13 November 2019), ""Fusion Cities"" (London, 9th October 2020) and the presentation of the OECD Education 2030 Framework are examples of the consensus reached, at the policy and expert levels, on the need to change traditional teaching methods if transversal key competences are given the adequate importance. Not always this need is clearly perceived at the grassroots level, where discipline-based curricula and strict timetables tend to dominate the school routines. When schools, teachers, parents and students perceive the need of changing learning strategies and putting transversal key competences at the heart of teaching and on the front line of learning objectives, a promising process can start. This project is based on the awareness of needs at the whole school level in the partner schools and the support of specialised partners and networks that will make the project feasible and sustainable. Target groups addressed are students of lower and upper secondary schools who will be directly involved in the conception and development of cultural products, teachers of different disciplines (history, art, music, languages, digital technology, science and environment, etc.) who will constitute the project team in the partner schools and parents who will be invited to encourage and support their children in an innovative transnational learning experience which is aimed at developing a rich set of key competences for further studies, but also for life and active citizenship. The Project has the ambition to propose and experiment a holistic method to develop key transversal competences (cultural awareness and expression, citizenship, multilingual, digital, entrepreneurship, personal, social and learning) through a transnational experience of developing a cultural product (a piece of theatre, a musical, an exhibition including students' performance, a multimedia work, etc.) including historic research, literature and art history, music, performing arts and digital skills. Starting from the analysis and reconstruction of the life and works of local celebrities, or historical episodes connected to local history, secondary schools of different countries will collaborate in the development of parallel cultural products, learning from one another and being supported by families engagement and some specialised partners that will respectively help develop the performing arts and the intercultural and democratic citizenship skills. Each of the chosen histories will be presented to each other school to allow the understanding of the history of other countries and adding a different perspective to the discovery of European cultural heritage. The PERFECT partnership strongly believes that such an approach has the potential to lead to a deeper understanding of each other's heritage and history, thus supporting the achievement of what the EU Ministers of Education have called for in the 2015 Paris Declaration on Promoting citizenship and the common values of freedom, tolerance and non-discrimination through education. Building on the mutual knowledge of local history is a simple but effective way to recognise commonalities and relationships between European peoples, and to value the achievements of the European Union in terms of peace, mutual respect and joint development towards a common future. This is in line with the required actions towards achieving the goals of the European Education Area, especially in the field of common European values.<< Objectives >>The PERFECT project aims at contributing to the innovation and quality of secondary education by developing and testing a teaching/learning strategy based on collaborative cultural production and intercultural exchange also through a meaningful, stimulating and interactive use of digital technology.The identified concrete objectives of PERFECT are:1) To stimulate and support the development of autonomous learning and basic research skills, creative thinking, collaborative attitudes and skills through the creation of cultural products based on local history;2) To organise and reward digitally-enhanced international collaboration of partner schools by supporting the exchange of good practice and cultural products originated locally by students' groups, interacting among them through digitally supported project work;3) To develop a review of the experiences conducted and produce a set of methodological instruments to support the replicability and dissemination of the PERFECT ""open model"" of action;4) To set up and promote a network of primary and secondary schools committed to participate in exchange of cultural products developed by their students and in a European Festival.The project is developed through a transnational partnership in order to properly develop the following features:- Cultural exchange: collaboration between schools of different countries allows pupils and teachers to share and learn about different experiences in diverse sectors. This leads to the identification of similarities, differences and new inputs and outputs;- Didactical innovation: by sharing experiences, teachers and, more in general, schools, can get to know innovative ways of teaching/learning and can therefore put them into practice in their local realities.- Openness to multiculturality: through cultural exchange, teachers and students have the opportunity to find out about other people's traditions and cultures, which can lead to feelings of cultural respect and understanding of other countries' cultural heritage.All these elements will contribute to the promotion of Global Citizenship Education principles, European history and cultural heritage and represent important assets to understand and adhere to a vision of Europe and the world as interconnected systems with commonalities and differences worth to be explored and understood.<< Implementation >>The project's central idea is to propose a learning innovation approach through which schools from different countries together develop a project-based method for the development of a cultural product. Teachers of different disciplines will concur to the design and development of these projects/products involving two classes in each partner school. Therefore the core set of activities will be implemented within, around and between the partner schools with the methodological and management support of the other partners (European Networks like FREREF, OBESSU, IPA, the IIHL with its hosted Education Inspiring Peace Lab, the Ministry of Education of Malta). The work programme is shaped around partners’ structured path to develop and experiment the approach to transversal competences through cross-cultural cooperation. The activities of the project will include:- Active participation and involvement of students (and teachers) belonging to two classes for each of the five schools participating in the project in the elaboration of a cultural product: school teams (teachers and students) will identify and study the life and works of a local character or a historical episode related to the local history (PR3). Through this activity, students will be stimulated to develop autonomous learning and researching skills, as well as creative thinking and teamwork. - Transnational collaboration and cultural exchange will take place between teachers during the whole project and will be enhanced through activities such as a three-day teachers’ training (LTTA) taking place in Italy, which will allow representatives of the partner schools teams to share their experiences and suggestions concerning the learning innovations to be associated to the development of cultural products, jointly preparing the design principles for the learning experiences to be developed in and among partner schools. They will collaborate in designing common features that the cultural projects and outcomes will share, to make them part of a coherent result, developed in different parts of Europe. - The five Transnational Project Meetings (including the Kick-off and the final meeting) taking place in Italy, Romania, Austria, Malta and Belgium will represent an opportunity for all project partners to co-create every final product and to share ideas and suggestions. Meetings are key activities in the project, since its final objective is to innovate traditional learning methods, through the development of a teaching/learning strategy based on collaborative cultural production and intercultural exchange.- Local communities will be actively involved in the project activity throughout all its phases. During PR3, when students will reflect upon the cultural product to develop, they will also create Community Maps which will identify the cultural resources and the local entities (theatres, cultural institutions, associations, etc.) which will collaborate with the school. Local communities will be involved also as audience during the four National Multiplier events, during which students will perform the cultural product that they developed (PR3). Representatives of all classes participating in the project will then gather in Sanremo during M25 to perform during the transnational Multiplier Event “European School Festival”. - The last Multiplier Event, Perfect - Lessons Learned for practice and policy, will allow to share the lessons learned through the project lifecycle in terms of multi-disciplinary project work, European history teaching innovation through intercultural exchange, developing creativity, collaboration and other transversal skills through cultural production projects. The experience gathered through the project activities will stimulate a participatory debate focused on how school and teachers education policies might get evidence and inspiration from the project results to invest in transversal competences in innovative and learner-motivating ways.<< Results >>The Project will produce the following Project Results:1. Conceptual model and competence framework for intercultural cooperative cultural production; This Output will be a key pillar for the project development, but will also be useful to stimulate reflection in other schools, who will be invited to comment and, if possible, to join the exercise at a later stage of project development;2. A Handbook for School Team Leaders, a more operational tool for the design and development of school-based cultural products;3. A set of 5 cultural products collaboratively developed by the partner schools and associated partner to be presented as good practices at the end of year two. It is expected that, during the third year, other schools and institutions will join the project, producing other final cultural products.4. A set of guidelines for school heads, teachers, students and parents, based on the evaluation of the first experiences conducted, to act as multiplier documents for newcomer schools5. A virtual showcase of school-developed cultural products, including a multimedia documentation of the development process, to be used as a set of inspiring examples for new classes and schools approaching the idea of developing their own cultural product Beyond the specific project contents and concrete Project Results, the PERFECT project will increase the capacity of partner schools to innovate learning design and international collaboration, and will help develop key transversal competences for students, thus producing a substantial impact at the respective local levels. Among other effects, the project will substantially increase schools’ capacity to work transnationally - and online- on complex activities and to enhance their network of international partners, not only schools but also European Networks and other stakeholders.By disseminating the experience gained and its Project Results through the Festival, the project also expects to produce a significant impact on many more schools, that will be invited to join the collaboration platform developed by the project, to share experience and to develop learning outcomes that are recognised as extremely important, but usually not easily developed within the school systems.It is also expected that, through the access to EU Networks (OBESSU, FREREF, Lifelong Learning Platform) and the to the EU collaboration platforms (eTwinning, ESG), some positive impact can be achieved at the EU level. The presence of national and regional education authorities, including those with curriculum definition authority, is expected to produce a multiplier effect in the school system of the territories where partners are based."

<< Background >>The capability of teachers to generate a positive, creative, and exciting learning environment is strictly related to teachers' competences and their ability to stimulate learners' agency and motivation to learn. Research data at the European level show that high proportions of teachers express a moderate or high level of training needs in areas that would allow them to develop more appropriate, diversified, and innovative teaching practices; teachers claim for new skills, including for dealing with cultural and linguistic diversity in the classroom, teaching in a technology-rich environment, and adopting collaborative teaching practices (Eurydice 2015; EC 2019).The recent lockdown in 2020 and the emergency use of distance teaching has strengthened the need to recognize and address the “core competence area” of in-service and future teachers at a European level and to introduce some innovations (Council conclusions on European teachers and trainers for the future, 2020).<< Objectives >>The project aims at improving creativity, inclusiveness, and equity in European schools. Whilst the ultimate beneficiaries of this project are the school pupils/students who will benefit from more inspiring and inclusive learning environments, EXCIITE addresses this aim by focusing on teachers’ competencies: it proposes a conceptual framework, concrete requalification paths for in-service teachers, and a set of methodological and organisational resources suitable to support the “creative and meaningful transition” of school systems, substantiating and enriching the required “digital transition”.Its objectives are:1. To design a series of training modules that combine into flexible and personalized learning paths based on a self-assessment tool designed to help teachers recognize their own training needs.2. To build a Hub for teacher training, consisting of a web repository of multilingual learning resources for teachers (building on what is already available in national teacher training agencies and at EU network level), to help them develop and practice creativity skills, learning innovation, self-regulatory learning, appreciation of diversity and social inclusion.3. To create an alliance of teacher education institutions capable of collaborating transnationally and supporting the exchange of resources and good practices in the field of in-service teacher education.<< Implementation >>The project objectives are directly addressed by the set of activities leading to the project results:1. The first objective will be firstly addressed by the co-creation of a State-of-the-art report on current methodologies and practices for teacher training (PR1). The development of this framework will be concentrated in the first period of the project, through the European Design Workshop sessions starting from the Kick-off Meeting until the completion of the Analytical Report by FRC. Original research will then be conducted on the training needs of teachers in the four target competence areas. The collected data will be analysed and discussed in the Descriptive report (PR2) and the conclusions reached will contribute to the progress towards the objective: a set of module-based, flexible training curricula, allowing individual teachers to self-assess their training needs and choose on which competencies they want to focus more (PR3).2. The second objective will be addressed by PR4, which will offer a Multilingual Learning Resource Hub for self-managed CPD. 3. The third will be achieved not only by promoting the dissemination and use of the previous results (PR 1 to 4) in the largest possible number of Teacher Training Institutions, but also, and more specifically, by PR5, which will develop Recommendations for Policymakers and a Roadmap to innovate the way CPD of teachers is conceived and offered, proposing concrete ways through which existing Schools of Education may collaborate and provide recognisable certificates and differentiated qualifications for the teaching professions, while sharing a common reference framework at the European level, according to the Council Decision of May 2020.The Partnership is composed of the University of Modena & Reggio Emilia (IT) - Fondazione Reggio Children (IT) - Örebro University (SE) - Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (ES) - FREREF (BE) - Eötvös Loránd University (HU) - IC Manzoni (IT) form a Strategic Partnership comprising academic, educational, research and training expertise, oriented towards making recognition, validation, training and exchange opportunities a normal practice throughout Europe, thus giving a contribution to the internationalisation of qualifications in the teaching profession.<< Results >>EXCIITE is committed to producing the following results:- Analytical report of good practices and intervention models for teacher training, summarising existing knowledge and good practices in the field of teacher training and establishing a clear link between the macro-scenarios for innovation of school systems and the school practice to make schools more creative, inclusive, and inspiring learning environments.- Descriptive report on teacher training needs related to the four target competence areas, based on a transnational survey, further enriched and detailed by the use of qualitative approaches. The report will also examine the ideas and practices school managers have regarding in-service teacher training.- Guidance tool for teachers, based on the first two Project results, providing tools for self-assessment of competencies and a set of possible teachers learning pathways corresponding to differentiation of teaching professions as they are organised in the target countries and at the different educational levels and kinds.- Multilingual Learning and Testing Resources Hub, providing a multilingual collection of self-manageable resources accessible for the teachers who are interested in improving inclusive and creative competencies for inspiring lifelong learners.- Policy recommendations, feeding policy definition and implementation through an evaluation-rich bottom-up exercise to make the teaching professions stronger at the EU level with the aim to foster creativity, lifelong learning skills and inclusion - as among the main priorities for the European society. The “Roadmap” element in the output will precisely consist of the suggestions on how to change teacher CPD and make it a cross-country issue to accelerate the innovation policies regarding the school systems of Europe, as defined at the EU and National/Regional level.- Five international workshops to promote results, evaluate learning paths and resources, and dissemination.In the long-term, the EXCIITE project is expected to produce a qualitative and quantitative leap forward in the availability of a coherent set of teachers' training opportunities, locally and transnationally, directly addressing well-known criticalities in school system performance, namely unsatisfactory levels of inclusiveness, creativity, and inspirational value.It is expected to have the following impact and long term benefits:- Participant organisations will gain common experience in the field of innovative teacher training design, implementation, and evaluation.- All partners will enhance their ability to impact, locally and beyond, on in-service teacher training and competence recognition processes.- Teachers will be provided with continuous professional development (CPD) courses and learning programmes leading to the development of creative, inclusive, and inspiring learning strategies.- Schools will have the chance to enhance their professional assets, increasing the teachers’ competencies related to creativity, learning innovation, learning self-regulation, diversity appreciation, and social inclusiveness.- Pupils attending the participating classes are expected to experience increasingly creative, inclusive, and inspiring learning practices that will support their future as lifelong learners.- Policymakers participation will have the effect of reducing the gap between the definition of innovative policies and their effective implementation.

"After over twenty years of justified -but almost exclusive- insistence in making education outcomes closer to labour market needs, the current context of growing distrust in political authorities and social disharmony in Europe have brought back the attention of policy makers to the need of cultivating social, citizenship and democratic culture learning outcomes in school education and adult learning. In parallel, the covid outbreak evidenced the need to adapt and renew way of teaching and learning, by embracing the development of new communication and information technologies. The Peace Games consortium aims to contribute to the development of citizenship, democratic and social competences by using the full potential of creativity through game-based learning in formal and informal learning. Creativity stands at the core of this project as it is considered both as a way to acquire civic and social key competences, and as a competence to acquire and develop in itself via the use and the development of ""self-made"" games oriented toward Peace Education. The project aimes at diffusing these competences in learners and at helping teachers to make good educational use of games. This is organised through the identification, assessment and support to the use of relevant games (online or in face-to-face) oriented to civic competences, intercultural communication and conflict transformation already existing and provide guidelines and advices for the development of new ""self-made"" games relevant for particular contexts.This project is building on the results of several projects in ERASMUS + which have reviewed good practices and developed competence frameworks for learners and educators aimed at bringing peace, conflict transformation, citizenship education, democratic values and respect for diversity at the centre of daily school practice.¨Peace Games"" originated within the Laboratory for Education Inspiring Peace (EIP Lab) created in Sanremo by the UPPER Project (ERASMUS +), responds to the need of offering advice and orientation to the education community and to individual learners, by developing a structured review of existing games, based on a qualified analysis of learning objectives achievable, and a community hub to engage on peace-oriented online and offline games.2. Objectives and main activities:To explore, analyse and classify the available supply of peace-oriented games on the basis of their relevance to the most pertinent competence frameworks that are actually developed and tested internationally, e.g. the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) of the Council of Europe, the Framework of Teachers Competence in Peace Education of the UPPER Eramus + project (http://eiplab.eu/upper-project), the European Curriculum on Nonviolent Conflict Transformation (NVCT) developed by the EduCATe Project (ERASMUS+);To identify, through a substantial mapping exercise based on the competence frameworks, existing gaps and engage the game developers community in the creation of new games addressing the identified gaps, also using existing sets of peace exercises that have not yet taken a game configuration;To develop an online hub able to provide information, advice and support to education institutions and educators who are interested to use the potential of games to achieve learning outcomes in these competence areas and engage “indie game development communities” in the creation of new games (e.g. through “thematic game jams” days with young designers, game developing starts up, school teams, etc.);To test and validate the use of the online hub and available games in ten pilot schools in five countries and, on a voluntary base, in other local communities and civil society organisations engaged in citizenship education;To develop and validate a Guide on “How to use, adopt and adapt game-based learning in traditional education settings ”To provide guidance and a collaborative context to individual learners who are already engaged in online games and might discover the interest and life-relevance of peace-oriented games;To draw lessons from the review and the online hub activities in order to feed the present education policy debate on citizenship and peace education.In order to achieve the project objectives there is a need to bring together complementary expertise existing in different organisations and different countries; the members of the consortium presenting the proposal have been chosen on the basis of their relevant experience and all have successfully run networking, dissemination and valorization actions in the past. We believe that this consortium represents a network of experts in peace education, games and innovation projects in Europe and, as such, is in a unique position to create consistent impact and sustainable results based on the project's outcomes."

eMovA project-Virtual Mobility for Apprenticeship, is the result of a reflection within the European network, Euroapprenticeship, to improve the efficiency of short-term mobility internship and offer a virtual alternative to those who cannot leave.To develop virtual mobility in Apprenticeship training, the eMovA project partners, eight in number, including five types of organizations (vocational training centers, craft chambers of commerce, public bodies, European foundation, SME organization) in five European countries (France, Belgium, Germany, Slovenia and Portugal) have worked closely on the following three objectives:Objective 1: To provide ready-to-use teaching materials to facilitate virtual mobility actions.Objective 2: To accompany the actors of vocational training by sharing open and innovative practices in digital eraObjective 3: To create a virtual space on Euroapprenticeship plateform in order to inform the users about virtual mobility and explain how to use or contribute in eMovA products. To reach these three objectives, three intellectual outputs - one per objective - have been made by the partners.Thus, O1 / eMovA-activities makes available to trainers/teachers or mobility referents, 20 ready-to-use learning sequences to facilitate virtual mobility actions.Access O1: http://moodle.euroapprenticeship.eu/O2 / eMovA-videos, via its video channel on Youtube, helps the trainers/teachers in the implementation of virtual mobility with digital tools, through concrete examples realized in class.O2 Access: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyqvS2bpjijKWcud03SuZdAO3 / eMovA-space offers a virtual information and linking space on virtual mobility, specific for Apprenticeship.Access O3: http://www.euroapprenticeship.eu/en/the-mobilite-virtuelle.htmlIn addition to the development of virtual mobility for the Apprenticeship, several impacts and benefits in the short, medium and long term were identified at the end of the project, in particular:- the professional development of the trainers on ICT methodologies, - the development of hard skills (linguistic, numerical ...) and soft skills (teamwork, communication, etc.) by the beneficiaries,- the appropriation of the benefits of virtual mobility by the companies,- the dissemination of open educational resources (OER) in various European languages,- the improvement of the learning quality by providing a European dimension and encouraging the adoption of innovative pedagogical practices,- the appetite of target audiences for virtual and physical mobility,- the increase of international cooperation between the actors of vocational training,- the increase of national and international cross-sectoral cooperation between the economic, political and educational actors of the European territories.

The role of regional governments in promoting integrated lifelong learning policies has been recognised as very important since many years and many studies and initiatives have been undertaken to conceptualise and review good practices and policy arrangements (such as CEDEFOP, OECD, German Learning region Programme, RELL project, LLHUB project and others). However, the policy context has not always been favourable to a comprehensive lifelong learning approach (not merely focused on professional development of employed workers), nor to enhance the role of Regions in the broad education field. This dichotomy between discourse and praxis has generated a fragmentary situation, in which some regions across Europe continue to be seriously committed to lifelong learning but, lacking continuing and reliable financial and political support, are unable to undertake sustainable exchange of experience among them and to systematically compare their progresses and learn from each other.The present proposal aims to design an open collaborative platform to enhance and compare Regional Lifelong Learning Policies: the COMORELP Policy Lab Platform, capitalising the results of previous initiatives and EU Projects, developing a coherent conceptual and operational framework. These results will be achieved with a strict focus on building the sustainability conditions for the monitoring exercise, thus overcoming the fragmented situation described above. The concrete objectives of the project are the following:· To organise a longitudinal review of LLL policies in each participating region, including a multi-stakeholders self-assessment exercise;· To review and synthesise existing contributions on regional lifelong learning and “Learning Regions” approaches to develop a new context-sensitive comparison/benchmarking platform;· To pilot a data collection approach to feed and validate the system among the pilot Partner Regions· To organise regional and European inter-regional Round Table to exchange and reflect upon practices in the field of Lifelong Learning and lay the foundations for inter-regional cooperation and common LLL policies· To promote the participation in the COMORELP Policy Lab Platform of new Regions and to develop a sustainability action plan.· To draw lessons from the process, both in terms of quality assurance and in terms of policy recommendations.The project will create the opportunity, for Regional Governments who are committed to Lifelong Learning, the opportunity to review, compare and enhance their policies through the systematic collaboration with other Regions and the establishment of a mutual learning process involving stakeholders and national/EU policy-makers, thus contributing to a renewed dialogue on lifelong learning at the EU level, also in relation with the first point of the recently agreed European Pillar of Social Rights. The expected results and impact envisaged and potential longer term benefits such as increasing participant awareness on the Lifelong Learning policies upon regional bases and make comparisons to rebuild or reorganize their own policies by detecting deficiencies or gaining alternative perspective from other contributors such as stakeholders, other regions or policy makers. Existing data collected on the platform will be the starting point for further evolvements and extensions by the participants. The COMORELP Policy Lab Platform aimed to evolve after the end of the project and build a broader community of users, coming from all other European and Third countries, stakeholders and regional bodies not originaly involved in the project.