<< Objectives >>The project aims to:(a) bridge the gender gap in STEM by tackling gender stereotypes and by enhancing the representation and continued interest of 10–14-year-old girls in STEM education and careers, by targeting both students and teachers.(b) enhance girls’ motivation and interest in making critical subject choices that will effectively lead to STEM studies in higher education and subsequently to employment and careers in STEM.<< Implementation >>Three main activities will be implemented:(a) To examine 10–14-year-old students’ attitudes and perceptions of STEM, and their expectations of future careers in the sciences, through questionnaires and interviews(b) To develop and implement in schools two student learning modules, consisting of a total of 6-10 teaching units, that will cover fundamental topics across various STEM disciplines(c) To develop and deliver a Teacher Continuing Professional Development program in Cyprus and Slovakia<< Results >>Project is expected to:(a) Deliver a fine-grained analysis of students’ attitudes and perceptions of STEM, in Cyprus and Slovakia.(b) Improve students’ awareness and knowledge and teachers’ didactic competences in STEM, by developing high quality learning and teaching materials, and a teacher training program.(c) Disseminate project outcomes to teachers, policy makers, and researchers in STEM education.

The high number of adults with low basic skills is a major challenge for Europe. European countries are still experiencing problems in harmonizing and coordinating different sectors of Education and Training. Participation in adult education varies significantly across Member States and regions in Europe. The Commission notes that there is a wide disparity among member states in policy making, programming, synergies among public bodies and adult education providers. These disparities reflect wider socio-economic national differences within Europe in terms of factors including employment, social inclusion, economic stability and growth. The ET2020 working group on Adult Education (2016) clearly identifies the importance for boosting adult education across Europe. Too few adults have access to adult learning and there is a strong need for “better outreach and collaboration” among all stakeholders (including public and private adult education providers) to achieve the 15% benchmark by 2020. DIMA 2.0 – Developing Strategies for Adult Education Providers’, is a project that serves 2 important NEEDS: (1) to Improve the quality of adult education provided across Europe and raise the participation rates (2) to better monitor effectiveness of adult learning policies and strategiesThe DIMA 2.0 builds on the existing knowledge developed by partners and aims at supporting the professional development of Adult education providers to improve and extend the supply of high quality learning opportunities tailored to the needs of low-skilled/ low qualified individuals. The primary target groups for this project include: Adult education providers, adult educators working with low-skilled/ low qualified adult learners, and adult learners.The project objectives are fully aligned with the EU priorities and are the following:1. Support adult education providers to design, implement, and monitor effective strategies for reaching out to low skilled adults and facilitate their access to upskilling pathways2. Building the competences of adult education providers and adult educators to design more effective programs for low-skilled or low-qualified adults 3. Improve the supply of high quality learning opportunities tailored to the needs of low-skilled or low-qualified adults.4. Improve the digital competencies of Adult educators to better serve adult learners.5. Enhance synergies and complementarities among adult education providers, public authorities and the labour market.Outputs IO1. Toolkit for developing and monitoring strategies for adult education providersIO2. Curriculum and training materialIO3. Elearning space and OERsThe DIMA 2.0 consortium includes 6 partner organization from 4 countries who are experts in the field of adult education. By cooperating in a transnational adult education oriented participatory context, project partners will be able to develop innovative outputs and exchange practices and ideas to expand adult education providers’ knowledge and practice and to improve and extend the supply of high quality learning opportunities tailored to the needs of individual low-skilled or low-qualified. The DIMA 2.0 project it is expected to reach directly and indirectly at least 2000 adult educators through the project’s outputs, implementation and dissemination activities (news on social media pages, e-learning space, websites). Additionally, at least 2,000 low-qualified and low skilled-adults will be reached directly/indirectly through the project’s activities and implementation, and via online means, while 1,000 relevant stakeholders (public authorities, educational institutes, ministries) in all partner countries through communication via media, cooperation in the development of project’s resources, and contact in relevant activities.

<< Background >>The INTERCOMP project involves the development of intercultural competencies to school educators primarily, but also to university educators and informal education. This is expected to be achieved through the development of a relevant educational course. This educational course will be developed in order to address the needs of educators that they have to interact with refugees. More specifically, educators currently working in schools have not been adequately trained to teach students from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds This is an important need to be addressed as the characteristics of the refugees attending schools nowadays are different from those of the past (e.g., war trauma etc) and our educators are not properly trained to deal with these challenges. In this respect, the INTERCOMP project aims to provide an educational resource that can be used by educators and stakeholders working with refugees.<< Objectives >>The INTERCOMP project has the following objectives: a) develop a network of universities and educational entities that together will develop a course for intercultural communication in the formal and non-formal education. b) develop an educational course about intercultural competencies c) develop a network of educators who will be aware of designing, developing and delivering effective Intercultural Communication plans through social and emotional learning methodologies and coaching techniques d) help pre-service and in-service educators strengthen their professional/teaching profile and job satisfaction by offering training on a stressful event of the everyday teaching life.<< Implementation >>To achieve this objective, a change in the mindset and skills of current and future teachers is required; and our project aims to kick start this process with collaboration by partners from different educational sectors, i.e., universities and educational entities passionate about working together to develop and disseminate a new approach which better suits our times and challenges. INTERCOMP project will implement a thourough process aiming at the development of an educaitonal course that will assist educators increase their intercultural competencies. This process involves co-creation of the educational course with educators, ie., the end users of the course, and a thorough evaluation of its efficacy in increasing awareness about the pedagogy and teaching practices for establishing intercultural skills. Furthermore, INTERCOMP project will conduct multiplier events and a LTTE in order to create ambassadors of intercultural education that will promote the concept of intercultural education to schools and educational authorities across Europe. In addition, dissemination activities targeting multiple and diverse (i.e, educators, policy makers, academics etc) have been planned to share and promote the project results and the concept of intercultural education.<< Results >>The project will produce the following project results: 1. Co-creation reflections of educators beliefs about their intercultural competencies and the needs for developing such competencies. 2. Development of an educational course suitable for several stakeholders, mainly educators, universities, volunteers, advocacy organizations, but also relevant to education policy makers. 3. Academic outputs such as conceptual and research articles, conference presentations and workshops related to the aims, objectives, and produced deliverables of the project. 4. Dissemination outputs, through modern communication approaches including social media [twitter, Facebook, Instagram], media clips on YouTube, downloads, press releases, etc) of the projects aims and objectives, and produced deliverables. 5. A 5 day learning and teaching event that can be used by educational entities to assist their members become competent to teach in an intercultural environment.Overall, the project envisages to contribute to the promotion of life skills education and increase the quality of education provided to children and adolescents.

Schools in several European countries frequently fail to provide both excellence and equity in mathematics teaching: more than 20% of European students do not reach a minimum level of basic skills in mathematics; only 2%-3% of them reach the highest level of proficiency; and large variations in achievement exist among students within schools, indicating that schools fail to create equitable learning environments for their students (OECD, 2016). Supporting teachers to combat this challenge requires that teachers be afforded curriculum materials that provide specific support and solid guidelines to teach for excellence and equity, as well as professional development (PD) on how to do so.Responding to this dual need, the main goal of the EDUCATE project was to develop, implement, validate, and refine materials for teachers and teacher educators (TEs) that address issues of cognitive activation (CA) and differentiation (DI) in an integrated manner –which was missing from past work attending to either excellence or equity. More crucially, the project aimed at educating teachers to use these materials by engaging them in guided reflection around their practice and to scaffold TEs to offer solid guidance to teachers in doing so.Working in four EU countries (Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, and Portugal) to minimize context dependencies and ensure the transferability of the materials produced, the project unfolded in four phases. In the first, EU/(inter)national policy documents on excellence and equity were reviewed, as well as prior studies on teachers’ needs and challenges when having to teach for both goals. This top-down approach was complemented by a bottom-up approach involving 66 lesson observations of a maximum variation sample of 33 prospective and practising primary or secondary teachers and 66 pre- and post-lesson interviews with them to identify their actual and perceived needs and challenges when having to engage all their students in challenging tasks. In the second phase, building on this needs-assessment analysis, we developed five modules for teachers and five associated modules for TEs, which aimed at helping them effectively deal with the most crucial challenges identified. After being content-validated and pilot-tested, these modules were implemented with 76 primary and secondary teachers (20 prospective and 56 practicing) working in different school settings (including underserved areas). During this third phase, recruited teachers worked in video-club settings through iterative cycles of experimentation with the EDUCATE materials and reflection upon their practice, facilitated by 16 TEs. TE logs (N=96) and teacher reflection cards (N=401), providing feedback on the implementation of the EDUCATE packages, were completed at the end of each video-club session and were used formatively to inform and refine the PD approach offered. In the fourth phase, we examined the effectiveness of the EDUCATE materials and PD approach. Specifically, the videotaped lessons were coded using an observation rubric developed in the third phase, which comprised a set of 35 phase-level and 10 lesson-level codes related to CA, DI and their interplay. By using linear growth models, we explored changes in the instructional quality in the 201 teachers’ videotaped lessons. Written memos of the videotaped video-club meetings (N=107) and end-of-project teacher/focus group interviews (N=76) were analysed following a phenomenological approach and constant comparative method to investigate participants’ experiences, (re)conceptualisations of CA and DI, and enduring challenges. The project culminated by revising the EDUCATE materials based on the lessons learned from this examination and by producing an e-learning course for teachers and TEs, which is hosted on the EDUCATE platform.The key EDUCATE results pertained to (a) producing a validated, effective, and transferable series of self-contained modules for teachers and their accompanying modules for TEs that concurrently attend to CA and DI; (b) identifying what is feasible to expect from teachers at different educational levels (primary vs. secondary) and career stages (prospective vs. practising)—as suggested by the statistically significant changes identified in aspects of teachers’ practice; (c) surfacing ways in which the modules produced and the adopted PD approach scaffolded teachers’ thinking and work around CA and DI; and (d) identifying challenges that teachers encounter as they currently work at both fronts.The project also raised awareness among different policy makers, stakeholders and researchers about the importance of attending to both CA and DI. Because the EDUCATE outputs are open-access and disseminated through several venues, such as the EDUCATE platform (educate-platform.com/) and website (www.ucy.ac.cy/educate/en/), the impact of the project on TEs, teachers, and foremost students—the ultimate recipients of high-quality instruction—is expected to be long term.

As the quality of the environment is continuously degrading, the vision of the Sea4All project was to contribute in reversing this tendency through the formation of a strong environmental awareness and consciousness. And the best way to start is school age, through the creation of innovative educational and electronic material. To this end, the appropriate learning strategies were elaborated in collaboration with the teachers as a driver to transfer and spread the knowledge to the schools.Sea4All has developed educational games and classroom material focusing on marine pollution and especially oil spills and floating objects (e.g. plastics) for school children around the world. A team of scientists from Greece, Cyprus, United Kingdom and Romania has developed new innovative educational material for teachers and an online learning game that were: a) pilot tested in multiple countries in Europe, b) used in a series of outreach events to enhance the awareness of local communities in terms of the environmental and economic impacts of marine pollution events. All the tools of the project are created mainly for educational purposes as part of a special educational curriculum for enhancing environmental awareness in schools, but can also be used out of the school setting and are addressed to all interested stakeholders. This endeavour was a result of the collective and interdisciplinary work of experienced teachers, marine scientists and computer scientists. The teachers created the Training Curriculum and the Pedagogical Handbook for teachers and students, enriched by scientific and environmental data concerning marine pollution and coastal environment, presented by ICT tools, also based on the same scientific and pedagogical material. Several activities took place in order to achieve the main goal of the project, and prepare the five Intellectual Outputs of the Sea4All project:-The Training Curriculum was created with the aim to contribute to the teacher’s professional development on marine pollution issues, providing them with all the necessary scientific knowledge and educational competencies to transfer the knowledge in the classroom and motivate the children.The Training Curriculum will help the teachers understand the marine pollution and conservation issues and its impacts not only to our health but also at the social, cultural, ecological and economic level.-The Pedagogical Handbook is designed to be used as a useful guide for school teachers, educators and counsellors. It consists of conceptual knowledge, pedagogical approaches and assessment methodologies based on successful and inspiring experiences on marine pollution. The ultimate goal is the transformational learning and the acquisition of new attitudes and behaviour on marine pollution by the pupils in class but also by the whole school community. It consists of 10 analytical lessons that can function as models and inspiring examples, for teachers to use them in class but also adapt them and take them further, according to the needs and pursuits of their pupils. -Technological developments in marine pollution, concerning the study of oil spills and floating debris affecting the marine environment. New research data was gathered and analyzed,and vast geographical, geological and oceanographic scientific databases were incorporated, in order to make the produced scenarios and simulations more realistic and adapted to local conditions. All the scientific material is presented in a simplified way, understandable by teachers but also generally non-specialists, highlighting the different aspects of pollution and its environmental impact. -The e-learning platform contains all the scientific information and knowledge produced in the project , but it also goes further. The platform is open to more information, in order to serve as a point of reference in the future, and contain all related information on marine pollution, educational methodologies and ESD competences for people who would like to enrich their knowledge and skills. -The ICT based learning game was created as a complementary educational tool for embedding acquired knowledge. The e-Game was designed in order to attract the interest of children and help them understand the marine pollution issues in a more active and experiential way, facilitating the acquisition of appropriate knowledge.This online learning game was developed mainly for 10-14 old pupils. All participants, but mainly teachers that took part at the various activities provided valuable feedback for the successful completion of the outcomes. They were very much interested and even enthusiastic about embedding innovative educational and electronic material in class, easy and understandable to use in classroom. All countries aim to embed these tools in their curriculum according to their different educational systems.