RIEPPS

Research and innovation of educational practices in children's services

Project Reference: 2023-1-IT02-KA122-SCH-000138116

Background

The changes imposed by the pandemic have prompted a reflection on the correspondence between the practices offered within the childcare services and the new needs emerging from the same social and cultural changes which have intensified during these years. Our organisation, which interfaces with more than 8,000 children and families every day, has identified the urgent need to initiate a process of innovation to enrich the tools and transversal skills of the staff working in the 0-6 services in a perspective of comparison with other European realities, to re-think the 'educational routine' and work on innovative and inclusive organisational and pedagogical models. This is accompanied by the setting up of a working team to foster an internationalisation process of the educational services through the creation of networks to enhance and to keep the focus high on the quality of childcare services.

Objectives

The main objective of the project is to systematise the job-shadowing activity as a good educational practice for all educational and school staff, working on the development of cultural exchanges, twinning and international mobility of educators, teachers, collaborators and pedagogical management and coordination figures. The second objective is investing in the enhancement of internationalisation, both through the linguistic improvement of all the profiles involved and through the training of project design and management skills of the coordination staff, in order to better manage projects in the incoming and outgoing phases and to create a working team that is able to accompany the staff of the 0-6 Services during the training opportunities abroad and in the reception of colleagues, keeping the coordination of the projects within the context of education services.

Activities

The project will allow a mobility flow of educators and teachers at two Swedish educational institutions with the aim of innovating and implementing tools for building inclusive educational contexts. The process will involve a number of representatives of 0-6 Services, who will be then involved to compare and review experiences before and after the job-shadowing activities. A pedagogical coordination monitoring group will also build a training moment in which a pedagogist from the Swedish territory will be welcomed to share the outcomes of the training project with all personnel at the city level.
At the same time, two courses will also be attended by the pedagogical management and coordination team to enhance English language and project management skills to promote internationalisation of the educational services area.

Impact

The expected results concern the processes of development and enhancement of the quality of the educational and scholastic offer, that will make it possible to impact on the constitution of inclusive services "tailored for every child". The group will develop skills with respect to the research and development of innovative practices for the creation of inclusive learning environments, starting from some transversal focuses: structuring spaces, materials, time, the role of the adult, the organisational model, didactic proposals, communication and documentation of learning processes. Participants will also be able to broaden their language skills and project management skills and learn new ways of building international professional networks through the promotion of twinning, job-shadowing projects, cultural exchanges and international mobility of school personnel.