2023-06-26
SOCI@LL – Whole school social labs: Innovative and participatory approaches for citizenship education and social inclusion
SOCI@LL - Whole School Social Labs is a project that aims to create innovative approaches to social inclusion by changing the way students, teachers, schools, and communities work together. The project was coordinated by the Portuguese association INOVA+ and CESIE was involved in its implementation. In order to achieve these goals, the consortium created different tools and resources to involve teachers and school leaders, students and local authorities, the target groups of the project.
Specifically, the project created guidelines for teachers and local authorities to develop initiatives inside and outside the classroom and, most importantly, it also created local social laboratories, i.e. virtual platforms linked at European level to promote innovative teaching tools. The methodological approach was participatory, involving all key actors at local and European level. This approach consisted of five steps.
The first step of the participatory approach is the mapping of the current landscape and the development of a roadmap for change in social inclusion. The second step is to engage key actors in collaborative actions, such as school-community cooperation at local and European levels. The third step is to provide school leaders and teachers with resources for creating an inclusive system both inside and outside schools, these resources will be co-developed and will be useful for testing innovative educational resources. This approach will also offer resources to local authorities on how to create and sustain cross-sectoral platforms for social inclusion. The final step is the above-mentioned creation of the Virtual Social Lab, more precisely called SOCI@LL, where the project resources and all that has been generated during the research phase and the other previous steps and experiences will be available to the end users. The ultimate goal is to create inclusive systems.
A positive consequence of the results of the project is that it contributes to the creation of local partnership and cooperation among students within their school and in a wider sense with their community. This leads to an increase in the participation of all actors involved in the implementation of the project, stimulated by the joint effort brought by the students. In turn, the increase in participation contributes to a more inclusive environment, not only inside the schools but also outside. In this context, the intuitive way in which the Virtual Social Lab helps to explore resources is fundamental and functional, as well as its openness to external potential participants, who always have the possibility to create new discussions or join existing ones.
The SOCI@LL project was presented at the 13th Annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (EDULEARN 2021).
