ACCORD has the aim to support teachers in handling conflict and dealing with cultural diversity by creating, assessing and upscaling an integrated online pedagogical practice that combines conceptual material through MOOC delivery and Serious Games for practical, experiential and hands-on learning. This represents one of the specific objective of the call and help to foster mutual understanding and respect in classrooms and schools. It will directly contribute to fostering the inclusion of disadvantaged learners, including persons with a migrant background, while preventing and combating discriminatory practices, which is one of the general objective of the present call.
The specific objective is to help teachers to create a peaceful and productive teaching environment in which students’ learning is known to be more effective and, in turn, help to prevent the current discrepancy between indigenous students and student with migrant background in European schools. The competence needed are therefore related to psychology and conflict resolution, knowledge of migrant conditions and reasons for conflicts, technology-enhanced tool development, assessment of pedagogical practice bases on ICT, and involvement of policy makers and big stakeholders in the educational field. All this is only possible thanks to the implementation of a transnational project in which competences and networks can be combined and exploited at a wider European level.
The ACCORD project aims to transfer and adapt positive project results, training products and methodology obtained by the ENACT project to the new context of mediation and cultural integration. ENACT software has already facilitated an active learning approach to negotiation skills development through several previous trials of scenarios in different EU countries. This provides a level of confidence in the ability of this project to achieve mediation and conflict resolution skills development at a low cost, using accessible and flexible VET product within training and educational settings. Consequently, the free online delivery of the training allows both geographic and resource barriers to training access to be overcome, that often hinder the access to professional training and assessment schemes in intercultural communication and conflict resolution by exploiting ICT practices, especially within the educational sector. This will be especially true for all those potential beneficiaries such as training organizations and individuals with no access to training in this area, or that have a limited economic capacity. In fact, ACCORD can effectively impact on the demand and the real need for teacher development in sensible social areas, such as public schools in frontline areas strongly interested by consistent immigrant flows and/or marginalised by the geographical location or by the particular constitution of the student body.
In particular, ACCORD project will impact the current curriculum development of teachers training and CPD by proposing a dedicated pedagogical framework and competency model for the transfer of conflict resolution, negotiation, mediation and intercultural communication skills based on evidence derived by quantitative and qualitative data collected during project activities.
Project reference: 580362-EPP-1-2016-1-IT-EPPKA3-ITutor-SOC-IN
Financial entity: European Union, Programa Erasmus+, EACEA/05/2016, “Social inclusion through education, training and youth”
Coordinator: Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II (Italy)
UB tutor: Mario Barajas Frutos
31/12/2016-31/12/2019