Implementation of ‘Europe and me’ (SoI-ES-238)

Context for the Implementation

This Story of Implementation has been developped by Juan Bosco Camón a member of the Europeana Spanish User Group within the subject Social Studies in a group of Adult Education Students.

Enhancing awareness of the rights and duties as a European citizen is one of the core goals of the European Parliament Ambassador School Project. Our Adult Education Center has been the only Public Training Institution for adults appointed in Spain for this Project. The above mentioned objective is also highlighted  and included in the Spanish Social Sciences syllabus for Year II at Secondary Education for adults (learners aged between 17 and 35 years of age). This LS focuses particularly on encouraging to reflect on values and personal identities as well as increasing awareness about cultural diversity. Therefore, the LS  ‘Europe and Me’ fits perfectly into our teaching plan and hence we implemented it as an introduction to the teaching about EU.

Implementing the Learning Scenario

Implementation took place during the first school week in January 2022. We opted for focusing particularly on research about the constituents of European citizenship, instead of opening our research to the topics designed by the author of this LS.

Since class periods at Secondary Ed. for adults take two sessions of 55 minutes, we opted for implementing a collaborative learning approach in which tasks were distributed among small groups and research was conducted in the computer lab. To facilitate progression L1 (Spanish) was allowed. Learners assessed their performance and provided feedback by means of a Google Evaluation Form. From this feedback, we may infer learners enjoyed this implementation which catered for critical thinking, as learners were required to think reflectively on their personalities and their roots while allowing differentiated learning paths. It also helped learners grasp the functioning mechanisms of the EU and also improved their collaboration skills.

Procedure

After an initial briefing in which I (adult teacher) laid particular emphasis on how European culture effects an individual’s identity, as an energiser, adult learners (aged 19 to 53) had to answer this open question “What does it mean  to be European to you?”, thus reflecting on the core values the European Union enshrines. The European Union’s fundamental values are respect for human dignity and human rights, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law. These values unite all the member states – no country that does not recognise these values can belong to the Union. This activity was carried out in small group work and was eventually peer reviewed.  

Next activity involved searching for images into Europeana  to sustain their views and opinions on “What does it mean to be European to you?”. This section of the activity is based on a free search through Europeana. Each learner was allowed to look for images and resources (gifs, mp3, etc.) on Europeana.

Final Activity consisted of sharing answers and images, which were pinned on the the EPA infopoint wall display by the students on then displayed in the class.

Afterthoughts

Teaching adults have to compensate for many learning shortcomings that characterize these learners. It is therefore essential to cater for learner needs, and provide differentiated input for diverse learning styles (visual clips,  listening fragments,  reading extracts, etc). Europeana resources is a treasure trove of learning materials that may be eventually turned embedded into any teaching plan. With this implementation our learners had plenty of learning possibilities in this respect.

The downside of our implementation: poor foreign language knowledge may hinder learners from using or accessing Europeana indexed resources. Alternate language provision (maybe through online translation) may facilitate and improve the usability of Europeana learning resources for these learners.

Did you find this story of implementation interesting? Why don’t you read about the related learning scenario?

Europe and me (LS-FR-11) – Teaching With Europeana (eun.org)

Did you find this story of implementation interesting? You might also like:

• Our City on Europeana (LS-PL-530) – Teaching With Europeana (eun.org)
• A Timeline of women’s rights in Europe (IT-LS-559) – Teaching With Europeana (eun.org)
• Travelling the World with Europeana (EN-CUR-605) – Teaching With Europeana (eun.org)

Do you want to discover more stories of implementation? Click here.

CC0 1.0 Universal: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by the National Gallery of Denmark.