Implementation of  “Women, feminism and human rights” (SOI-IT-306)

Author: Emma Santarcangelo

School/Organization: IC “G.Pascoli” – Benevento-Italy

Feminism and gender equality are important topics to be discussed at school because they help students to develop a critical understanding of the world around them and prepare them to be informed and active citizens in a complex society. This was the reason why I decided to implement the learning scenario ”Women, feminism and human rights” by Maria-Isabela Miron, even if It was designed for older students.

A cross-disciplinary work

 As soon as I read the LS it was clear to me that it was easy to adapt it in my classroom. I appreciated the complete organization and useful resources which involve cross-disciplinary work across subjects such as Mother tongue, History, Geography, Civic Education, Art, Foreign language, and Technologies

I proposed this activity to the final class of the lower secondary school (students of 13-14 years old) and I have organized the students into groups of four. They had a basic familiarity with digital cultural heritage. The SOI has been planned to develop various competencies among the students like: 

  • Literacy (writing slogans and speeches and speaking in public); 
  • Multilingual (reading and translating the captions under the images and documenting the cultures to which they belonged); 
  • Digital (using digital tools like Word cloud, Padlet, Genially, Canva, Power Point); 
  • Personal, social, and learning-to-learn competencies (reflecting on oneself and the privilege to live in a democratic society;  Managing information, and working constructively with others); 
  • Entrepreneurship (developing the ability to turn ideas into action through creativity, innovation, and project planning and management);
  • Citizenship competence (valuing democracy, justice, fairness, equality, and the rule of law, and remembering that rights are not privileges that must be guaranteed to everyone around the world

Talking about the process

The learning process had several steps. 

The first step was the warm-up, which engaged students with questions related to feminism, gender equality, and discrimination. 

The second step was an introduction to how to use Europeana, we started with the resources included in the original learning Scenario. Then, the students thought about how to organize the work, first of all, they planned a checklist, shared their ideas, and made proposals.

In the third step, students were divided into groups of four, they have to search images on Europeana using these key words: feminism, gender inequality, discrimination, suffragettes, famous females, and women in literature and science. At the end of the research, each group is requested to reflect on the images, wrote their thoughts, and drew slogans and stories inspired by the images. Slogan and stories were written in English and translated into Italian, all the material has been used to create presentations using digital tools like Genially and Canva.

The fourth step was sharing students’ experiences, each group presented their stories and slogan during a conference about Agenda 2030 (goal 3) organized in our school in May. 

As the final step, students filled out a cognitive autobiography to reflect on the experience.

Following there are some images of student works.

A new awareness

The implementation of the LS “Women, feminism and human rights”, achieved several learning outcomes, like promoting Gender equality, Fostering critical thinking skills, Addressing gender-based violence, and Encouraging activism. In fact, the topic of feminism can inspire students to become active citizens and advocate for social change. It contributes to providing opportunities for students to engage in activism and learn about how they can make a difference in their communities.

I suggest to educators interested in implementing the same learning scenario to have also a look at other resources on Teaching with Europeana, in order to see other colleagues’ ideas and enrich their lesson plans.  Furthermore, I would also suggest also to explore other topics related to this learning scenario, like gender discrimination between white and black women.

The benefits of browsing through cultural digital heritage

Thanks to Europeana I had the opportunity to incorporate digital cultural heritage into my teaching practice, and this was a huge benefit for my students. Through Europeana, we had access to safe digital resources and this helped me in creating engaging and dynamic learning activities. The students had an incredible experience because only Europeana makes it possible to explore and work with digital cultural heritage in a truly unique way. They can interact with certified historical artifacts and cultural treasures in a non-traditional way. Students’ experience with research on Europeana has been facilitated thanks to the personal account, in this way they create their own “board” where collect the resources and save their links. To implement this learning scenario I have collaborated with other colleagues conducting cross-curricular activities and it has been different from traditional educational activities, here are a few:

  • incorporating digital heritage into ordinary lessons, students got in touch with the materials in more interactive and interesting ways;
  •  working together with different teachers, students developed skills in different disciplines.

Did you find this story of implementation interesting? Why don’t you read about the related learning scenario? Women, feminism and human rights (LS-RO-221) created by Isabela Miron

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

Public Domain Mark 1.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by the Albertina.

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