Progetti di ricerca

In 2015, the United Nations formulated the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), as the world’s strategic plan to create a better world focusing on “people, planet and prosperity”. It is a plan that will engage all stakeholders - from European and international… Leggi tutto institutions as well as governments on national, regional and local level, to private stakeholders and NGOs, and further on to grassroots associations and individual citizens - working together to end extreme poverty, reduce inequality and protect the planet against the climate changes. The SDG have been adopted by 193 nations, among these all the EU member states (MS), and as a common European response to the SDG, the European Commission (EC) has developed and are implementing, together with the MS, a range of different strategies, plans and programmes that support the implementation of the SDG. Among these are e.g. the European Green Deal, The European Social Pillar and the European Skills Agenda, with which the EC and the MS work together to create a greener, more resilient, fair and inclusive European society. In all these initiatives, European diversities and the European Integration Project (EIP) are seen as an advantage to innovate together, increase equality and social inclusion in the society and create better opportunities for the European society to contribute to the SDG. There is a clear and strategic desire from the EC to engage the European citizens more in the EIP and the implementation of the SDG, but in order to create this engagement it is important that both the SDG, the EIP and the European strategies and plans that support the implementation of the SDG, become “each citizens property or agenda”, which is not the case today. Citizens working in government organisations, NGOs and research institutions, are very often aware of the SDGs, as many national, regional and local development strategies build on the SDG, as well as this is often the case for research strategies within universities. But for many other citizens, who are not working in policy-oriented organisations or research institutions, the SDG, as well as the EIP and development strategies, are not common knowledge, and are not values that are close to the consciousness of the citizens. A great challenge is to reach the citizens on an individual level, and the PLACES project will deal with this challenge, reaching out especially towards children and young people, as a sustainable development is about ensuring their future. If they can become more engaged and act as ambassadors, a cascade reaction is possible to be created from children to parents, and further on into the working place and the society. Only in that way the EU will be able to create the sustainable changes we want for our society. So, the PLACES project is basically motivated by the missing engagement within the European population to engage actively in the creation of a sustainable society.

The current European societies are experiencing an unprecedented crisis when it comes to social inclusion in general and the social inclusion of disadvantaged groups in particular. As many newspapers show, the same COVID-19 pandemic does not produce the same effects on the student… Leggi tutto population since, for example, only considering the use of online training, students of migrant origin have more problems if only because of the lack of personal computers at home. Many studies point the finger at the growing social exclusion of this group of persons trapped between school dropouts and menial jobs (very often in the deliveroo sector). According to OECD (https://gpseducation.oecd.org/revieweducationpolicies/#!node=41750&filter=all), "Immigrant students are less likely to enrol in early childhood education programmes, tend to have more restricted access to quality education, leave school earlier, and have lower academic achievements than their native peers. Among adults, many highly-educated workers in their own countries face a higher risk of unemployment or end up in low-wage jobs that underutilise their skills, around half of foreign-born workers are employed in jobs primarily involving routine tasks, more prone to job loss due to automation. As a result, host countries forgo the potential of productive contributions that these immigrants could bring to their communities, especially in ageing societies". The Technical report by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), (Luxembourg, 2018), highlights that "Early school leavers become generally disadvantaged socially and economically in later stages in life, so that it is important to better understand the motivations for leaving school and provide adequate policy solutions" while identifying that "at the students’ level, the socio-economic background of students, their epistemological beliefs and grade repetition, while, at the school level, the most consistent factor is the school’s mean expected early school leavers rate. The school-environment thus appears to play a key role in shaping educational expectations". As the report points out, the school environment is indeed a central theme and it also allows us to introduce the topic of the whole-school approach. From this point of view, one of the most interesting experiences is that coming from the "Schools for Health in Europe Network Foundation" (SHE) that is a network of health promoting school professionals from 33 countries in Europe and Central Asia. The network is supported by the WHO Regional Office for Europe and the European Commission (https://www.schoolsforhealth.org/). The network promotes the whole-school approach which recognizes that all aspects of the school community can impact upon students’ health and wellbeing, and that learning and health are linked. SHE recommends focus on six components in order to seek to achieve a whole-school approach, and here as for this project, we highlight: 1) "School social environment relates to the quality of the relationships among and between school community members, e.g., between students and students and school staff. The social environment is influenced by the relationships with parents and the broader community" and 2) "Community links are links between the school and the students’ families and the school and key groups/individuals in the surrounding community. Consulting and collaborating with community stakeholders will support health promoting school efforts and support the school community in their health promoting actions". Educators, youth workers and, especially, schools teachers, often complain about training and tools lackness and how often, when it comes to students of migrant origin, the emphasis is placed on teachers' skills mainly on intercultural competence, which is important but not enough. Due to this reason, the "Whole school Approach" for Youth with migrant background" (WAY) project aims at: 1. To produce a very first research paper on the whole-school approach adapted to education to students with migrant background that will be published in the "Health Promotion International"; 2. develop the methodological guidelines for the training of teachers, educators, youth workers with regard to whole-school approach to education to students with migrant background; 3. supporting of 60 teachers, educators, youth workers in developing the whole-school approach to education to students with migrant background. While in the long term WAY project aims at: 1. promoting the social inclusion of people coming from a migrant and low socio-economic background; 2. reduce the early school leaving for students of migrant origin. The importance of funding WAY project lies in the the potential of the whole-school approach aimed at reducing the school dropout of children of migrant origin. Carrying it out at TRANSNATIONAL LEVEL offers, besides, the possibility to strengthen the strategic European dimension of the consortium.