News

DIDATTICA PER COMPETENZE E ORIZZONTI EDUCATIVI
La prospettiva Lifelong Learning

A cura di Roberta Ricucci e Alessia Rosa

Download the full publication here.

We are now approaching the final phase of our project.
By October, all pilots will have been completed. While the more practical activities of the project are coming to an end, our team remains committed to conducting an intensive evaluation of the results and further disseminating the project's findings.
This is a critical moment for the consortium as we work to ensure the sustainability of the KIDS4ALLL method and advocate for the promotion of key lifelong learning competencies to foster the inclusion of migrant children.

KIDS4ALLL September Newsletter

The KIDS4ALLL project will be present at UNIGHT, a European Researcher event that takes place from 29-30 September 2023 in Turin.

The initiative strives to be an immersive experience that involves researchers from five Countries with the aim of enhancing the dialogue between citizens and science, to actively participate in the most relevant social challenges of the present and the future.

Make sure to drop by if you have the chance, the KIDS4ALLL teams will be there on Sept.30, from 10am - 6pm with several activities and information related to the project contents.

For more information visit: https://unightproject.eu/en/about-unight

To further enhance impact of the KIDS4ALLL project activities and results all partners who implemented the pilot phase in their national contexts engaged in meetings with national representatives from public and civil society organisations. The National Stakeholder Groups were composed of representatives of teachers, headmasters and social workers’ organizations, parents’ organizations, and children and youth organizations at regional and national levels.

The KIDS4ALLL project team has provided for a flash note, that sums up all recommendations and suggestions of the meetings in the different national contexts that can be downloaded here.

The Italian pilot partner ASAI, volunteering association based in Turin offering after-school activities for children and learning initiatives for migrant adults, has officially launched the second round of the pilot phase. After having tested learning contents of the literacy unit very successfully with migrant adults, who are participating in a particular formation path to obtain an official and recognised educational title, they performed a peer4peer activity with 5th grade elementary school students during an after-school activity. Thus, migrant students aged from 16-18 years old, who arrived just a few months ago, provided for a mini lecture in their home language and in Italian about friendship for their younger peers. The activity aimed to raise awareness for multilingualism, for the importance of language for social and educational inclusion and to stimulate intercultural exchange and received a great feedback from the involved trainees and mentors. The group has been supported by highly engaged and dedicated educational specialists who implemented and facilitated the action with enthusiasm and the spirit of the KIDS4ALLL project. 

The international KIDS4ALLL contest has been launched to award original, inclusive and interactive learning material that has been created by learning buddies who participated in the first pilot phase.

The original deadline of May 15th has been extended to May 28th, 2023 to provide a further possibility to all pilot participants to showcase their developed material and learning products.

What are you waiting for? Upload your work.it results and become an official kids4alll contestant!

UniTo, grant holding and coordinating institution of the KIDS4ALLL project, is looking forward to host the 5^th internal project meeting in Turin. Central aspects will focus on the Pilot Phase I that has been conducted in 8 partner countries. Therefore, the consortium envisages to discuss preliminary outcomes as well as opportunities and threats for the following Pilot Phase II in order to optimise all upcoming processes.

The first round of the KIDS4ALLL pilot phase is coming to an end; youngsters, educators and teachers have successfully tested the proposed learning method and the elaborated learning contents on the KIDS4ALLL platform in 8 national contexts. Essential part of the learning method is the co-creational phase that envisages the production of learning contents from peers for peers to benefit from synergies among learners.

The consortium is very eager to discover learning products that have been thought and designed by the users who participated in the pilot phase and therefore launched an international competition. The most original, inclusive and interactive learning material that has been created by learning buddies will be awarded by an international jury.  

Check out the call and get started!!!

Partners have started the piloting phase of the KIDS4ALLL project. This part of the project is essential for testing the know-what and know-how areas, as well to ensure the quality of the final project.

Before starting the pilot phase of KIDS4ALLL in Turkey, we visited our formal institutions (primary, middle, and high school), and held workshops with students and teachers who will be the primary target groups in the pilot phase.

At the beginning of the workshops, some children were distant, and they didn't want to participate in the activities. After the initial activities, children started to get involved and share their opinions on topics that had to do with their education and everyday life in school and at home. It was very promising to see these children opening up and starting to discuss. It was great to see the quick progress and see them wanting to communicate despite the language barrier. The most vivid example was a child that wanted to fill up our questionnaire but could not read Turkish fluently. However, he was so engaged with the workshop that he wanted us to help him to do that. Workshops were a great experience for us during the project because it was the first time we communicated with the children and saw the potential of this project, and how it is improving their situation towards a more inclusive future.

Koç University Team | Sarıyer, İstanbul | Türkiye

The event is organized by KIDS4ALLL project and IDEAs project in collaboration with the Islamic Association of the Alps (AIA), local stakeholder of KIDS4ALLL. It will be held in Turin on 12th September, and will focus on discussing inclusion processes in schools. Several topics will be addressed, including school and extra-school cooperation and educational success of students with a migratory background.

The event will be held in YallAurora! Center. Founded on the initiative of AIA association to contribute to the urban redevelopment of the Aurora district in Turin, YallAurora! is a community center mainly addressed to young people and, at the same time, it represents a reference point for the Aurora neighbourhood community.

International Literacy Day takes place on September 8 every year to raise awareness and concern for literacy problems that exist globally. It was founded by a proclamation of UNESCO, in 1966 to remind the international community of the importance of literacy for individuals, communities and societies as a matter of dignity and human rights, and the need for intensified efforts towards more literate and sustainable societies.

Literacy is one of the 8 key competencies for Lifelong Learning that KIDS4ALLL project aims to promote through a collaborative and co-creative learning process. In fact, as reported by a  UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) policy brief, literacy can’t be conceived any more as a stand-alone skill to be learned within a set timeframe, but instead it should be approached with a lifelong learning perspective: investing in sustained learning and updating already acquired skills.

The theme of this year’s International Literacy Day is Transforming Literacy Learning Spaces to ensure quality, equitable, and inclusive education for all.

Today, as mentioned by UNESCO, at least 771 million young people and adults are still lacking basic literacy skills. For this reason, it is important to transform learning spaces using “an integrated approach that promotes literacy learning within the perspective of lifelong learning” (UNESCO).

For the occasion UNESCO learning cities, are invited to exchange best practices of implementing lifelong learning at local level during the webinar ‘Transforming literacy learning spaces’ by discussing with relevant stakeholders approaches to literacy learning spaces while exploring how disadvantaged groups can best be reached.

The KIDS4ALLL project has been officially launched on April 1st, 2021. After one year of challenging activities and intriguing results, the partner IfE has prepared the first report addressed to policy makers and stakeholder that aims to underline the significance and the opportunities of peer learning.

First Policy Brief

The KIDS4ALLL project has successfully concluded its first year of activities and is proceeding timely and with satisfactory outputs of the preliminary research phase conducted so far towards the implementation preliminary results. On this occasion, the University of Turin will host the 1st General Assembly on March 28, 2022 which brings together the team leaders of the involved 14 partner institutions from 11 national contexts. Consequently, it aims to facilitate the dialogue between the various partners. The main topics of the meeting will focus on the upcoming 9-month pilot phase and thus on the implementation of the online learning platform based on co-creative collaboration between peers. This trial period foresees the involvement of formal and non-formal educational institutions in each partner country.

In December 2021, for the World Day of Migrants, the Department of Political Sciences, Law, and International Studies of the University of Padua organized two presentations and discussion meetings starting from the KIDS4ALLL project. The initiative, called KIDS Meets Students, was aimed at raising awareness among students of the issues of inequality, migration, and educational challenges. The condition of the migrant continues to be penalizing: as regards access to education; consequently, low levels of education affect life and work opportunities (as well as the lack of qualification recognition), overall the quality of life and well-being of these individuals. Therefore, the issue of raising awareness of the education-migration binomial is central in democratic societies. In fact, Save the Children (2020) highlights that in schools of the first cycle of many realities, especially in the metropolitan area, there are increasing processes of marked ethnic-social polarization that do not favor integration.

KIDS4ALLL is a good observatory of these dynamics. In practice, we then worked on preparing a short presentation of the project, preceded by a contextualization within the lessons of Social policies and Sociology of interculturality by project team members Martina Visentin and Chiara Pattaro and thanking the presence of Giulia Maria Cavaletto (Advisory Board Member KIDS4ALLL). The activities in the classrooms were organized around three topics: 1) migration (push factors, countries involved as sending and receiving contexts, migrants’ profiles by age, gender, education, goals…); 2) relationship between migration and education and 3) public policies and institutional tools to support inclusion,

Within the peculiar theoretical framework of each involved teaching course, students and teachers dealt with the key competencies for lifelong learning and the right to access and enjoy qualified educational opportunities. The project showed how concretely it is possible to take action starting from a theoretical reflection, and methodological tools; and highlighted the importance of the interconnection between different contexts: educational, social, and political. The project goals and its actions, designed to be carried out in formal, non-formal, and informal learning contexts, have given the opportunity to debate on public policies and institutional actions that support equoality of pportunities. And this was done by emphasizing the crucial role of eight key competencies for lifelong learning, reaffirmed by the European Union, as essential for full citizenship, inclusion, participation, education, and social cohesion.

The initiative involved about 60 students who actively participated in a fruitful debate. Questions were especially asked about the difficulty in working on a local level with all parts of migration services.  In the Veneto region, according to the students, there seems to remain a lack of synergies fragmentation between services and schools. It was an opportunity for the students to understand that in their work, they must also look around and be receptive to opportunities that may arise from projects, initiatives that are not just for the benefit of experts.

The pilot partner or TÁRKI, Motivation Association supports the social integration of people, primarily children and young people with disadvantaged backgrounds through motivating them, improving their skills and abilities as well as through shaping the attitudes of society.

Their study halls, which stem from a holistic view of personality, were created in order to provide complex developmental services to children and young people who do not receive enough attention in the educational system in Hungary due to their marginal social position. The program is realized in two study halls in Southern Hungary. They organize complex developmental courses, free time activities, ICT courses and sport activities for 30 disadvantaged pupils. 

On the occasion of the International Day of Education, the Association prepared special activities for the children, in order to get their answers on what they think about the study hall, why do they like to go there. Children were asked to write or draw what they think. Really heart-warming works were created.

Some examples of their answers:

„The community and the cheerfulness are the best!”

„Thank you, mentors for all the help!”

„When any of us has a problem, we can turn to you.”

„Here we can learn, play and make new friends.”

„It’s great to be together!”

Children in the study hall feel they belong to a community, that their characteristics are valued and that they have a safe place to go. Those who are often lagging behind the others in classrooms, can find their strengths and build self-confidence in these non-formal educational settings, as the study halls.

In occasion of the International Day of Education, the KIDS4ALLL project has launched its first learning video pill on the issue of Lifelong learning and the linked 8 key competences, which you can find in the section 'Ressources' at this page.

The learning pill explains in a few minutes why a temporally unlimited cognitive development through learning and training represents today the new educational paradigm of the 21^st century, which competences need to be forwarded and promoted to achieve the objective of lifelong learning and how these principles have been implemented in the KIDS4ALLL project.

Don’t hesitate and check it out – there are more learning pills to follow!

The 1st Cross-cultural workshop has been launched very successfully last November. It was an important opportunity to bring together teachers and educators, to engage in an interdisciplinary dialogue and to share best practises and techniques for promoting multilingualism in school and educational contexts.

The 2nd edition of the Cross-cultural workshop will take place on Wednesday, February 9, 2022. The theme is 'Personal Competencies - Cultural Awareness - Citizenship Competences' as central part of the LLL Key Competencies. The workshop is for practitioners working in formal, non-formal and informal educational and will be organised by the KIDS task force consisting of Tarki Social Research Institute, University of Jena, University of Barcelona and the Foundation for Access to Rights, and be supported by the University of Turin.

“Education is a human right, a public good and a public responsibility.” (UNESCO)

Lifetime inclusive and quality education for all is one of the most effective and proven means for sustainable development. For this reason, quality education is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations.

The Lifelong Learning construct has been introduced by the European Commission as 21st century educational paradigm, that moves away from temporal, spatial and modal constraints when we speak of learning and training.

The KIDS4ALLL project consortium has created a short video pill on the lifelong learning concept and the related 8 key competencies on the occasion of the fourth International Day of Education. With this micro lecture, the consortium aims to contribute to the dissemination of the LLL perspective as key element for inclusive education and a structuring element of society because it helps to promote social cohesion and active citizenship, personal development and well-being. One of the principles underlying our project is the idea that LLL competencies are an important tool to address the growing problem of inequality in education systems, where vulnerable groups, such as immigrant students, are particularly disadvantaged.

Stay tuned!

On Dec. 18th has been proclaimed the International Migrants Day by the UN, which represents a global commemoration event honoring the millions of migrants around the world who have faced adversity to seek dignity, security and peace while aspiring to a better life for themselves and their families.

For the occasion KIDS4ALLL is planning a Facebook and Instagram Live Event on December 13th at 12 p.m. (CET). In this event Mialy Dermish from the SIRIUS Network will lead through the conversation with three speakers having a migratory background focusing on inclusion of migrant and refugee children in education.

Stay tuned on our Instagram and Facebook profiles!

We are pleased to share this interesting initiative organized as part of the Scandagli Project (in which the University of Turin is involved), together with two schools in Turin: La festa della Luce (engl.: The Party of Light) on Monday 13 December 2021 | 4 pm (CET).

The purpose of the initiative is to make the students of the two schools the protagonists of a path that will lead them to participate in the improvement of the area of the Aurora district around the schools of via Cecchi together with the community, to create belonging and invest in change in a lasting way.

To find out more, visit the SCANDAGLI website or their FaceBook page and their Instagram  profile

The National Service Learning Festival was held in Mestre, Italy on Nov. 24 -  But what is actually Service Learning?

It is a methodology that promotes the design of ‘learning’ paths to create a ‘service’ that satisfies a real and felt need in the area. Through didactic proposals, activities are built starting from real problematic situations of the socio-economic context in which the school is located and students are guided to carry out concrete actions in favor of the community. The initiatives undertaken must always provide for close collaboration with local institutions and aim at establishing a virtuous circle between classroom learning and solidarity service.

KIDS4ALLL partner INDIRE joined the Festival that took place on November 24^th. This was an important occasion to promote the Service Learning innovative approach within the Italian context.

To learn more

As our past research conducted within the project has underlined the necessity of teachers and educators to enter into (interdisciplinary) dialogue and to exchange (best) practices and techniques of their daily work, the KIDS4ALLL project is happy to launch a new training series for target group 2, ie. practitioners working in formal, non-and informal educational contexts.

In order to benefit from the international KIDSconsortium we have set up an online cross-national workshop that brings together teachers and educators from 11 national contexts on Wednesday, Nov. 24.

The topic of this first cross-national workshop will be ‘Multilingualism’, in line with one of the LLL key competences, that is addressed by the work team Levinsky and Indire. The entire event will be organised in English language, therefore English and foreign language teachers will be primarily addressed. All participants will have the possibility to enter into dialogue with their international peers and represents thus a great opportunity to meet, greet and exchange experiences and practices. 

World Children's Day is celebrated on 20th of November to commemorate the Declaration of the Rights of the Child adopted by the UN General Assembly on 20 November 1959. This Declaration highlights children’s need for special care and protection.

The KIDS4ALLL project aims to encounter the educational needs of children, in particular of migrant children, and of educators as pathfinders for continuous lifelong and life wide learning.

We strongly believe that the following 10 principles underlying the Declaration of the Rights of the Child are central for the development of strategies towards educational and social inclusion of a highly diversified student population: 

• The right to equality, without distinction on account of race, religion or national origin.
• The right to special protection for the child’s physical, mental and social development.
• The right to a name and a nationality.
• The right to adequate nutrition, housing and medical services.
• The right to special education and treatment when a child is physically or mentally handicapped.
• The right to understanding and love by parents and society.
• The right to recreational activities and free education.
• The right to be among the first to receive relief in all circumstances.
• The right to protection against all forms of neglect, cruelty and exploitation.
• The right to be brought up in a spirit of understanding, tolerance, friendship among peoples, and universal brotherhood.

“From climate to social to digital, young people are at the heart of our policymaking and political priorities”

With these words the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen expressed in her 2021 State of the Union address the need of a strong European commitment to give young people more and better opportunities for their future.  With this in mind, the commission has proposed to make 2022 the European Year of Youth. Some of the European Commission initiatives like NextGenerationEU and the Conference on the Future of Europe will play an important role to achieve 2022 European Year of Youth objectives of providing quality jobs, education and training opportunities and to draw inspiration from the actions, visions and insights of young people.

The KIDS4ALLL project wants to respond to this open call supporting and engaging with young people and empowering them to strive for high-quality, equal and inclusive education.

To learn more

After the 25th ENOC (European Network of Ombudspersons for Children) Annual Conference and General Assembly meeting that took place from 27-29 September 2021, the ENOC General Assembly adopted a Position Statement on “COVID-19: learning for the future”.

To face the negative impact that covid-19 emergency had on children’s rights the Statement proposed 5 principles as a framework to draw up a series of recommendations for action by government, public and other authorities, to help ensure that children’s rights are respected, protected and fulfilled in any public emergency.

The 5 principles are:

• Embedding children’s rights
• Equality and Non-discrimination to children
• Empowering the child
• Participation of children in decision making
• Accountability to children

KIDS4ALLL wants to promote a learning method and environment to address these topics: by fostering the students LLL key competencies and educators inclusive and participatory teaching abilities, the KIDS4ALLL project aims to promote children rights of empowerment and non-discrimination.

To learn more about the Position Statement

The MIRNet project aims to address the issues of East-West migration by advancing the quality and volume of research on migration and integration and by promoting the networking position and visibility of an interdisciplinary consortium of partners.

The 2^nd MIRNet International Conference is on ‘New Dynamics of East–West Migration and Migrant Integration Within Europe and Beyond’ and being hosted by the Sussex Centre for Migration Research.

The KIDS4ALL work teams of University of Turin and Levinsky College of Education will be on board with their contributions on LifeLong Learning in migratory contexts.

To learn more

This Friday, three coordinators of recently launched Horizon projects will meet to present their projects and report on activities that have been done so far to foster the inclusion of migrant children through education.

Dermish from the SIRIUS Network will lead through the conversation between Prof. Roberta Ricucci, KIDS4ALLL coordinator, Prof. Teresa Sorde (Refuge-ED project) and Prof. Rachele Antonini (NEW ABC project) - don’t miss it and be there on INSTAGRAM or FACEBOOK on Friday, Nov 29 at 12pm (CEST)!!

3,2,1…. zero! The KIDS4ALLL spaceship has been launched into the learning universe! Its astronauts are already busy searching for hidden treasures behind stars and galaxies. With the treasures they will find, they will create an extraordinary learning environment...

This seems fantasy but it is actually very near to reality: indeed, the work for creating the KIDS4ALLL learning environment has begun: the researchers of the international consortium are starting to search for the best open educational resources ever which will be adapted and organized in a way that they can be easily found by the ones who need them!

How will it look like? Stay tuned and we will keep you updated!
For now: wish us a great journey out of space!

Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash

The 2021 Researchers' Night is an initiative promoted by the European Commission and involves every year thousands of European research institutions. The event aims to create opportunities for researchers and citizens to meet and to spread scientific culture in an informal and stimulating context. Thus, proposals and activities will take the form of experiments, games, science stories, exhibitions and shows to promote lifelong learning.

The KIDS4ALLL project will be presented by UniTo in Turin on Friday, September 24, 2021 from 3-11 pm (CET) at the Botanical Garden in the charming Valentino Park.

Don’t miss it and come by to learn more about the project, its potentials and benefits, ongoing activities and of course to meet & greet personally the UniTo KIDS4ALLL team!

AIS-EDU brings the legacy of a long tradition of sociological studies and research on educational institutions and processes developed in Italy since the ‘50s, whose common denominator is the analysis of changes in formal, informal and non-formal education.
This conference, hosted by the University of Cagliari, unites thus the academic community onsite to reflect on challenges, missions and perspectives of the sociology of education on the one hand, and new competences required on the other hand in a post-pandemic society.

To learn more

ESPAnet Italia is a network of scholars that promotes the interdisciplinary debate on social policies drawing on different theoretical and methodological traditions. The 14^th conference hosted by the network aims to promote research on the most recent global developments focusing on “Covid and welfare policies: emerging effects and dynamics of change”.

To learn more

The European Educational Research Association has been organising the annual ECER conference entitled “Education and Society: expectations, prescriptions, reconciliations.”

The international online event presents interactive paper sessions, research workshops, panel discussions and talk sessions to promote high-quality educational research in an open debate among peers.

To learn more

“Sociological Knowledges for Alternative Futures” is the header of the 15th ESA conference 2021, that will be held in online format. The topic chosen for the interdisciplinary exchange of research related to education and society seems to be more relevant than ever before, in post-pandemic times that require latest research to formulate updated measures and strategies to cope with the future.

To learn more

The first phase of KIDS4ALLL was also dedicated to establishing the various project communication channels.
You can find more information on the project and follow us through the following communication channels: 

Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn 

The KIDS4ALLL project consortium has put highest priority to continuous formation to always be on the same page.
The events, that are organised four times per year aim to provide an ongoing platform for discussions, exchange of best practices and critical reflections. The KIDS4ALLL seminar series are at the core of the internal staff training activities and involve all partners and advisors. All seminars shall contribute to creating a common knowledge base, bridging experiences in research and innovation and building interdisciplinary and cross-project collaboration towards successful synergies. The topics of the 1^st year seminars regard the Lifelong Learning Key Competences as defined by the EU-Commission.

Past events
Seminar on Social-Emotional Skills, Feb. 9, 2021, 3-5pm (CET) - online
Seminar on Literacy and Numerical Skills, June 22, 2021, 3-5pm (CET) - online 

Upcoming events
Seminar on Multilingualism & cultural awareness, Sept. 28, 2021, 3-5pm (CET) - online
Seminar on Active Citizenship, Dec. 21, 2021, 3-5pm (CET) - online