GOOD PRACTICES – EIP Laboratory

The EIP Laboratory inherits from its father UPPER project the aim of contributing to bring peace, intercultural dialogue and civic participation at the core of educational policies and school practice by scaling up the results of existing good practices.

Good (and relevant) Practices…

Practices are considered relevant if they are aimed at producing a positive impact on school in the domain of peace, intercultural dialogue and civic education; but in order to be considered not only relevant, but also “good” for the UPPER work they have to present more than one of the following characteristics:

Being deliberately “transformative” in their purpose and in relation to their context;

Having already produced observable results;

Being planned, supported, evaluated, fostered (methodologically structured);

Containing good elements that are (or at least look) potentially re-appropriable in other contexts;

Someone (on the beneficiary side) considers it a good practice.

Good Practices that present all five characteristics will be the top priority in our search, but those that present four, three or two characteristics are also eligible.

…related to one or more of the following 6 fields:

1	Policy making (a policy is characterised by a coherent set of goals and priorities covering an extended period of duration and implying a steady and constant allocation of funding and resources. The decision-making process of policies, strategies, programmes and initiatives is a complex process involving several actors and stakeholders having different priorities, roles and interests);
2	Teachers competence development (developing teachers’ competences focused on valuing learners’ differences to propose more articulated learning strategies and assessment practices);
3	Self-assessment approaches at individual, organisational and system level (Good practices characterised by self-diagnostic and assessment/peer reviewing and instruments developed including indicators, methodological approach and toolkit for schools and teachers);
4	Concrete school practice (We would like to collect both institutionally-led and bottom up movements and practices that promote the centrality of peace in the education context and propose different strategies, having all achieved a high level of formal appreciation and consolidation, making them good sources of inspiration for the massive transfer of good practice and for the enlargement of the project network);
5	Community building: Good practice which capitalise on several successful examples of community building in the field of school education, at both EU and national/local level;
6	Mainstreaming: Good practices characterised by “multiplication strategy” that we consider interesting for the population involved and the media approach used.

Good Practices in wider strategies

The following list – mostly identified through the NESET II Report “Education policies and practices to foster tolerance, respect for diversity and civic responsibility in children and young people in the EU” and further discussed/modified at the UPPER kick-off meeting – describes to which strategies innovative practices might be referred:

1. Avoiding segregation and promoting diversity in schools;
2. Ensuring effective leadership and good governance;
3. Providing accurate information on diversity;
4. Providing high quality teacher education on diversity;
5. Encouraging diversity in the teaching workforce;
6. Establishing flexible and culturally relevant curriculum and pedagogy;
7. Providing bilingual and multilingual education;
8. Promoting the use of interactive culturally relevant teaching methods;
9. Promoting school-society relationship;
10. Making socially responsible and positive use of ICT;
11. Involving NGOs and Youth Organisations at school;
12. Provide incentives and reward good practice;
13. Social integration;
14. Awareness of injustice;
15. Promotion of Peace Value.

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