PROJECT SUMMARY
Our project titled The Social Service for Students, as a Complex Institutional Innovative Programme, which involves mixed institutions, scheduled its programme for the development of public education for a longer duration than originally intended, lasting for 36 months instead of 28 months, with the cooperation of 5 secondary schools in 5 countries, as well as the Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta.
Following the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the implementation of the project was obstructed, and had to be halted multiple times, for which reason the International Office extended the implementation period for the maximum 36-month duration, and therefore, the project was completed on 30 September 2022 instead of 30 January 2022.
The topic of the project is the integration of the volunteering activities carried out by students, in other words, social service, and the international adaptation of the service-learning methodology.
In accordance with the objectives, the international partnership was created with the involvement of schools that had a significant experience in the field, working programmes, and best practices to share. According to the main concept, by learning about these national, individual, and unique best practices and sharing them, we intend to develop intellectual outputs related to our topic which constitute a complex institutional innovation that gives its user the opportunity for methodological and attitudinal development and renewal.
The international significance of our project is justified by the fact that there have been several initiatives in Europe that aimed to integrate the subject of volunteering and/or social service at school into the teaching-learning process, but very few of these have achieved successful, long-term results, and most of them have not been able to cross national borders. By selecting from these best practices, we intend to create a cross-border programme which is capable of institutional and educational (pedagogical-teacher-student) innovation.
Our project is transnational, as we are not looking for answers to a problem of one specific country, but we offer an educational and cooperative solution that can be adapted in all of Europe. We intend to fill a gap with this complex programme which would be useful for any participants of the European public education system, or those outside Europe as well.
The mission of our project is the development of public education by offering a system to students in which they can develop their social responsibility, social sensitivity, and active citizenship through social service activities.
Of our strategic goals, with our intellectual outputs (O1, O2, O3), we managed to create a Europe-wide adaptable, synthesised programme, which provides a link between the world of educational institutions (school – teachers – students) and host institutions (social, non-governmental, and other non-profit organisations). In addition, each and every partner institution has created its own system of social service which focuses on the educational role of students’ volunteering activities done outside school lessons. Furthermore, it enables an alternative and complex education which is experiential and can be related to everyday life. With the introduction of the service-learning programme, a collection of teaching materials and an educational programme have been created, which can be integrated into the pedagogical programme and everyday teaching methods of any of the European schools.
Regarding theoretical goals, in the case of institutions cooperating in the project, the following factors have developed:
The project aimed to develop 5 intellectual outputs beside the organisation of the activities designed in the application. These intellectual outputs constitute a complex whole, but can also be used independently of each other, and, according to our plans, can be adapted and expanded one by one.
Our intellectual outputs developed in the project:
O1 – Institutional guide – guide to the introduction of student volunteering on an institutional level
O2 – Teacher’s guide – pedagogical and methodological supplementary materials
O3 – Online volunteer management interface for students and digital project platform (website)
O4 – Course syllabus and training materials
O5 – Quality assurance standard, host institution evaluation system
The working language of the application project is English, as are the results of the project, the innovations, and the language of cooperation.
The target group of our project is made up of 3 groups of participants: secondary school students, their teachers, and host institutions, organisations, and their employees providing volunteering activities for students. We aim to connect the world of education to the civil volunteering sector through their cooperation.
In the activities of our project, we directly involved 12–15 students and 4–8 teachers per institutions, 20–30 persons from host institutions, altogether 50–60 students, 20–30 teachers and 80–100 host institution employees. Indirectly, 1800 persons benefited from the programmes and project activities organised as part of the project as well as additional programmes organised outside the project.
In the mobilities of LTT activities (C1-C10), a total of approx. 100 mobilities (98) were realized, of which 41 were student mobilities, 46 were teacher mobilities, and 11 were teachers accompanying students on mobilities.
There was one programme which could not be realised in the project, student workshop C2, due to the local regulations and restrictions caused by the Covid pandemic in the Netherlands.
The list of activities realised during the project:
Methodology of Service Learning: Service Learning is a pedagogical proposal that links Service (citizenship and volunteering for the community) and Learning (the acquisition of professional, methodological, and social skills) so that the students can develop their knowledge and skills through a service in solidarity with community.
In terms of the applied methodology, we aimed to apply the project approach regarding the introduction of the institutional protocol. The institutional guide presents a process which has stages, milestones, measuring points, which have to be followed. Our basic principle is education focused on practice-oriented student activity. The subject emphasises the development of informal education and alternative pedagogical methods even more.
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