Why Do We Need to Teach About Europe?

Insights from the First Teach Europe Workshop

In early May, we kicked off the Teach Europe project with a three-day workshop in the Future Classroom Lab during which our 12-member teacher taskforce had the opportunity to get to know each other better, discover their shared interests and explore potential approaches for cooperation.

Day 1 of the workshop began with a short re-introduction of the project, the intended outcomes and the tentative timeline of the initiative. This was followed by several meet-and-greet sessions which allowed the participants to learn more about their colleagues – where they come from, what they teach, why they applied to take part in the project, why they think it is important to talk about the European Union with their students and what they hope to achieve with their learning scenarios.

The 12 teachers were invited to share one article from their home country which captured the essence of the EU debate in their respective countries. This exercise served as a springboard for the subsequent discussions around the need for teachers to be able to answer the questions that students have when they see conflicting positive and negative commentaries on their country’s participation in the European project.

Preparing students for active participation in the life of their community is an important goal of K12 education and therefore, it is important that students are alerted to the importance of active citizenship. To enable this active citizenship, it is important that students are introduced to the topics of the European Union and EU citizenship. However, as of now, the pedagogical offer on the subject is limited. Educators do not have access to resources that can help them discuss the EU with their students and which are appropriate for different subjects and age groups.

See what the participants had to say about the workshop:

On Day 2 of the workshop, the taskforce members discussed the different ways in which they already incorporate the topic of the EU in their teaching practice. They shared ideas and resources that can help their colleagues do the same. The participants stressed the need for students to know more about the origins of the EU, the existing institutions and how they influence their lives. It was also pointed out that specialisation in social and European students is readily available at university-level education but little preparation on the topics is offered in secondary schools. Many noted that even if their colleagues want to discuss the EU with their students, they lack appropriate materials to seamlessly include the topic in the existing curriculum. Finally, the taskforce members noted the need for students to be educated about the rights and obligations that stem from being an EU citizen.

Day 3 of the workshop allowed time for the participants to start preliminary deliberations on the learning scenarios that they will produce at the end of the project’s Phase I. They were invited to choose the school subject and to roughly define the topic which their learning scenario will address. Going forward, they will have three months to refine their ideas and experiment with different approaches but at this stage, they were given the chance to dig a little deeper into the technicalities of producing a learning scenario in the presence of our pedagogical advisors who could more immediately and directly assist them with any questions they might have.

With the stage set for the teachers’ further work and most of the technical and organisational issues clarified, we let our 12-member teacher taskforce return to their respective regions to start designing the 12 learning scenarios which will later be shared with the teaching community across Europe to help them discuss the EU with their pupils.

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