2.1.3 Methodological Material_Chapter 9 "InCrea+ Curriculum: Foundations and choices"

1. INTRODUCTION

The Project finds its inner reason in the severe worsening of educational disparities and the increase in dropout rates caused by the COVID-19 pandemic’s outbreak and calls for the adoption of a more holistic approach to inclusive education. Arts teaching can effectively support a more inclusive school culture, while also promoting students’ wellbeing and the development of the main 21st Century Skills.

The general goal is to provide an innovative method of inclusive education and promotion of wellbeing through the implementation of arts educational content and practices. More specifically the goals are:

Several choices directly follow from these premises.

2. Defining inclusion

Studies in the literature provide several definitions of inclusion. Among them, it is worth mentioning the one at the basis of the Index for Inclusion (Booth and Ainscow 2002).

Inclusion can be addressed both to reduce barriers as well as to promote participation. It is, in fact, about a community that cares for its members, makes them feel welcome and is willing to adjust to fit their various needs (Marino-Francis and Worrall-Davies, 2010). And participation can be seen as an outcome (endpoint) of health and education services (Imms et al., 2016; Kennette, & Wilson, 2019).

Some of the actions identified and aimed to these twofold goals can be:

-Reducing barriers to learning and participation for all students, not only those with impairments or those who are categorized as ´having special educational needs´

-Learning from attempts to overcome barriers to the access and participation of students to make changes for the benefit of students more widely

-Valuing all students and staff equally

-Viewing the difference between students as resources to support learning, rather than problems to overcome

-Acknowledging the right of students to an education in their location

-Increasing the participation of students in, and reducing their exclusion from, the cultures, curricula and communities of local schools

-Improving schools for staff as well as for students

-Emphasizing the role of schools in building community and developing values, as well as increasing achievement.

-Fostering mutually sustaining relationships between schools and communities

-Recognizing that inclusion in education is one aspect of inclusion in society.

-Restructuring the cultures, policies and practices in schools so that they respond to the diversity of students.

2.1. The 21st century skills and the priorities

Ten core life skills laid down by the World Health Organization (WHO) are considered crucial for the 21^st century:

Self-awareness: Includes recognition of self, our character, our strengths and weaknesses, desires and dislikes. Creating self-awareness can help adolescents recognize when they are under stress or feel pressured. Self-awareness is often a prerequisite to effective communication and interpersonal relations, as well as for developing empathy with others.

Empathy: Empathy is the ability to imagine what life is like for another person. Without empathy, the communication that adolescents have with others will not amount to a two-way process. Empathy can help adolescents accept others who may be very different from them. This can improve their social interaction in classroom settings but also later in life, in situations of ethnic or cultural diversity.

Critical thinking: An ability to analyse information and experiences in an objective manner. Critical thinking can contribute by helping the adolescent to recognize and assess the factors that influence attitudes and behaviour, such as values, peer pressure and the media.

Creative thinking: A novel way of seeing or doing things that is characteristic of four components – fluency (generating new ideas), flexibility (shifting perspective easily), originality (conceiving of something new), and elaboration (building on other ideas).

Decision making: A skill that can help an adolescent deal constructively with decisions about their lives. Young adults can learn to assess the different options available to them and consider what effects these different decisions are likely to have.

Problem solving: Helps in empowering the adolescent to look at a problem objectively vis-à-vis the different options for solutions and would help them come to a solution after weighing the pros and cons of the different options available.

Interpersonal relationship skills: Help adolescents relate in positive ways with people they interact with in their everyday lives. This may entail being able to make and keep friendly relationships, of great importance to our mental and social well-being; maintaining good relations with family members and being able to end relationships constructively.

Effective communication: Means helping the adolescents express themselves, both verbally and non-verbally, in ways that are appropriate to cultures and situations. This means being able to express opinions, desires, needs and fears and includes the ability of being able to ask for advice and help in a time of need.

Coping with stress: As a life skill, this means recognizing the sources of stress in their lives, recognizing how this affects them, and acting in ways that help them control their levels of stress; learning positive coping styles and replacing passive with active coping mechanisms - this may include changing their environment or lifestyle, and learning how to relax.

Coping with emotions: Includes recognizing emotions within themselves and others, being aware of how emotions influence behaviour, and being able to respond to emotions appropriately. An important aspect of this skill is learning to manage intense emotions like anger or sadness that can have negative effects on our health if we do not respond appropriately.

Based on recent international proposals focusing on children and adolescents and the results of an InCrea+ international survey report, we will refer to these skills as grouped into 3 main categories (Trilling & Fadel, 2009):

1.Learning skills (Critical Thinking, Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, Problem solving)

2.Literacy Skills (Information Literacy, Media Literacy, Technology Literacy)

3.Life Skills (Empathy, Flexibility and Adaptability, Leadership, Initiative and Self-Direction, Social and Cross-Cultural Interaction).

In developing the activities for the curriculum, we expect to cover these three sets of skills.

2.2. The arts’ domains

The various classifications of art include fine art, visual art, plastic art, performance art, applied art, and decorative art (Bernard, 2020). The curriculum will focus on the first four, namely:

2.3. Plastic Art, includes artworks that are molded and not necessarily plastic objects; consists of three-dimensional works like clay, plaster, stone, metals, wood and paper (origami).

2.4. Performance Art, this classification consists of an art form that refers to public performance events that occur mainly in the theatre (traditional performance art – theatre, opera, music, and ballet; Contemporary performance art – mime).

The curriculum will involve activities addressing both famous artistic expressions and artmaking activity, thus supporting a reflective approach to coded experiences and the meaning making associated with a direct involvement.

2.5. The Universal Design for Learning principles

3. THE CURRICULUM

3.1 The structure

The curriculum develops along three steps, each including 13 activities (Table 1).

The six challenges to inclusion will be addressed in each of the steps, addressing at the same time more significant 21^st century skills included in the specific set, through the four main diverse types of artistic expressions (with examples of both art reading and artmaking)

Table 1. Basic structure of InCREA+ Curriculum

UDL is the guiding principle for each activity developed within the curriculum.

3.1. Good practices in the development of the curriculum

In developing the curriculum, we will consider the existing Good Practices across Europe. We will also choose the ones that matched the foundations and the goals of the INCREA+ project or manipulate them to have them fit the criteria set described in section 2 of this chapter.

In developing the activities at least, the following aspects will be addressed as shown in the template that follows (Table 2).

Table 2. Template for the description of basic information in curriculum activities

Specific expertise needs or stories of participants may well lead to introducing additional aspects in activities development.

3.3 Learning Indices

As stated in the project, the curriculum will promote a series of diverse and highly impacting benefits.

Short-term benefits:

Development of 21st Century Skills in students

Increased inclusion of disadvantaged students into participants’ schools

Establishment of teachers and CCS professionals trained in artistic inclusive practices

Fostering creativity, culture, multiculturalism and wellbeing through teaching tools, materials and educational resources.

Long-term Benefits:

Diffusion of arts education practices at European level.

Improvement of learning environment conditions and scholastic achievement for all students.

Decrease of dropouts from disadvantaged groups.

Stronger collaboration between CCS and schools.

To describe the changes instilled, both qualitative and quantitative tools will be considered and proposed to students before and after participating in the curriculum (Table 3). Reflective questions during the activities will guide the learning.

Table 3. Components of learning assessment

As proposed, both participants and professionals conducting the activity will be involved in analysing the changes and promotion of inclusion, skills’ development and active participation.

REFERENCES

Bernard, C. F. (2020). Lived experiences: Arts policy at the street level in the New York City Department of Education. Arts Education Policy Review, 121(1), 30-41.

Booth, T., Ainscow, M., Black-Hawkins, K., Vaughan, M., & Shaw, L. (2002). Index for inclusion. Developing learning and participation in schools, 2.

CAST (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Retrieved from http://udlguidelines.cast.org

Imms, C., Froude, E., Adair, B., & Shields, N. (2016). A descriptive study of the participation of children and adolescents in activities outside school. BMC pediatrics, 16(1), 1-11.

Kennette, L. N., & Wilson, N. A. (2019). Universal Design for Learning (UDL): What is it and how do I implement it. Transformative Dialogues: Teaching & Learning Journal, 12(1), 1-6.

Marino‐Francis, F., & Worrall‐Davies, A. (2010). Development and validation of a social inclusion questionnaire to evaluate the impact of attending a modernised mental health day service. Mental Health Review Journal, 5,1-12.

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2009) A framework for 21st century learning P21Tucson, AZ Available at: www.21stcenturyskills.org.

Trilling, B., & Fadel, C. (2009). 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times, Jossey-Bass (publisher). ISBN 978-0-470-55362-6. Retrieved 2016-03-13.