Periodic Reporting for period 1 - LET´S CARE (LET´S CARE: BUILDING SAFE AND CARING SCHOOLS TO FOSTER EDUCATIONAL INCLUSION AND SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT)
Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2023-09-30
LET´S CARE aims to understand and improve the caring dimension of educational inclusion and school success. The project will substantiate how student socio-emotional (in)security can promote/hinder educational opportunities from early childhood education to secondary school, and beyond. LET’S CARE will analyse the forms in which family relations and social inequality can explain school (under)achievement, (dis)engagement and early dropout, especially for vulnerable populations, and how building Safe School relationships can be a decisive tool to counteract these dynamics. LET’S CARE concept relies on the following features: i) multistage, including four different educational stages (ECEC, primary, lower and upper secondary and Second Chance); ii) multilevel, considering 4 ecological levels or pillars in relation to school safety (1- individual level (Safe Learning), 2- relational level (Safe Teaching), 3- community level (Safe School), 4- policy level (Safe Education); iii) intersectional research looking into the impact of gender, ethnicity - specially Roma children-, migrant background, socioeconomic status, (dis)ability and (non)parental care; iv) exploring the European diversity by considering different educational contexts (PL, LT, BG, IT, SP, PT). These features will be placed at the core of the research design and will be the basis for the development of a theoretical model of Safe Education, which will be defined and empirically validated. This knowledge will be translated into different tools and methodologies to diagnose and assess the Safe Education framework. LET´S CARE will implement a holistic methodological approach, cocreation mechanisms, and translate research findings into political approach, through formulation of novel evidence-based policy recommendations, raising awareness on safe/caring schools, combating social exclusion of disadvantaged learners. LET´S CARE proposes a revolutionary approach to provide holistic, multilevel, intersectional research to improve care and security in EU school environments. It will systematically explain all possible factors responsible for poor achievement and school dropouts on individual, relational, community and political levels. The research will involve 120 schools, 18 000 students and 2 400 teachers from six EU countries. The project aims to minimise social exclusion in schools.The main objective is to identify determinants affecting student security as a root cause of underachievement, disengagement and school dropout, at 4 different ecological levels or pillars. LET’S CARE will create a theoretical and practical framework to foster Safe Learning, Safe Teaching, Safe Schools and Safe Education in each level, an approach to break the chain of transgenerational transmission of educational and social exclusion. This will generate lower rates of school failure, poor learning outcomes and early school leaving. The main breakthrough is based on considering a relational response to educational exclusion and inequality, resulting in a model for understanding the importance of security to address underachievement in reading, mathematics and sciences, disengagement and early drop out from early child education and care to secondary and second chance schools; and a relational approach to inclusive practices at school, that will be translated into tools, recommendations and guidelines for action at the 4 pillars and at the 4 school stages. The tools can be replicable universally with an impact on challenged populations at risk of educational disadvantage and adapted at EU level.
The tasks undertaken pivot around a) desk and qualitative research substantiating the development of theoretical model, which points at the determinant and outcome variables of Safe Education and educational (under)achievement, (dis)engagement and early school leaving; b) design and implementation of the necessary infrastructure to make possible the data collection, including data collection and analysis strategies and protocols, a data management plan and different bodies supervising the technical and ethical standards and c) generating different communities involving schools and other key stakeholders in the project, ensuring its bottom-up approach and the co-creation of the subsequent results. The theoretical basis of the model have been built upon the results obtained after completing three Systematic Literature Reviews targeting at multilevel predictors of educational (under)achievement, (dis)engagement and early school leaving, upon mapping, and appraising available secondary databases.The empirical basis is built upon the qualitative research with families and educators in the fieldwork countries of the project. A joint analysis of the different sources allowed to identify the key variables of the theoretical model. Establishing a network of involved schools (CoS), a network of relevant stakeholders and two bodies to coordinate multi-partner co-creation has allowed to guarantee a bottom-up approach and the relevance in practice of the theoretical model. The formalisation of the PMAB will help to lever the results of this co-production of knowledge into evidence-based policymaking in next reporting periods. The supervising bodies and standards established, allowed to accomplish requirements and best practices related to data gathering from potentially vulnerable individuals, preventing stigmatization and establishing optimal consent procedures. The project will keep doing so in the following reporting periods, in which data collection will escalate to a wider scope and relevance.
LET’S CARE has impacted scientific, societal and economic/innovative instances. In terms of the scientific impacts, an innovative safe education model is being developed and three systematic Literature Reviews are under preparation/submission as articles to high impact international peer-reviewed journals. In terms of the societal impact, at this report delivery, 24 organisations have been officially invited to actively engage in the network of stakeholders, 37 schools have been invited to actively participate in the Community of Schools and the Consortium is working on the engagement of more groups in the project. A Safe Education Database has been developed and is publicly available for the participation of educational and policy makers in the LET’S CARE Hub. These outputs will enhance innovative interventions in the educational field.