Law and Rights Modules in Teacher Training Programmes
Full Project Title
‘Introducing modules on law and rights in programmes of teacher training and educational sciences:
A contribution to building rights-based education systems in countries in transition’
Project Type: Erasmus+ Mundus Curriculum Development
Start date: 15-10-2016
End date: 15-10-2019
Coordinator:
Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
Project Coordinator:
Prof. Gracienne LAUWERS
EU contribution:
€943.663,00
Background to the project
The project underlining assumption is that collaboration between educators and lawyers can promote effective teaching, learning, school leadership, and educational innovation. The project underlining question relating to multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity is how good lawyer-educator collaboration could improve education. What are the trends in law and education that make effective collaboration increasingly necessary? In democratic societies, decisions affecting human conduct are the primary force which determine the direction of educational institutions from day to day. Many court decisions introduced by individual students or staff members are held to reduce educational discretion on central questions of education and school leadership. Therefore, an effective collaboration between educators and their lawyers increasingly influences such central educational matters as school governance, school reform, equality of educational opportunity, school leadership, and allocation of scarce resources. In democratic societies, there is a growing need for such collaboration. In contrast with this phenomenon and needs, there is a lack of learning and teaching tools on education law and rights in education, as well as methodologies and pedagogical approaches and ICT-based testing for professionals in education. Because of the limited cooperation and available learning tools, many educators / school boards and lawyers are not be engaged in ongoing collaboration. Finally, such an interdisciplinarity would not only improve lawyer-educator interactions, but could also reduce litigation in educational issues, and finally use the law to support and advance educational policy objectives.
Aims
- to support eligible partner countries in updating their curricula;
- to better prepare their staff and students for a rights based school governance and teaching process and to respond to pro-active rights demands in societies in transition.
Objectives
- to enhance the relevance of teacher education for the development of a rights based labour market and society;
- to improve the level of competences and skills in HEIs by developing on-line new modules and innovative teacher education programmes.
Specific objectives
- to redesign courses and programs in teacher training and educational sciences programmes to include modules that transfer a basic knowledge of (education) law to the students in teacher education and educational sciences with or without a previous legal education;
- to develop learning (for students) and teaching (for staff) tools on education law and rights in education;
- to create Open Educational Resources and an online testing system;
- to enhance multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity consisting of effective collaboration between educators and lawyers specialising in different fields of law;
- to support partners with methodologies and pedagogical approaches including the description of learning outcomes for each of the modules;
- to develop an innovative approach on teacher education and the role of law in education;
- to improve the professional level of staff;
- to align teacher education to international standards.