A European project will use creative writing and digital narrative resources in primary schools to foster inclusion among children

A school must be a place where children live naturally with diversity, and where all children have the same opportunities for growth and learning, without any distinction on the grounds of disability, gender, religion or race, or any other reason. Conflicts that hinder inclusion may be latent in the early stages of formal education, such as at primary school, and may not become readily apparent until later. That is why teachers must have tools in the classroom enabling them to identify these hidden problems and prevent future situations of exclusion. That is precisely the aim of the WIN project (Writing for Inclusion), led by researchers at the University of Vic - Central University of Catalonia (UVic-UCC) within the framework of the international Erasmus+ programme.

WIN has a financial endowment of 129,435 Euros and will last for two years. During this period it will develop resources and tools for care and prevention for inclusion using creative writing in the classroom, and is aimed primarily at boys and girls aged 9 and 10 years old. The project aims to support teachers with training sessions and teaching resources to help them identify latent conflicts and improve students' inclusive attitudes, and focuses on using resources for creative writing and digital storytelling. The end result of the process will be a free tool that is open to all schools in Europe to work on inclusion in classrooms in all areas of education.

WIN is led by Mireia Canals-Botines, Angel Raluy Alonso, Miquel Pujol Tubau and Núria Medina-Casanovas, who are lecturers and researchers at the Faculty of Education, Translation and Humanities (FETCH) at UVic-UCC. When carrying out the project, they will work with teachers at the Les Pinediques School in Taradell, which is also a partner in the project, and where one of the pilot tests will be carried out. The other partner institutions are the Università Degli Studi Di Firenze (Italy), the Eötvös Lorand Tudományegyetem (Hungary), and the Poltava V.G. Korolenko National Pedagogikal University (Ukraine), three higher education centres, each of which has a school in its area as a partner: Istituto Comprensivo Le Cure (Italy), Erzsébetvárosi Két Tanítási Nyelvú Általános Iskola és Szakgimnázium (Hungary) and Poltava Comprehensive School of I-III degree # 18 of Poltava City Council of Poltava region (Ukraine). 

Audiovisual tools for children to create stories

The WIN project will be carried out in three phases. In its first year, which is now under way, its work will focus on two areas: on the one hand, it will create resources and tools, which are basically animations available in a Moodle environment, which the children will use to create their stories of inclusion. On the other, it will train the teachers who will accompany the children in the activities focusing on creative writing and inclusion in the classroom in the second phase.

The aim is to have everything ready for the second phase, which takes place in the first term of the 2021-2022 academic year. At that point, the children and teachers will carry out the project and create the stories using the tools that have been created, which according to Mireia Canals-Botines, the project's lead researcher, "will offer a wide range of creative possibilities." Among other items, the children will find animations of boys and girls doing specific actions, objects and backgrounds in the resource library: "pleasant drawings, with soft colours and rounded shapes, which are very neutral so that they do not affect the creative process in any way, and enable underlying conflicts to emerge without any conditioning factors."

"The teacher will provide a problem or difficult situation in the classroom that will act as the starting point," explains Mireia Canals, who says that "from there, the children, in randomly created small groups, will use the animations to invent a collective story with a resolution that may be positive to varying degrees." The researcher says that during this process, "problems and disagreements between the children will arise, which are determined by the social and family environment in which they live, which they carry inside them but have not yet left behind, and which will emerge unconsciously."

The results obtained will be worked on at various levels. First of all, the boys and girls themselves will share the stories with their class to discuss the conflicts that have arisen, accompanied by the teachers and observed by students on the EHEA degree course in Primary School Teaching at UVic- UCC, who will also be involved in the project. All the stories will subsequently be shared with the other participating centres on the Etwinning platform and through focus groups. Finally, the WIN project will conclude with a meeting in Vic in 2022, where the conclusions of the project will be shared, and with the publication of several scientific articles.

A project "that has been simmering"

Mireia Canals explains that this is a project that has been simmering for two years: "this measured pace of work will make the children become immersed in reflection, in order to normalise inclusive behaviours both inside and outside the classroom" because according to the researcher, "a relaxed environment is needed to address the problems that arise in depth."

At the Les Pinediques School, the teachers Marta Ramírez and Cinta Gonzalez, who are coordinating the project there, argue that one of their motivations for taking part is being able to work with UVic -UCC and other schools in Europe. "It is very enriching and we hope it will enable the children to learn from interacting with children from other countries, as well as internalising inclusion as something that is natural," they say. At the moment, the children are preparing logos to identify the project in a competition organised by each school, which they will share through Etwinning. "One of the European students participating in the project will be the author of the final image, which will be decided upon by a vote," say the teachers.