Parents As Successful teacherS (PASS)

The support materials of this project will aim to help parents turn any situation into a learning activity. Thus, parents will be provided with tools for integrating learning in real life activities they engage in with children.  As a result, no “extra” time for learning will be required.

Goals

The project aims to bring the following results:

• 5 different sets of support materials for parents to introduce project target languages, namely, EN, FR, DE, IT, LV, NL to their 4-6 year-old children in the context of everyday situations published as a CD and online;
• A website providing the most up-to-date version of the support materials, as well as serving as an experience exchange platform for parents;
• Dissemination campaign encouraging multilingual parents to take an active part in Early Language Education of their children.

The project proposes the following steps to help the parents become key players in Early Language Education of their children:

• Provide parents with “learning-to-teach-by-teaching” materials, thus training them to be successful teachers in the process of actual work with the proposed materials. This corresponds to the 'learning-by-doing' principle of informal education and helps parents learn even when no 'extra' time for learning is available.
• Equip parents with the tools to integrate foreign language learning into their families' everyday activities. Thus, learning becomes a natural thing rather than something artificial both parents and children try to avoid.
• Help parents integrate a foreign language in the process of general development of their children, thus using already existing motivation of most parents to contribute to the development of flexibility and creativity of children’s minds.

The methodology of the project is based on the findings of activity theory (Leont'ev, Galperin, Engeström), especially when organising learning in real life situations. The ideas of the Thinking Approach to language teaching and learning are used for integrating language learning with the development of creativity and thinking skills of children. The General Theory of Powerful Thinking based on the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (OTSM-TRIZ) underlies the development of thinking skills as conceptualised in the project.

Consortium

The project consortium consists of 9 institutions from 6 Member States: Latvia, The Netherlands, Germany, UK, Italy and Spain. It also involves 3 associative partners: European Parents Association, Ministry of Education in Brandenburg and Turkish Lifelong Learning Centre.

The project is supported by the European Commission in the framework of the Lifelong Learning Programme (Grundtvig Multilateral Projects).

Project duration

January 2011 – December 2012