Brussel, 13 October 2022

HERMMES partners form working groups

Four main working groups are focusing on developing project’s website, designing curriculum, drafting school policy guidelines and modeling diverse training for teachers and parents.

Basis for successful partnership is in stable relationships

Freie Hochschule host­ed the first live part­ners’ meet­ing in Stuttgart from 9th to 11th Sep­tem­ber 2022. Dur­ing the meet­ing, part­ners shared with each oth­er their pro­fes­sion­al back­ground, moti­va­tion to join the part­ner­ship, and the main expec­ta­tions of the project. The meet­ing agen­da full of artis­tic activ­i­ties, such as land art and eury­th­my, helped build a coop­er­a­tive atmos­phere as the basis for fur­ther work. In the three years ahead, the part­ners will work togeth­er close­ly, and this meet­ing served as a valu­able oppor­tu­ni­ty for net­work­ing and team building.

Curriculum for media education sets the foundation for the rest of the project results

Next to the devel­op­ment of the project’s web­site, the HERMMES cur­ricu­lum for media edu­ca­tion will be devel­oped. The Cur­ricu­lum Work­ing Group is com­posed of experts from ECSWE, IASWECE and Fed­er­a­tion of Flem­ish Stein­er Schools, with sub­stan­tial input from the Alanus Uni­ver­si­ty and the Freie Hochschule Stuttgart. Dur­ing this meet­ing, all part­ners mapped the exist­ing media edu­ca­tion cur­ric­u­la that will serve as inspi­ra­tion. Part­ners also agreed that the HERMMES cur­ricu­lum must pro­vide a frame­work for suc­cess­ful media edu­ca­tion, be adapt­able to dif­fer­ent nation­al set­tings, and have a col­lec­tion of good prac­tices for teach­ers and par­ents. In the school year 2023–24, two part­ner schools — Wittering.nl and Scuo­la Novalis — will pilot the cur­ricu­lum and pro­vide feedback.

School policy guidelines and trainings will serve teachers and parents

To suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment the HERMMES cur­ricu­lum, part­ners have iden­ti­fied two basic pre­req­ui­sites — ade­quate school poli­cies and trained teach­ers and par­ents. The Nor­we­gian Stein­er Par­ents’ Asso­ci­a­tion leads the work­ing group on school pol­i­cy guide­lines for media edu­ca­tion. The group will focus on col­lect­ing basic prin­ci­ples of holis­tic media edu­ca­tion that are to be com­mu­ni­cat­ed between all edu­ca­tion­al stake­hold­ers, includ­ing par­ents, teach­ers, school lead­ers and pol­i­cy mak­ers. Led by Ele­wa, the Train­ings Work­ing Group will aim to pro­vide con­tin­u­ous and prac­ti­cal sup­port to teach­ers and par­ents on how to best imple­ment the cur­ricu­lum in their own class­rooms and homes.