Stakeholder engagement in NEMESIS: Lessons from Pilot 1

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26 Feb 2020

Stakeholder engagement in NEMESIS: Lessons from Pilot 1

By Valnalon

NEMESIS conceived co-creation labs as open learning environments. Here, teachers and students join forces with parents, social innovation practitioners and any other member of the local community to collaborate in the design and development of social innovation projects.  You can think of a Co-Lab as the main decision-making structure of the project, bringing together student representatives, teachers and a range of different community actors including families.

Community involvement in NEMESIS

Schools in Pilot 1 have managed to engage a rich mix of community partners.  Parental involvement has been a consistent feature in all Co-Labs, particularly in Primary Schools.  As observed in the figure below the number of parents (Family) attending Co-Lab meetings is only second to teaching staff. Non-Profit organisations (including SIPs) and Local Authorities do also feature prominently in the Co-Lab Member Lists provided by the schools.

 

Profile of Co-Lab members

Stakeholders from non-profit sector outnumber the rest

Piloting schools have adopted an expanded approach to stakeholder engagement that goes beyond Co-Lab participation. In total, schools have established fruitful links and worked alongside 92 unique external stakeholders representing a diverse mix of profiles as evidenced in the figure below.  Representatives from the non-profit sector (including Social Innovation Practitioners) outnumber the rest of groups. The key input and support provided by local authorities is also worth noting and acknowledging.

 

Overall Stakeholder Engagement

External stakeholders were mainly sourced by teachers and schools.

“Contacting external stakeholders takes time, effort. It slows things down. Sometimes you need an expert. It would be nice to have a list of contacts.“ – Teacher, Portugal

However, the need to reach local stakeholders is described by one of the teachers:

“It’s not only geographical proximity,  but personality, feeling the space is shared, sense of connectedness, belonging to the same community (neighbours)” – Teacher, Spain

New possibilities and practices

Quite interestingly and in spite of the fact that most of them were institutions and individuals from the local area, two out of three external stakeholders had not collaborated with piloting schools before NEMESIS. This indicates access to new cognitive and relational resources opening  up new possibilities and practices (Drew, Priestley & Michael, 2016)

Previous collaboration with school

When asked to describe the role played by external stakeholders, schools described it in different terms.  In some cases, stakeholders acted as mentors (26) or as collaborators (18) with quite a lot of contact time with the group of students. Some others brought in expert knowledge (14) needed to deal with specific aspects of the project.  Inspiration is also fundamental in the initial stages and the SIPs appointed by NEMESIS have excelled at this. Last but not least, local companies have provided goods and services.

Main role of external stakeholders

When asked to rate the level of involvement, schools did not only consider contact time. Some stakeholders were considered as highly involved simply because they provided some relevant input to the project once.

Stakeholders’ level of engagement

Difficulties finding an SIP

The difficulties reported by schools in finding an appropriate SIP was one of the main lessons of this first pilot. There are three key reasons or explanatory factors.

First and foremost, the SIP category is problematic in itself. It is hard to find people who define themselves as Social Innovation Practitioners. In order to overcome this constraint, schools have embraced a more inclusive definition that has informed our decision to rename SIP community as NEMESIS community and include all stakeholders that have community and social focus.

The second aspect has to do with relevance. Schools are expecting to find a good match that is in a position to provide expert advice on the topic they have chosen. Obviously this was (and it’s going to be) hard to anticipate in advance.  So while the efforts at creating a SIP community are laudable, they will never meet the unpredictable range of demands arising from school projects.

The local factor has made the difference, evidenced by the strategies devised in schools. So while local community stakeholders are easier to reach, they are also more likely to be concerned and willing to act on issues affecting their communities. Tapping into local community actors does also help to prevent some issues regarding the cost and time of attending Co-Lab meetings or undertaking actions with schools.

NEMESIS enables new, stronger connections with local community

Co-Labs, a central element in NEMESIS pedagogical model, have enabled collaboration between young people and adults to address problems in the school and their local communities and allowed students to have a say in issues of their interest and assume leadership roles in change efforts.

As we have discussed in this article, NEMESIS has enabled new and stronger connections with the local community. A broad range of local stakeholders, mainly sourced by schools, have been engaged in the project. Factors like proximity, relevance and disposition to collaborate on a voluntary basis are key to build a strong NEMESIS community.

Are you a school willing to learn more about NEMESIS or thinking about joining the project? Feel free to surf the web and drop us a line (hello@nemesis-edu.eu) or fill our contact form.

Are you a social innovator who would like to collaborate with the schools in your area? Click here for more info on how to become a mentor.

26 Sep 2019

The student experience of NEMESIS: cultivating self-positivity in the classroom

By SEI

Having had the privilege to take part in and closely observe pilot period 1 of NEMESIS at Rockingham Junior and Infant School, I realise how important the power of self-positivity is. We all know what it means to be positive, and how this can sometimes be a struggle. So when ‘positivity’ becomes an intrinsic part of someone’s mentality, it can be extremely powerful. While ‘self-positivity’ may not be an element you can tap into in every part of your life, that does not mean it is not attainable. Even if you are only experiencing positivity in one aspect of it, this can be harnessed to permeate your whole mindset!

A new driving force

‘One parent noted that it made her son feel worthy – a powerful sentiment – which I know from my teaching career can increase motivation, engagement and feeling good about oneself.’

During the 9 month NEMESIS project, children took the lead in restoring the caretaker’s house at their school. The trends in behaviour visible over the course of this project were complex and intriguing to say the least! It seemed that the children’s motivation within the programme came from being given ownership over the project. Activities such as teaching adults how to record on tablets encouraged the students to see how valuable and important their work and ideas truly were. One parent noted that it made her son feel worthy – a powerful sentiment – which I know from my teaching career can increase motivation, engagement and feeling good about oneself.

Praise can take many forms

“NEMESIS gives students a voice and we can make decisions” – a NEMESIS student.

As a teacher, I also understand that different forms of praise must be given depending on the child and situation in question. The children’s participation in the NEMESIS project, however, seemed to create a form of praise all of its own. The pupils were left feeling “valued, worthy and important“. This is because, in getting the chance to take charge of the operation themselves, they were not only being listened to… but heard! They were not merely dismissed as token children. As one 9 year old boy commented: “NEMESIS gives students a voice and we can make decisions.” The fact that their decisions were taken seriously became an implicit form of praise – implicit because praise didn’t always have to be verbal. Carrying out the ideas that the children had come up with was praise enough. As the adage goes ‘actions speak louder than words.’

Real life = real feelings

Working on something real to create a positive outcome for yourself and others brings about a sense of achievement, happiness and positivity. Knowing the project was really happening, and not just an abstract concept to write about in class, had a significant impact on the children: ‘it was interesting because we got to see the proper house,’ ‘I really like the house and hope it will be finished,’ ‘it’s not how I thought it would be – it’s bigger and better. Students would be comfy here.’ Children could take pride in the knowledge they were doing good for themselves and others. The contribution that they were making acted as motivation. It encouraged them to carry on…

 

Students at Rockingham School, In Sheffield (UK)

That communal spirit

“I can help alongside other people.”

Working with children and adults of all different ages and backgrounds was a novelty for the students of Rockingham. Despite the Junior and Infant school being a newcomer to the programme, however, the educational programme proved to be a resounding success. The collective feeling of working together towards something positive nurtured good feelings and positive results as the children, and adults, saw how two, three, four… (you see where I’m going with this) minds are better than one! The children all said that they enjoyed working with people more as the project went on while one adult noted the joint collaborative effort to be “very powerful.” It seems it’s not only the children that are motivated by this shared approach to improving the world.

All these important things, feeling empowered, valued, listened to and important, interlink in complex ways, mirroring the complexity of the human mind to bring about that wonderful feeling of positivity. The combination of emotional, cognitive, behavioural and agentic engagement was different in every child, usually comprising more than one element, to produce a combination that made them feel good. This, when sustained over time, can become innate in the child – making them happier, more motivated learners. Imagine if all education made you feel this good!

Author: Jen Wall

Author’s note: the research conducted was on a small group of 7 children aged 6 – 11 years old hence my qualitative findings are not generalisable. I am not suggesting this would be the same for everyone, merely sharing initial insights gleaned from my research.

NEMESIS is a Horizon 2020 project bringing together education and social innovation to empower the changemakers of tomorrow. The project started in 2018 and it will continue until 2021. At the moment there are ten schools involved from five European countries and a second pilot will start in September 2019, for which we invite more schools.

 Do you want to learn about other schools projects in NEMESIS? Click here.

Are you a school willing to learn more about NEMESIS or thinking about joining the project? Feel free to surf the web and drop us a line (hello@nemesis-edu.eu) or fill our contact form.

Are you a social innovator who – as those mentioned here- would like to collaborate with the schools in your area? Click here for more info on how to become a mentor

16 Sep 2019

NEMESIS participation in Youth activism, engagement and the development of new civic learning spaces

By Valnalon

When: 25/06/2019 – 28/06/19

Where: Budapest, HUNGARY

Our partner Valnalón attended the final event of the Leverhulme Trust International Network project on Youth Activism.

This 3-year project (2016-2019) has been exploring the meanings of youth activism and engagement to young people, professionals and policymakers. The conference provided the platform for sharing, discussing and deliberating on questions around the role of education in promoting forms of civic activism and engagement congruent with democratic pluralism and patterns of participation in a range of different socio-political contexts.

The conference was attended by over 80 delegates from over 20 countries. Audience profile was a mix of researchers, educational practitioners, youth workers and policymakers.

NEMESIS was introduced to the audience, explaining our goals and pedagogical model, discuss our conception of Social Innovation in Education and present preliminary teachers’ perspectives on different aspects of the first piloting phase. The session was moderated by Terezia Zoric (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto). Terezia is the co-founder of The Grove, a public elementary school dedicated to social justice, environmental sustainability and community activism.

 

 

 

Visit the Project website

Visit the Conference website

 

13 Sep 2019

Teachers’ Training Event in Thessaloniki

By STIMMULI

Some days before the official start of the academic year 2019 -2020, the NEMESIS team organized a teacher’s training workshop in the premises of the 9th high school of Kalamaria in Thessaloniki, Greece. The aim of the workshop was to introduce to new schools and the 56 participating teachers the NEMESIS educational philosophy and set the ground for their involvement in the second pilot year of the project.

The training focused on different aspects of the projects:

i) concepts around social innovation and social entrepreneurship,

ii) the key principles guiding the NEMESIS educational model, namely: the student-centred approach, co-creation and transformative social action,

iii) the project mechanisms that will be utilized in each school to facilitate the pilot implementation such as the co-creation labs and the NEMESIS SI open learning platform.

To avoid long theoretical discussions, teachers from the three Greek schools that participated in the first pilot year of the project shared their experiences and helped the new schools with practical tips and guidance. Also, the Greek SIP Alexander Theodoridis from Boroume helped the participants to better understand concepts around social innovation and social entrepreneurship and the role of the SIPs in the NEMESIS co-creation labs.

Overall, the discussions held during the workshop enabled the new teachers to get to grips with the NEMESIS model but most importantly brought to surface some “expected” challenges for implementing the NEMESIS model in the new academic year. As anticipated, the challenges that were pointed out relate to

i) teachers established teaching practices and the need to change their instructional style, step back and let students lead the way,

ii) difficulties in understanding the wider concept of social innovation

iii) existing attitudes and narrow perceptions towards linking entrepreneurship and school education.

However, the valuable experience and the lessons learned from the first pilot year will help the NEMESIS teams to better address teachers concerns and challenges ensuring an even more successful and enlightening second pilot year whereby more than 30 schools around Europe will try to implement the NEMESIS model in their contexts.

Dr. Aristidis Protopsaltis (ILI-FAU) giving a presentation during the training

 

The NEMESIS team would like to thank all participants and wish them a creative and successful school year.

 Do you want to learn about other schools projects in NEMESIS? Click here.

Are you a school willing to learn more about NEMESIS or thinking about joining the project? Feel free to surf the web and drop us a line (hello@nemesis-edu.eu) or fill our contact form.

Are you a social innovator who – as those mentioned here- would like to collaborate with the schools in your area? Click here for more info on how to become a mentor.

10 Sep 2019

NEMESIS in the 7EMES International Research Conference on Social Enterprise

By STIMMULI

In 24-27 June 2019, the NEMESIS team participated in the 7EMES International Research Conference on Social Enterprise which is one of the world’s central meeting places for all researchers that are involved in social enterprise, social entrepreneurship and social and solidarity economy research across the globe. 

The first day of the Conference was launched with a Transdisciplinary Forum and NEMESIS was presented during three sessions. In the first session, a fishbowl technique was used and the 20 participants had the chance to get information about the project and reflect upon social innovation in education. In the second NEMESIS session, the OPERA technique was utilized enabling people to reflect upon how could education help society in the 21st century. In the last NEMESIS session, Catherine Brentnall (SEI) gave a presentation on NEMESIS as an alternative to competitive Enterprise Education. 

Figure 1: NEMESIS session 1, facilitated by Catherine Brentnall (SEI) and using the fishbowl technique to discuss about Social Innovation in Education

In the second day of the conference, NEMESIS was presented through two research papers by the project partners Stimmuli and ILI-FAU, focusing on discussing the Social Innovation Learning Framework and the Social Innovation Open learning platform developed by the project.

Figure 2: Presentation of the research paper: “Towards a Social Innovation learning framework” by Irene Kalemaki (Stimmuli)

Figure 3: Presentation of the research paper: “Social Innovation Open Learning Platform” by Dr. Aristidis Protopsaltis (ILI-FAU)

The novelty of the NEMESIS project, as well as the first research findings that were presented, attracted the attention of the audience and fruitful discussions were held on how social innovation education can impact the wider education domain.

 Do you want to learn about other schools projects in NEMESIS? Click here.

Are you a school willing to learn more about NEMESIS or thinking about joining the project? Feel free to surf the web and drop us a line (hello@nemesis-edu.eu) or fill our contact form.

Are you a social innovator who – as those mentioned here- would like to collaborate with the schools in your area? Click here for more info on how to become a mentor.

28 Aug 2019

Pedagogies for active citizenship: flavours, strategies and tensions

By Valnalon

“Our education systems and schools need to prepare young people to become active, participative and responsible individuals: the complex, multicultural and rapidly evolving societies we live in cannot do with less.”

(Reference Framework for Competences for Democratic Culture  vol.1, p.7)

Few would disagree that preparation for life as active citizens in democratic societies is one of the major purposes of education.  As observed in the opening quote schools are expected to drive “activation”, the process(es) of becoming an active, participative and responsible individual. Yet, the expression “active citizenship” is taken for granted. What does it really mean?

By way of scene-setting, we can locate the different flavours or conceptions of active citizenship along a continuum.

  • “personally responsible’ citizens… ‘public spirited’ citizens who obey the law and pay their taxes
  • ‘participatory’ citizens …. active community members who volunteer and take on leadership and initiative within established systems and structures
  • ‘justice-oriented’ citizens…. concerned for social justice, a desire to improve society and question structural factors that perpetuate injustices

You may have noticed the three categories are not mutually exclusive, but each of them may require different pedagogical strategies.  Woods, Taylor, Atkins and Johnston (2018) took the “justice-oriented” route “where the aim is to equip students with the ability to critically analyse society and address social issues and injustices” and tried to understand how this particular learning journey is best planned and supported in an educational setting.

By observing and talking to secondary school teachers and students involved in a citizenship curriculum initiative in New Zealand,  the authors sought to identify pedagogies with potential for critical and transformative citizenship learning.  New Zealand teachers employed a combination of  strategies to deepen affective and cognitive engagement  in order to win the hearts and minds of students:

Pedagogical Strategies to deepen affective engagement

Teachers encouraged students to:

  • Step into other people’s shoes
  • Access digital media which connected directly with people associated with the social issue (eg.  personal blogs of refugees or homeless people, videos of inspirational actions of others)
  • Connect  with inspiring community members who themselves were already making a difference
  • Select their own social issue to study

Pedagogical Strategies to deepen cognitive engagement

Teachers encouraged students to:

  • deepen the level of critical thinking.
  • work on the root causes of a problem.
  • explore the controversial and contested nature of social issues by considering alternative perspectives

Two tensions came to the fore in conversations with teachers and students:

  • The first tension had to do with the “heart vs mind” conflict or to put it in slightly more technical terms, balancing the right dose of affective and cognitive engagement.   “Feeling inspired or moved to take social action alone did not lead to critical or transformative acts of citizenship,  deep knowledge was also essential.”  Lack of knowledge, low levels of confidence or little prior experience in taking social action may result in poorly conceived social actions. More structured and teacher-led approaches are needed here. Drawbacks? Lower levels of student engagement or  even resentment
  • A second tension had to do with immediate or delayed gratification. “Unless teachers took a strong and intentional focus on critical and transformative forms of social action, there was a tendency toward apolitical and ‘quick-fix’ forms of social action.”   So this is not action for the sake of action, but action that goes hand in hand with a critique of institutional injustices and attempts to leverage policy change.

And while I was reading this I recalled a third tension, the one between” civic-mindedness (construed as solidarity with and loyalty towards other people) and moral responsibility.” (Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture Vol 1, p 44). Should we go with the flow or swim against the tide? Should we always take action, or refusing to act is the best option to confront social injustice?

Dealing with all these tensions confirms the need for highly skilled specialist teachers who are “agile and creative in mastering a wide variety of topics and issues as well as figuring out curricular connections, often on the fly”.  Teachers are adept at managing a delicate juggle that entails  “letting go” and “jumping in”,  keeping students’ spirits high through action while creating time and space for reflection, identifying short-term milestones while not losing focus on long-term and structural change.

Finally, authors stress it is unrealistic to think a single experience, no matter how positive, could churn out active citizens as if by magic.  So, don´t be harsh on yourself if projects fall short of achieving the critical and transformative level you aimed for.  Students will get better at if they are given more than one opportunity to practice social action.  As experiences accumulate,  they will be able to take on more difficult and systemic social issues.

So, what’s in it for NEMESIS?

1.       It helps to clarify what we mean by socio/political activation in our definition of Social Innovation. “Social Innovation Education is a collaborative and collective learning process for the empowerment and socio/political activation of students to drive social change […]

2.       This is more of an open question for teachers in NEMESIS pilot schools.  Do the pedagogical strategies and tensions identified in New Zealand resonate with your experiences in the piloting phase?

 

Further reading:

Wood, B. E., Taylor, R., Atkins, R., & Johnston, M. (2018). Pedagogies for active citizenship: Learning through affective and cognitive domains for deeper democratic engagement. Teaching and Teacher Education, 75, 259-267.

02 Jul 2019

It’s time for better schools: NEMESIS partners meet in Sheffield

By NEMESIS

In June 2019 the pilot schools, along with the rest of the partners involved in NEMESIS, met in Sheffield (UK) to put in common the experience with those pilots schools that have been implementing NEMESIS. The meeting was held in The Chimney House, a part of Sheffield’s important historic industrial heritage that once housed an elephant named Lizzie during World War One. 

Children guiding us towards a new school model

During our first day, we visited Herringthorpe Junior School, a beautiful school located in Rotherham, part of the Willow Tree Academy. Jane, their Headteacher, gave us the welcome and introduced us to the children who would be our tour guides. As part of NEMESIS, Herrinthorpe’ pupils have been developed a large variety of projects, form a renovation of a caretakers house, to a second-hand clothes market. After their pilots, they are now looking at how they can roll this out across the academy, looking at using the NEMESIS framework in all classrooms and in all year groups from September.

The link with real-life experiences

The NEMESIS educational model was co-designed and tested over a period of 3.5 years by primary and secondary students, teachers, social innovators, businesspeople, researchers and members of the community in France, Germany, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Holland and the United Kingdom. As well as offering us an important opportunity to reflect on the NEMESIS’s educative model, this meeting also provided us with a chance to ponder its potential to be extended to a larger number of new schools. Teachers from all our pilot’s schools presented their projects, talking about their challenges, unexpected outcomes and advice that they would give to future schools. 

This meeting was the time to see, after all the theory, how NEMESIS is actually changing the realities of the schools. As part of the expected and also unexpected outcomes of the pilot, hierarchical relationships between children and adults are being transformed.  As one child of the Albares School said: “It is like getting out of the classroom, it’s more real. We are not treated as simple kids but as persons.  It’s very interesting to collaborate with people of different ages […] if I think about the future that’s the kind of situation we will be facing […] dealing with different kinds of people that you may not know very well, but with whom you’ll need to collaborate anyway.” 

“We are not treated as simple kids but as persons.” 

Co-creation labs are safe spaces to identify and ponder social problems, but also are processes that allow students to have a comprehensive view of their connection with the others, which motivates them to engage in social action and increase their civic engagement. Students participating in co-creation labs have increased their confidence and sense of belonging and feel more empowered. This empowerment is manifested in underlying psychological processes such as increased autonomy, belonging or connectedness.  Moreover, this empowerment can also be seen also in the rise of self-confidence and more articulate discourse of their needs and interests, especially in those children with a tendency toward shyness or with relationship problems. 

As one the NEMESIS community members, Catherine Brentnall, said, language constructs reality, and those kinds are testimonies that show what is in the core of the NEMESIS educational model: to put the children at the centre of everything so that the become the changemakers of tomorrow. 

And now, what? 

With all the experience gained, the time has come to move on to pilot two, in which new schools are invited to participate. NEMESIS now not only have a tested pedagogical framework, but also the experience of other teachers, parents and social innovators who may have never heard of the term “Social Innovation Education” before and ended up immersed in a process in which their students become more socially aware and innovative.

NEMESIS is a Horizon 2020 project bringing together education and social innovation to empower the changemakers of tomorrow. The project started in 2018 and it will continue until 2021. At the moment there are ten schools involved from five European countries and a second pilot will start in September 2019, for which we invite more schools.

Are you a school member and do you want to implement Social Innovation Education in your school? Feel free to surf the web and drop us a line (hello@nemesis-edu.eu) or fill our contact form.

Are you a social innovator who – as those mentioned here- would like to collaborate with a school? Click here for more info on how to become a mentor.

28 Jun 2019

Three concepts in a boat: co-creation, youth-adult interactions and student voice

By Valnalon

Co-creation is a central piece in NEMESIS model.  Such a fancy word deserves a better explanation. What follows is an attempt at translating it into educational jargon. I’ll be indulging in two conceptual leaps to make my point.

NEMESIS projects aims at bringing individuals from different backgrounds and ages (parents, SIPs, teachers, students) together to accomplish common goals.   As a result NEMESIS  Theory of Change postulates:

  • “Students participating in co-creation processes will increase their confidence and sense of belonging and thus feel more empowered. Empowerment of students is linked to underlying psychological processes such as autonomy, belonging or connectedness.”
  • “The involvement of SIPs in co-creation labs provides inspiration and motivation which will broaden the horizons of students and trigger them to engage in social action and increase civic engagement. […]”

Now, pretending the magic of co-creation will simply happen by gathering people, young and adults,  together is a paradigmatic example of wishful thinking.

 

1st leap: Co-creation –> more and better youth-adult interactions?

The first leap consists in considering co-creation as an enabler of high-quality youth-adult interactions.  We all know it does not always work that way but NEMESIS projects would ideally fall into the Youth-Adult Partnership category in the continuum of Youth-Adult Relationships model proposed by Jones & Perkins (2004).

Adult-Centered Adult-Led Youth-Adult Partnership Youth-Led Youth-Centered
programs that are conceived and driven completely by adults adults provide guidance for youth, but the youth have some input in decision making, albeit limited by adults’ discretion Youth and adult participants have equal chances in utilizing skills, decision making, mutual learning, and independently carrying out tasks to reach common goals programs or projects where youth primarily develop the ideas and make decisions while adults typically provide needed assistance. programs or activities led exclusively by youth, with little or no adult involvement

 

Ok, so this gives us a glimpse on things to look for to gauge the quality of youth-adult interactions. In such a situation,  youth and adults work collectively, engaging in one or more components of a project and fully exercising an equal opportunity to utilize decision making and other leadership skills. But, one may still wonder what’s the impact of high quality youth-adult interactions in young kids competence/skills development. Bear with me for the next conceptual leap.

 

2nd Leap:  more and better youth-adult interactions –> expanded student voice?

Our second conceptual leap links high quality youth-adult interactions with student voice.  Mitra wrote some time ago “More extensive student voice initiatives include collaboration between young people and adults to address problems in the school, with rare cases even allowing students to assume leadership roles in change efforts (Fielding, 2001; Mitra, 2005).”

The impact of student voice intiatives has been extensively studied.  While most research has been undertaken in secondary school settings, Mitra and Serriere (2012) have identified similar impacts in primary school students mainly on the development of Agency, Belonging (sense of), Competence, Discourse and (Civic)Efficacy, or what the authors summarise as the ABCDE of student voice impact.

The ABCDE Impact Framework of Student Voice (Mitra & Serriere, 2012)

 

Collaboration between young people and adults to address problems in the school seems like a good description of what’s going on in most NEMESIS pilot projects (watch this and this) But what’s interesting here is what happens when you reframe these projects as student voice initiatives.

 

So, what’s in it for NEMESIS?

  • Translates “co-creation” into a more teacher-friendly language
  • Sheds further light into theories regarding the potential impact of NEMESIS on students.
  • Provides additional means for assessment/evaluation of NEMESIS pilots, which may be helpful in determining the quality of experiences and areas for improvement.

Further reading:

Jones, K. R., & Perkins, D. F. (2005). Determining the quality of youth-adult relationships within community-based youth programs. Journal of Extension, 43(5), 1-10.

Mitra, D.L & Serriere, S.C. (2012) Student Voice in Elementary School Reform: Examining Youth Development in Fifth Graders. American Educational Research Journal, Vol. 49, No. 4, pp. 743–774

03 Sep 2018

Introducing NEMESIS schools

By NEMESIS

In every journey there is a a group of brave pioneers whose involvement and commitment are essential to succeed. Such is the case in our schools. We are already on the hunt for more schools to be involved, so keep an eye on this page – we will be updating!

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24 Apr 2018

Meet our Social Innovation Practitioners

By NEMESIS

In NEMESIS we are trying a social innovation education model for and with schools to empower the changemakers of tomorrow. For that to work, the combination of teacher and social innovators expertise is essential. In three years, we aim to develop a European social innovator community and engage around 200 SIPs (‘social innovation practitioners’, our code for social entrepreneurs). For starters, we are already working closely with four of them.

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15 Feb 2018

NEMESIS partners meet in Seville

By NEMESIS

What is social innovation? Is it about finding imaginative solutions for social problems? About subverting power relations? About bringing systemic change? Is it the same that social entrepreneurship?  Trying to define social innovation was one of the challenges NEMESIS partners faced at our second project meeting, held in Seville.

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13 Oct 2017

3, 2, 1… NEMESIS!

By NEMESIS

Fürth, Germany. October 10th 2017. Around twenty people from fourteen organizations across Europe meet for the first time. Some have known each other for years. For others, this is their first encounter. But we are all here for the same reason: to build a bridge between education and social innovation. Welcome to NEMESIS kick-off meeting!

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