Gamified Values Education For Fostering Migrant Integration at Schools (GAMIGRATION)
DURATION: 26 months (01/02/2022 to 31/03/2024)
PARTNERS:
- University of Salamanca (Spain) – Coordinator
- IES Ruiz de Alda (Spain)
- Bursa Il Milli Egitim Mudurlugu (TR)
- NESRIN FUAT BURSALI ILKOKULU (TR)
- UKLA AKADEMI OZEL EGITIM OGRETIM KURUMLARI TURIZM TICARET LIMITED SIRKETI (TR)
- Wirtschaftsschule am Oswaldsgarten (Germany)
BACKGROUND
It’s worldwide known that immigrant students have complicated problems in integrating into the schools they are educated and societies they live in. Immigrant students have had to leave their families, their homes, their cultures and their pasts in a sense, and had to migrate to countries where they are not very accustomed to or completely foreigners.
Besides poverty, loneliness and the psychological problems, these immigrant students are expected to harmonize well to a new country. On the other hand, teachers who teach in schools with diverse student populations recognise that handling cultural diversity in class is difficult and requires preparation. Both parties seem to be suffering.
OBJECTIVES
The Gamigration project aims to make the adaptation process of immigrant students easier, more enjoyable and stressfree by using the Gamification technique in English Language classes. Whilst this fun and academically proven useful technique aims to teach English vocabulary and grammar explicitly to immigrant and local students, our main goal is to teach the EU Citizenship Values implicitly. We believe that the understanding and acceptance of subjects such as Respect for Human Dignity, Equality and Human Rights, Inclusion and Tolerance and Respect for Diversity will accelerate the collective pace that both immigrant and local students experience and help the process of accepting each other. The objective that we are expecting to accomplish with the help of a ‘Factor Analysis’ is that we would like the educators who are working with immigrants to be more aware of the fact that once immigrants have a better understanding of the values that form European Citizenship, it would be much easier for them to integrate to the schools they are in, and societies they live in as well. Since all the partners are chosen from the countries with a strong background of immigrant experiences, we believe that what is learned from this output is going to be highly transferable both among them and between the other related institutions in their countries.
IMPLEMENTATION
The first activity in the project is the “Factor Analysis”, to learn more about the factors that cause difficulties in the integration of immigrant students preparing three different questionnaires for immigrant students, local students and teachers who teach them. Another product of our project, is the creation of the “Games-Based English Lessons about EU Citizenship”, aims to help teachers of English teach both immigrant and local students European Citizenship values implicitly while teaching the English language goals explicitly. We will provide teachers with concrete teaching materials in real atmospheres to teach and strengthen common European Values. This objective we want to achieve with the help of “e-ntegration via Gamified English Lessons”, a gamified eLearning course. An finally, the last activity that we want to achieve in this project is the “Branching scenarios”, to create a series of scenarios in which immigrant and local students can understand each other’s lifestyles, family life, culture and value judgments in a better way. And we want to put them into these scenarios to determine what consequences they would face in certain situations to help them have some ideas.
RESULTS
The Gamigration project will impact all participants and participating organisations by providing students and teachers with innovative English lessons materials that will change their mindset about European Citizenship Values and integration of immigrants. Integration of immigrant students has been a top priority and subject of high interest for University of Salamanca, Bursa İl Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü, Nesrin Fuat Bursalı İlkokulu, UKLA, IES Ruiz de Alda and Wirtschaftsschule am Oswaldsgarten. Also for the University of Salamanca and UKLA, e-Learning and Gamification have been items of high priority. Gamigration project will lead to a refreshing change in mindset within these organisations.
Because the project plans the development of new approaches and outputs for the integration of immigrants from EU Citizenship Values and e-Learning perspectives. Impact and sustainability of Gamigration after the project has concluded is guaranteed at the premises of all partners. In addition, we expect the partner organisations to increase their ability and capacity to enable target groups to become socially productive and to raise their communication skills level through learning and using the Gamigration results.