Be Active, be a Citizen

In many EU countries the topic of active citizenship in youth education is often understood more as learning ‘about’ active citizenship rather than learning ‘to be’ active citizens. Indeed, in the...

In many EU countries the topic of active citizenship in youth education is often understood more as learning ‘about’ active citizenship rather than learning ‘to be’ active citizens. Indeed, in the field of citizenship education, educational practice still places the main emphasis on transferring knowledge, that is, the cognitive aspect of learning even though it would be important to teach skills as well, such as analytical and argumentative skills. Among those, an emphasis should be made on critical thinking skills that can assist with ethical decision making and reasoned argumentation. According to researchers, these are particularly necessary in times of uncertainty. Indeed, thinking critically supports our wellbeing, our decision-making amidst ambiguous and constantly changing information and our understanding of complex situations. On the other hand, critical thinking skills are also important for active citizenship as they are needed to allow democracy to work well; critical thinking can help us ask better questions, uncover our assumptions, overcome systematic biases in our reasoning and reframe issues in ways that can take advantage of the essence of democracy, that is epistemic (i.e. the knowledge-producing potential of

In order to achieve the project objectives we implemented the following activities: • Project management • We created, piloted and adjusted a set of complementary resources to support youth educators to develop critical thinking and active citizenship among disadvantaged adolescents and young adults. o PR1: The Be Active, be a Citizen - a workshop programme based on the philosophy for community (P4C) methodologies o PR2: The Be Active, be a Citizen - Artful thinking workshops for adolescents and young adults o PR3: The BeAC photo challenge - an outreach activity to promote active-citizenship o PR4: Teaching critical thinking through philosophy and art: a training for youth workers • Dissemination of results through: dedicated webpage, e-learning platform and multiplying events organized by each partner in Romania (Conference and seminar), Italy, Serbia, Greece and Ireland. • Evaluation of the project

The project contributed to the development of critical thinking skills among disadvantaged youth - promoting pro-social behaviours among disadvantaged youth, including increased Environmental citizenship, Democratic citizenship at the EU level and Social citizenship - support to social inclusion of youth coming from marginalised contexts - support the upskilling of youth workers for the implementation of tailored active citizenship training programmes. The outputs of the project: o PR1: The Be Active, be a Citizen – a training manual we created a workshop programme based on the philosophy for community (P4C) methodologies o PR2: The Be Active, be a Citizen - – a training manual Artful thinking workshops for adolescents and young adults o PR3: The BeAC photo challenge - an outreach activity to promote active-citizenship, on-line photo exhibition o PR4: Teaching critical thinking through philosophy and art: a training for youth workers, e-platform