The European Commission has just announced the 98 winning schools of the 2022 edition of the European Innovative Teaching Award EITA – European Innovative Teaching Award, expected on 25 October in Brussels at the headquarters of the European Commission for the award ceremony.

The award rewards the results achieved by teachers and schools that use innovative teaching and learning practices in European partnerships and was awarded to completed and already completed Erasmus+ projects, selected by the Erasmus+ National Agencies on an annual basis, starting in 2021.

The annual theme of EITA 2022 is “Learning together, promoting creativity and sustainability”, directly linked to the European Commission’s New European Bauhaus initiative that links the European Green Deal to our daily life and the environment by inviting Europeans to imagine and build together a sustainable and inclusive future.

Each country participating in the Programme has selected four Erasmus+ projects. In Italy, the Indire’s Erasmus+ National Agency has identified the best activities carried out by schools in Key Action 1 for mobility and Key Action 2 for cooperation in projects. For the Education and Vocational Training (VET) sector, however, the selection of the Erasmus+ project was handled by the Inapp’s Erasmus+ Agency.

The selected schools represent all school levels: early childhood education and care, upper and lower secondary education with general courses, upper secondary education with vocational education and training courses (technical/professional institutes).

In the project selection phase, the Agencies took into account a series of quality indicators related to methodologies, learning environments (including digital learning) and impact on learning/teaching processes.

The winning Italian schools of EITA 2022

The EITA 2022 award for the vocational education and training sector goes to the “Trentin” Agricultural Technical Institute in Lonigo (Vicenza), for the Green thinking 2018 project. The partnership included schools from Italy, Poland, Germany, France, Slovenia, the United Kingdom and Spain to collaborate together. The project was Coordinated by the teacher, Ambrogio Raso, and carried out in an industrial and agricultural economic context that has suffered a negative impact in the recent past and is committed to innovation and sustainability. By developing knowledge and reflection on green issues, the project induced positive individual behaviours and eco-friendly practices in schools. Support for participants with special needs and fewer opportunities has contributed to inclusion and social cohesion, in a context of massive immigration.

The Promoting wellbeing in pre-school through healthier lifestyles project, coordinated by the “Guatelli” Comprehensive Institute of Collecchio (Parma) was selected for the early childhood education and care level. Here the schools, coordinated by teacher, Simone Mazza, worked in partnership with institutes in Greece, Portugal and Sweden. All the partners together, analysed the issue of well-being for children between 3 and 6 years old, in relation to a healthy diet, health and good relationships between school companions. The activities were developed through the initial discussion between teachers and educators in the planned seminars; subsequently the parents were also involved in meetings to share the new learning practices experimented with the children involved in the project.

The award for the project The different colours of music, relating to general secondary education, goes to the “Bianco-Pascoli” state secondary school in Fasano (Brindisi). Teacher coordinator Maria Dibello worked in partnership with schools in France, Greece, Poland, Portugal and the United Kingdom to experience a common vision of the use of music as a universal language, capable of promoting inclusion, communication and acquisition of social and cultural skills, regardless of the conditions of social and economic hardship or the presence of specific disabilities. The students experimented the musical activity in an active and creative way according to the different skills they had.

The Do you speak green? project of the comprehensive Institute “D’Azeglio-Nievo” in Turin was selected as part of the Erasmus+ mobility projects for teacher training. A group of 27 teachers of the school and the referent teacher, Stefania Massaccesi, carried out mobility to acquire greater skills in outdoor education. The new educational environments created in the school have given pupils the opportunity to develop an ecological identity, which is a fundamental prerequisite for environmental education and for concrete sustainable actions.

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