CEDAR (Continuing Education Against Radicalisation) project partners committed to training and empowering European teachers and educators to actively contribute to radicalisation and extremism prevention among young people.
From the analysis of the interviews and focus groups conducted in the project’s partner countries, the consortium defends that it is clear that there is a need to invest in the development and implementation of P/CVE programmes directed at youth. Likewise, evidence shows that we should empower education practitioners to be active actors in prevention programmes.
Moreover, citizenship programmes and initiatives that promote democratic values should be implemented in schools and other educational settings from an early age, in order to prevent potentially discriminatory behaviours and, eventually, the involvement in extremism and radicalisation processes.
How will CEDAR be supporting prevention in schools?
The project’s next steps include the development of materials for the creation of an e-Learning training course for practitioners in educational setting. This e-Learning aims to prepare and engage agents of P/CVE in their professional settings, especially those working with youth.
The pedagogical needs analysis and inventory of available online contents is currently being developed, based on interviews and focus groups with practitioners within the educational setting conducted in each of the partner countries.
The aforementioned conclusions were presented in the first day of the project’s second meeting held on the 2nd and 3rd of December 2021 at the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid, Spain. On this day the consortium discussed the state of the art analysis on P/CVE in educational settings and identification of best practices implemented in each of the partner countries.
On the second day, Rodolfo Ramos Alvarez, from the University of Granada presented conclusions on signs of radicalisation and polarisation in high school and higher education in the region of Melilla, and Álvaro Vicente, from the Royal Institute Elcano revealed evidences about the importance of citizenship promoting initiatives and potential difficulties to their implementation, with a special focus on the Spanish case.
Both presentations led to interesting and fruitful debates regarding, among other things, the link between discrimination and polarising behaviours to extremism and radicalisation, as well as the evaluation of citizenship promoting and P/CVE programmes focused on youth. Such knowledge will contribute to highly enrich the CEDAR project and will be considered in the development of all initiatives throughout the project.
Organised by the Rey Juan Carlos University, the event had the participation of the project promoter National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts (France), as well as IPS’ (Portugal) and fellow project partners: University Toulouse Jean Jaurès (France), School with Class Foundation (Poland) and Salzburg University of Applied Sciences (Austria). The project is funded by Erasmus+ and KA2 – Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices (Strategic Partnerships for higher education).