Education for Citizenship

CHALLENGE
Find complementary and alternative models of Education for Citizenship and for the promotion of civic participation in children and young people. This project is aimed at the school community, civil society organizations and, especially, children and young people between 8 and 18 years old.

BENEFICIARIES
This project mainly benefits young people and children, civil society organizations and the school community, in particular, responsible for implementing the Citizenship Education Strategy.

APPROACH
We started by diagnosing children of various ages and learning about initiatives, inside and outside Portugal, on themes of citizenship and civic participation. To this end, two initiatives were taken to support the development of citizenship and civic participation skills, as well as interviews with civil society technicians, teachers to learn about: 1) what are the young people’s response to these issues? citizenship and civic participation; 2) which are the most suitable channels for an intervention on these themes. Based on the learning, LabX created two new diagnostic tools and civic participation: the card game «Agora Falo Eu!» and the board game «Estrela da Cidadania!» for children in the 1st and 2nd cycle of basic education. Both were tested and iterated at various schools and civil society partners. For children in the 3rd cycle of basic and secondary education, the gamification approach was tested, observing the “Citizenship Tournament” with 100 young people playing citizenship themes in an app and the “World Café” approach of civic participation, carrying out three sessions in schools and civil society associations.

MAIN RESULTS

• Development and testing of 4 experimental initiatives – “Agora Falo Eu!”, “Citizenship Stars”, “World Café Citizenship” and “Citizenship Tournament” – which involved more than 200 young people aged between 7 and 17 years;

«AGORA FALO EU!»

«Agora Falo Eu!» is a pedagogical game, in which children answer questions with picture cards.

OBJECTIVES:

• Explore the themes of citizenship based on the reflection promoted with the game.
• Give children the opportunity to express their needs and expectations.
• Support the choice of activities through participatory processes.

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PROCESS:

• Play the game to understand what the children’s needs and expectations are.
• Vote on project proposals that meet the needs expressed by children in the game.
• Activation and implementation of local projects that were voted on by the children.

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MAIN RESULTS:

• Production of 650 kits of «Agora Falo Eu!» distributed through the network of partners, schools and civil society.
• Approximately 25 entities answered the questionnaire to perceive opportunities for improving the game and to gauge the effective result of the implementation of participatory and gamified practices with children. About 88% rated the game as «Good to Very Good».
• In these 25 entities, until March 2020, 119 gaming sessions took place, involving a total of 549 children and 17 local intervention initiatives were implemented.