Newsletter #1

First Meeting of the “QualiFLY” project

Istanbul, 14-16 November 2005

The meeting was the first project meeting – after a preparatory meeting in January 2005 to jointly formulate the project proposal - in the framework of the EU Grundtvig 2 project “QualiFLY” (Quality in Family Literacy) which is coordinated by UIE. The project is a “learning partnership”, its aim being the

• promotion of good quality in family literacy programmes;
• dissemination of best practice;
• reviewing monitoring and evaluation methods to identify quality indicators and promoting new approaches for effective programmes;
• creating a core group of expertise in each partner country through the active involvement of tutors in the project;
• doing advocacy work for the “Family Literacy” approach through the website of the partnership and the individual networks of each partner.

The main focus of the meeting was on teacher training. Every partner had brought at least one tutor to the meeting.

Staff meeting

The Turkish partner, AÇEV (Mother Child Education Foundation) had organized the meeting and study visits. AÇEV was founded in 1993 and has about 150 employees. Apart from the headquarters in Istanbul, it has about 10 local offices all over Turkey. With financial support from the government and other organisations such as the World Bank and (formerly) the Soros Open Society it carries out educational programmes for children and their parents, including literacy for women. AÇEV works closely together with leading academicians in Turkey (e.g. Prof. Sevda Bekman from Bogazici University, Istanbul) and has done lots of research and evaluations in their areas of work. AÇEV’s best known programme is the Mother Child Education programme which targets 5 to 6 year-old children and their mothers. It has been running for years all over the country and involves thousands of children and their mothers. The programme has undergone five evaluations (e.g. Sevda Bekman: A Fair Chance). Meanwhile it has been handed over to the Ministry of Education so that AÇEV is no longer responsible for quality control (but still for teacher training). This is a result of the expansion of the outreach programme which now has 350 active trainers.

The partner from Malta, the Foundation for Educational Services, was established in 2001 as a mechanism that works hand-in-hand with the Education Division at the Ministry of Education in Malta to provide, among others, a range of innovative educational initiatives in the field of literacy support. Among its initiatives are primary prevention and secondary prevention family literacy programmes, capacity-building programmes for parents, writing workshops for children and adults, community lifelong learning centres, capacity-building of schools, training, research, international projects and publications. At the heart of the Maltese family literacy programme is the “Bridging to Empowerment” Hilti Model with its core aim of empowering parents as co-educators, learners and parent leaders and at the same time helping children develop literacy skills.

Tutor's meeting

The Bulgarian partner, Ethnocultural Dialogue Foundation, is a non profit organization which was founded in 1999. In 2003 the Foundation, in partnership with the IIZ/DVV, implemented the project Second Chance – Social Integration through Literacy – in Sofia, Trun and Breznik. The project involved 150 young Roma who attended literacy and social skills courses. It was funded by the European Commission in the framework of the PHARE program. The Bulgarian partner has no experience with Family Literacy yet, but is keen to implement such a programme, mainly with Roma population. There are about 800,000 Roma, of whom 25% are illiterate, living in Bulgaria. Adela Stoyanova, President of the foundation, is seeking funding for family literacy or father support programmes. The current Roma Inclusion Decade (2005-2015) may constitute a good framework for these initiatives.

Father's Support Program

The partner from Ireland, the National Literacy Agency (NALA), is a non-profit membership organisation, concerned with national co-ordination, training and policy development in adult literacy work in Ireland. The Agency was established in 1980 and from that time has campaigned for recognition and response to the adult literacy problem in Ireland. Its mission is to ensure all adults with literacy difficulties have access to a range of high quality learning opportunities. Adult literacy tuition is provided by the Vocational Educational Committees (VECs). Each of the 33 VECs in the country operates an Adult Literacy Service. NALA has already extensive experiences with family literacy. Celia Rafferty gave an introduction on the teacher training for tutors working in this field. Classes take place one to one or in small groups. The one to one literacy tutors are all volunteers who must complete a 30-hour tutor training course (Initial Tutor Training) before they are matched with a learner. NALA also provides in-service (one day workshop on specific topics) and accredited courses (modular courses leading to a certificate) for tutors. In Ireland the curriculum is developed together with the learners, according to their needs whereas in Turkey the curricula of the programmes are developed by academicians on the basis of research. The Irish Family Literacy Program puts adult learners in the centre of its attention whereas the activities of the Turkish partner AÇEV focus more on pre-school aged children.

Mother Child Education Program

The Italian partner, UPTER (Università Popolare di Roma) is a non-profit cultural association active in the field of adult education. Established in Rome in 1987, UPTER arose out of the primary need to create a new – and affordable – educational experience for adults.

UPTER has been particularly sensitive to the problems related to the integration of the immigrant population. Like the Bulgarian partner, UPTER has no experience with family literacy yet (the approach is rather unknown in Italy, just like in Germany) and wants to learn more about it. In their presentation, the Italians gave an overview of their language training for migrants.

Preschool Parent-child Education Program

Apart from the UNESCO Institute for Education there is another partner from Germany, the State Institute for Teacher Training and School Development. In the Hamburg based pilot project – which is carried out by the State Institute in cooperation with UIE – seven primary schools and two kindergartens in nine locations with high concentrations of immigrant population are involved. The four tutors who were part of the Hamburg delegation as well as the other tutors brought by the other partners contributed concrete project experiences from the grassroots level to the meeting.

On the first day, we had a long project meeting at which every partner presented their programmes and best practice, especially with regard to teacher training. In the evening we split up in groups and drove by car more than one and a half hours to the outskirts of Istanbul to visit different meetings of the fathers support programme. In this programme fathers are enabled to support the learning of their children. In addition, it is about improving intra-family relationships and prevention of conflict and violence. We all were particularly impressed by this programme. In the group we observed we saw 12 fathers who come together once a week – for a period of about 30 weeks alltogether – after their working day to discuss in a confidential atmosphere how they could best support the development of their children. We had interesting discussions with the fathers and their trainer, who acknowledged that it is not easy to recruit the participants. Apart from this programme, we saw a Mother Child Education Program and a Preschool Parent-child Education Program. In the final evaluation of the meeting participants expressed their high appreciation of the classroom visits – one evening and a whole day of the programme were dedicated to this – since there is no substitute for it when it comes to learn something about an educational experience.

Participants of the project meeting in Istanbul

During a staff meeting to discuss the way forward of the project, tutors met to exchange experiences and to establish some comparisons among the different approaches to family literacy in each country. One of the issues raised in this meeting was the proportion of migrants in each country. While in Germany immigration (especially from Turkey) has been a reality for many years, Ireland has only recently been exposed to immigration, many of the migrants coming from East Europe. The Bulgarian partner reported of the biggest minority population, the Roma, who have generally a low educational background. Another issue were the practices used in the family literacy programmes. The tutors appreciated the opportunity to exchange informations and experiences with one another and expressed the wish to communicate through the project’s website. In the parallel staff meeting, a plan for presentations of the projects was developed. Each partner will provide brief informations on the following issues: Context of the country; aim of the project/concept of family literacy; target population/cultural and social content and languages; programme design, content and progression routes (incl. place of project provision, start, duration and perspective of project); teacher training; teacher background and qualification; focus (children, young people, adults); curriculum (yes or no, how is it developed?); methodological approach; monitoring and evaluation (which instruments are used, quantitative or qualitative?); how is the project financed?; partnerships; best practice example (something that works particularly well). Another issue raised was the need to develop a common definition of family literacy. After a first round to gain an overview of how each partner describes their approach, the participants agreed upon the following common working definition: “Family literacy is an approach to learning that focuses on intergenerational interactions within the family and community which promote the development of literacy and related life skills.”

In the meetings we had we discussed that after the broad presentations and the little time to go into detail during the discussions we felt the need to have a much more focussed meeting next time (February 2006 in Malta). We decided that the next meeting should focus on programme design, content and curriculum and on teacher training (best practice and lessons learned) and that we want to work partly in sub-groups (workshops) to be able to look closely at these matters.

The website of the project (www.unesco.org/education/uie/qualifly/) will be a knowledge-base which provides informations on all of the partners, their activities and partly disseminates best practice material. There will also be a forum allowing for tutors and other people involved in the project to communicate with each other.