About Us

ECO IN proposes a new and innovative training model to generate inclusive schools and communities. Through an ecological approach and based on scientific evidence, ECO-IN promotes an active participation of teachers, school heads, policy-makers, parents and families.

Scope & Needs

The purpose of ECO-IN project is the improvement of inclusive education policies and practices from primary to lower secondary school, through the active involvement of all the main educational stakeholders - such as, teachers, school heads, educational staff (in and out of the school), parents and public authorities - by providing them with specific training and supporting actions to concretely act as a teamwork combating segregation and radicalization thus enabling more qualitative and quantitative measures to implement, monitor and assess inclusiveness at school.

Enhancing the capacities and competences of a wider educational community, to promote and support inclusive education and to reinforce its impact assessment on both key actors and disadvantaged pupils, is the main strategy that ECO-IN project adopts to ensure that the key players belonging to different social and educational systems (school, family, community, political bodies) are enabled for appropriate implementation, monitoring and assessment of the impact of their action in reducing social exclusion and marginalization of disadvantaged students and boosting social participation (education, personal and social benefit) while reinforcing, on different levels, competences for promoting social inclusion through education and training (social and systemic levels benefit).

Dynamic and Innovative Evaluation System

Developing of ECO-IN training programme

Developing of ECO-IN training programme aimed at supporting high quality levels of school inclusion, involving different target groups categories (“cross-sector network”) in reaching this goal. Based on the “ecological approach” mentioned before, the programme will deliver a set of training sessions to boost specific skills for specific categories in order to provide cultural, methodological and organizational support for schools to better promote inclusion at all levels of the educational system. According to chosen objectives (general and specific), the content of the training program will be structured around some “kernel elements” that fit with the development of different categories’ competencies. According to the assessment protocol, ECO- IN training program will be adapted to the national contexts, different figures and will have a part in common, with a solid European background for scaling-up and transferability;

Developing an innovative, digitalized and multi-language system

Developing an innovative, digitalized and multi-language system, based on a specific, reliable and valid algorithm-based scoring system for new ecological approaches on inclusion and for assessing and monitoring the processes of inclusive education carried out by the different target groups. This protocol will collect data coming from the cross-sector sample population and will comprise of: a) a series of in common items; b) country-specific items and c) specific items for categories in relation to the different school systems. This innovative system will be managed through a Vortal (a vertical portal) that allows the collection, managing, monitoring and publication of data. The algorithm will allow also the weighted distribution of data import to connect to each answer provided by the varied sample population, therefore, highlighting strengths and critical points of inclusion towards which developing and steering “improvement plans”, especially in terms of policies;

Carrying out an evidence-based research in 4 consortium countries

Carrying out an evidence-based research in 4 consortium countries (Italy, Spain, Romania and Lithuania) to test the efficacy of a training program, strategies and actions for school inclusion with pre-post assessment, involving different stakeholders coming from formal and non-formal learning environment and using ECO-IN assessment protocol;

Building new spaces for trust, involvement, sharing and communication

Building new spaces for trust, involvement, sharing and communication, between the different figures in the educational systems that support and promote EU values of inclusion, equity, social justice and non-discrimination;

Producing a white paper and a policy recommendation

Producing a white paper and a policy recommendation paper based on the evidences collected in 4 different Countries able to guide and oriented European policy on inclusive education, with high potential impact and scalability in new EU Countries.

Target Groups

The project is structured to maximize the cross- European transfer of expected results and outputs in different school systems and to identify successful actions for steering educational practices, actions and policies for a more effective educational and social inclusion.

ECO-IN project addresses this needs analysis in a very concrete, feasible and sustainable way, by providing the direct and indirect target groups with a series of benefits. First of all, as inclusive education has not yet reached its full potential, the ECO-IN Toolbox provide teachers, school-heads, policy makers, stakeholders and family with actual tools to implement to monitor, assess, revise and improve the inclusive processes carried out by the schools. By making these target groups fully aware of the potential offered by inclusive education in boosting social participation and improving people’s well-being and success at school and in life, ECO-IN aims at reducing inequality in education, equipping the main players with the right knowledge and expertise to cater for the different needs of the different children that make today’s classrooms.

Direct Target Groups

  • Teachers
  • School heads
  • Parents & families
  • Policy-makers

Indirect Target Groups

  • Learners
  • External stakeholders, local services and associations
  • Scientific Community

Open licenses

All the Outputs will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which guarantees that users give appropriate credit to the authors and indicating if changes were made from the original piece, but at the same time allows sharing, distributing and adapting it.

All deliverables produced by the project will be easily downloadable from the project website, which will also offer a comments section in which people accessing the website, can continuingly keep in contact and ask for further information. By asking the email address and the name, ECO IN website is able to build a database of the people interested in the project topics, in order to establish systematic contacts with them also beyond the project duration.