Aqueduct is a Comenius Multilateral project aiming to improve the acquisition of key competences through heritage education and to build teacher capacity for competence oriented education in a heritage context. Aqueduct targets teachers, teacher trainers, teacher training students and educational programmers in heritage

organizations willing to invest in competence driven teaching and learning and in heritage education.

During two years the project partners worked on the aim to offer ac-cess to an attractive and effective environment for transversal key com-petence oriented educa-tion based on multidisci-plinary project work and to offer a low threshold heritage entrance to Lifelong Learning. An

additional focus of the project is to take

lifelong learning out of the classroom and involve heritage actors from the local and regional community.

In order to reach these aims, research has been done, guidelines and tools for competence based teaching and learning have been developed and tested in heritage pilot projects and national train-ing days in all participating countries. Good practices of com-petence oriented learning activities in heritage contexts from all over Europe have been collected and described. All these project results have been brought together in an appealing manual, which will be presented at our final conference in Bologna (26-29 Oc-tober 2011). In this newsletter we publish some extracts of theory and practice as well as external expert views and comments.

October 2011

AQUEDUCT PARTNERS: Landcommanderij Alden Biesen project coordinator (Belgium) - www.alden-biesen.beKatholieke Hogeschool Leuven (Belgium)www.khleuven.bePLATO, Leiden University (the Netherlands) www.fsw.leidenuniv.nl/plato/

Transylvania Trust Foundation (Romania)www.transylvaniatrust.roBabeş-Bolyai University (Romania) www.ubbcluj.roIstituto per i Beni Artistici, Culturali e Naturali, Emilia-Romagna (Italy) www.ibc.regione.emilia-romagna.itMalopolska Institute of Culture (Poland) www.mik.krakow.pl

Centre de Culture Européenne Abbaye Royale Saint-Jean d’ Angély (France) www.cceangely.orgPädagogische Hochschule Steiermark (Austria) www.phst.at

Associated partners:GO! : Onderwijs van de Vlaamse GemeenschapACCR : Association des Centres Culturels de Rencontre

ACQUIRING KEY COMPETENCES THROUGH HERITAGE EDUCATION

This document reflects the views only of the Aqueduct consortium, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information therein.

INTRODUCTION TO THE AQUEDUCT APPROACHIngrid Gussen and Jaap Van Lakerveld (PLATO, Leiden University), the editors of the Aqueduct manual, selected some fragments we pre-publish here as a brief summary of the Aqueduct approach.

Characteristics of competence based heritage education

Guided tours, guides explaining the chronological history of rem-nants of early days; booklets telling us all the details of a particular monument without any linkage to either its context, or to the prior knowledge or relevant current experiences people have, the physi-cal exhaustion while strolling through a museum and the inability to recollect much of what was explained afterwards ... many people will recognise these situations. And yet heritage has such potential to inspire us. It teaches us about ancient times, about people, about ourselves, about the present and even the future if… we reveal its treasures in a proper way; if we turn exploration of heritage into a challenge, an experience.

The Aqueduct project was launched to help teachers and other educators do exactly that! To turn heritage education into an in-spiring collective experience that allows pupils and students, as well as their teachers, to gain as much out of it as possible, not only as far as historical knowledge is concerned, but to develop their key competences for lifelong learning, such as the competence to co-operate, communicate, to express themselves culturally and to acquire a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. Within the Aqueduct project heritage is not a goal as such. It is a vehicle for personal learning and development. The relationship between heritage education and competence development is a mutual one.

Heritage education may benefit from a competence based ap-proach and when such an approach is applied the learners will develop the key competences as a consequence.

Key features of competence based education

Competence based learning and teaching do not consist of tradi-tional teaching situations. They are based on the idea that the learn-ers learn by experience and discovery. Therefore learners need to be actively involved in the learning situation and teaching should take place in a highly responsive and learner-centred way without neglecting the obligation of showing learners new horizons and perspectives, and enthusiasm for things they may never have heard of yet.

In competence based education one tends to stress the importance of rich learning environments, which enable students to engage in meaningful learning processes. The most distinctive features of this approach may be summarized as follows:

• MeaningfulcontextsTeachers / educators should assure meaningful contexts in which students experience the relevance and meaning of the compe-tences to be acquired in a natural way.

• MultidisciplinaryapproachCompetences are holistic and as a consequence the educative ap-proach needs to be integrative and holistic as well.

• ConstructivelearningThe philosophy of competence based education has its roots in the social constructivism that pervades our views on learning these days. Learning is conceived as a process of constructing one’s own knowledge in interaction with one’s environment, rather than as a process of absorbing knowledge transferred by others . The conse-quence of this view is that educative processes should be construc-tive by focusing on the construction of models, products, , rules of thumb, reports, or other tangible outputs.

• Cooperative,interactivelearning(withpeers,teachersandheritagepro-viders etc.)

The basic idea of social constructivism is to help learners de-velop their own knowledge and seek ways to make optimal use of other people’s competence in their learning itinerary. Co-op-eration and interaction are both domains of learning as well as vehicles of learning in other domains. If learning is supposed to be self-initiated, self-regulated, and aimed at developing personal competences, the educative approach must allow for diversity in needs, goals and objectives. This requires an open approach in which education includes dialogues between learners and educa-tors about expectations, needs, goals, choices etc.

KEY COMPETENCESThe concept of key competences originated with the adoption of the Lisbon Strategy in 2000. It resulted in the European Reference Framework. The Aqueduct project focuses on the 4 transversal key competences: learning to learn, social and civ-ic competences, sense of initiative and entrepre-neurship and cultural awareness and expression.

Moreinformationonkeycompetences:http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/education_culture/publ/pdf/ll-learning/keycomp_en.pdf

WWW.THE-AQUEDUCT.EU

Read more on page 2

“Too much information might make us stupid, because the human brain cannot deal with it” (Aqueduct manual p. 20) Thus, developing competences to deal with this is important

(Comment by Jacqueline Van Leeuwen, FARO (Flemish Interface Center for cultural heritage), BE)

Practice• DiscoverylearningOpen learning processes require learning that may be character-ized as active discovery as opposed to receptive learning. This does not imply that learning content should not be made accessible. It means that the way of acquiring this knowledge or these compe-tences cannot be just a process of providing information, but should contain opportunities for discovery.

• ReflectivelearningCompetence based learning requires, apart from a focus on the key competences, also an emphasis on the learning processes as such. By reflecting on one’s own motivation, approach, progress, results etc. one develops learning strategies that may be considered meta-competences. The competence meant here usually is referred to as the ‘learning to learn’.

• PersonallearningIn the competence oriented theories learning is conceived as a process of constructing one’s own personal knowledge and com-

petences. Information, knowledge and strategies only become meaningful for a person if they become an integral part of his/her own personal body of knowledge and competences. In education this implies that students need to be able to identify with the con-texts, the people, the situations and interests which are included in the learning domains.

Three basic elements: motivation, experience and reflection

The process which leads to competence acquisition involves three basic elements: motivation, experience and reflection. Compe-tence based education implies learning by doing. Active learning in a realistic situation, in which you have a valuable role, makes the learning process a worthwhile event with outcomes that will be useful in many other contexts. So if you would like the students to learn about architecture, then don’t give lectures but have them design and build buildings. If you want them to learn about the work of painters, don’t only

give them information, but make them paint, make them define what object they would choose to paint, give them feedback on their choices from your own expert background. Tell them what choices would (not) be possible in the times in which the painters lived. Have them talk about what they experienced and how they came to their decisions and products.

These are examples of potential competence based activities in which the learners acquire competences by doing, experiencing and reflecting on their experiences and products.

Since the competence based approach is such an active approach the students have to perform, produce and demonstrate their competence and the growth of their competence throughout the whole learning process. Self-reflection on this progress, as well as peer reflections , is an integral part of the whole learning experi-ence, resulting in a final demonstration of the reached level of competence in what may be a presentation, a play, a design.

Jaap van Lakerveld and Ingrid Gussen

‘Following the Traces of Wojciech and Aneri Weiss’ was led by art teacher, Teresa Marta Hordziej, of the Janusz Korczak School Complex No. 2 in Brody and developed in cooperation with the Małopolski Instytut Kultury (MIK). In the project 11 pupils aged 12 years old are being asked if there is anything worthwhile in the small town where they live, that lies in the shadow of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, a UNESCO heritage site.

Through studying a map of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska the pupils find a small street named after Weiss. They visit the street and try to find out who Weiss was, what his connection with the town is, and where he lived. Pupils then go on to search in the school li-brary. There they find out that Wojciech Weiss was a distinguished painter and professor at the Krakow Academy of Fine

Arts at the beginning of the 20th century. He settled in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska and became one of the most eminent 20th century Polish fine artists. His house still exists in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska. He worked there together with his wife, Irena Weiss, also a painter.

The pupils then discover the website of The Wojciech Weiss Mu-seum Foundation in Krakow. It turns out that it is run by one of the two living granddaughters of the artists. The pupils write a letter to ask for a meeting. In the meantime the pupils develop their knowledge and under-standing of Wojciech and Irena Weiss’ life and work, by visiting an exhibition, the artists’ house and watching a film.

Back at school, watching the pictures taken during their trips, the pupils discover that the paintings by Weiss’s wife are signed ANE-RI, the name IRENA spelled in reverse order. The Polish teacher explains that this device is called an ANAGRAM and all pupils make anagrams of their own names.

Invited by Mrs Zofia Weiss Nowina-Konopka, the artists’ grand-

daughter, the class pays a visit to The Wojciech Weiss Museum Founda-tion in Krakow. Back at school an outbreak of ar-tistic expression follows: the children turn into artists. Several painting workshops are organised. With their art teacher the pupils analyse the choice of topics and artistic tech-niques of Wojciech and Aneri Weiss.

At the end of the project all works of the pupils are captioned and framed and a vernissage is organised by the pupils themselves.

INTRODUCTION TO THE AQUEDUCT APPROACH Continuedfrompage1

The Aqueduct partnership has distinguished 5 methodologies for competence oriented heritage education, which all contain the basic elements motivation, experience and reflection: the storyline approach, action learning, problem based learning, co-operative learning and guided discovery. An example of each methodology is described below. You can find a theoretical description of each methodology as well as a rich collection of case studies in the Aqueduct manual.

Want to read more? Please contact myriam.swinnen@cjsm.vlaanderen.be for your free copy of the Aqueduct manual. Free downloads are available in English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Dutch and Romanian on www.the-aqueduct.eu.

The Vrije Basisschool Vlierbeek, near the city of Leuven has two sites; one of them is just next to the abbey ‘De Abdij van Vlierbeek’, founded in 1125 with a rich history of prosperity and misfortune. At the end of the 17th century the building of a whole new abbey was started, but the French Revolution and the secular dominance afterwards meant the decline of the abbey. Only the church and a part of the abbot’s house were finished.

The project starts with a very official letter from the Mayor who asks the 9-10 year old pupils to help him to promote the abbey to the other pupils of the school and to the local community. Pupils brainstorm about this key question. The teacher outlines the ideas and directs them to the idea of an exhibition.

In the following lessons the pupils elaborate on this idea and think about what is needed to plan an exhibition. They all become staff members of the exhibition and work together in small groups on its content. They brainstorm about what they already know about the abbey and formulate questions they still want to answer. They think about possible sources of information. One possibility is an interview. So the children invite an expert to tell about the story of the abbey and the life of the monks. Afterwards the pupils choose a subject they want to elaborate for the exhibition.

From that point on the pupils work in small groups of 2-4. In these groups they think about their subject and how they want to

present it at the exhibition. Pupils can also visit the abbey, inter-view locals and make pictures or drawings on the spot. Information sources and a lot of different materials are available in the class-room, but pupils also bring books and materials from their homes to make clothes for the play.

After the content, the next challenges for the pupils are the orga-nization and the publicity for the exhibition. The teacher makes an overview of all the suggestions and the pupils choose ‘a role’ in advertising or organising and work in small groups.Finally the pupils think about what they want to say to visitors of the exhibition. They practice their short presentation and set up their part of the exhibition. Another class is invited for a rehearsal. After school parents can visit the exhibition and in the weekend it is included in a local cultural event.

The strength of this project is the rich heritage context of the abbey being so close to the school. Pupils can discover and explore the abbey using all their senses (I.e. see, feel, touch, hear, and smell). Another strength of the project are the very well thought-out questions of the teacher that led the learn-ing process of the children. The pupils could make a lot of genuine choices: not only about ‘what’ they want to do, but also on ‘how’ they want to work on something. The key ques-tions generated a lot of original ideas from the children and gave them a sense of ownership of their own learning process.

Elements of the problem based learning approach have been used in this project on cultural heritage and the European Union in Ireland - North and South. The target group is a whole class in the 15 – 16 age range. The stu-dents undertake individual and class research on a chosen subtheme, Furthermore they attend workshops on building trust, cultural awareness, religious tolerance, and civic education. The outcomes are the production and dissemination of videos produced entirely by the students themselves. These are on different European themes, but always from the perspective of an Irish person. The themes included so far have been: • Imagining Ireland was not an EU member – what would it be

like? • ‘Captain Europe’ - a European superhero who comes to save

people in different areas of conflict in Ireland; • Imagining you are a visitor from outer space landing in Ireland -

how would you explain the European Union?

AN EXAMPLE OF ACTION LEARNING: ‘FOLLOWING THE TRACES OF WOJCIECH AND ANERI WEISS’ (PL)

AN EXAMPLE OF THE STORYLINE APPROACH:

DE ABDIJ VAN VLIERBEEK (BE)

Theory

“What have you learnt about yourself during this project?” (Aqueduct manual p. 60) A question we rarely ask pupils! But how very important to do this all the time! (Comment by Jacqueline Van Leeuwen,

FARO (Flemish Interface Center for cultural heritage), BE)

AN EXAMPLE OF PROBLEM BASED LEARNING: MY VISION FOR EUROPE (IE)

Practice

The term “competence” has been used since the 1990’s, by connecting competence to cultur-al heritage, the project

Aqueduct has unveiled a new dimension of the term.A naïve interpretation of the word “competence” in fact recalls the ability of doing, performing in a school which addresses the needs of a changing society basically by offering a functional support.But if we associate competence to cultural heritage in a knowl-edge based society, what comes to the fore is the idea of compe-tence as an ability to intentionally and freely interpret the world, alone or with others, and a notion of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.This is what clearly emerges when reading the pilot projects and the good practice case studies which make up the largest sec-tion of the Aqueduct Manual, where the collaboration between schools and cultural heritage institutions is illustrated. Pupils who tell the story of their school – an ancient monastery with an attached church – to visitors and promote it within the pilot project Open Monuments, will certainly, as adults, visit his-torical sites, empty abbeys, castles dominating the territory with an interpretative competence which, by then, will have become an integral component of their personality.Likewise, the students who took part in the project “ Mapping Golkowice” with the objective of interpreting and understand-ing materials, natural and artificial contexts, and the art symbols embedded in their daily life and environment - they built a map placing the school in the middle and their homes at a regular distance from it – will look at places with an interpretative com-petence which will allow them to understand the functional and symbolic relations which characterise any specific place.The second consideration I think is useful to highlight, concerns the “story” of the project as described in the Manual “Aqueduct,

acquiring Key Competences through Heritage Education”.In each professional community and/or community of practice, when one reads about the experiences of colleagues doing the same job, a sort of shared pre-comprehension and an understand-ing of the situation circulate, which often leads the reader to com-menting “I know how these things go!”The Manual, for the clarity with which it approaches the three areas:• the approach to the subject - what we are talking about• the work in the classroom – the practice• the working methods used – the toolsprovides material for the teacher to answer the questions posed by innovation.

I can picture the teacher who, reading about the pilot projects, tries to imagine them as happening in his own situation, in his classroom.This exercise of “practical reflective thinking” puts the museum expert in relation with the teacher who actively partici-pates in the project. The teacher, whose competence is focussed on education, is prompted to questions like “How am I compe-tent?”

• Being able to motivate and involve• Being able to communicate• Being able to structure a learning experience• Being able to evaluate the process and the product with regard

to the student, the teacher, the school

In conclusion, the Aqueduct project has shown the strength of the concept of Heritage which embodies both the content (what) and the method (how) of the learning process through the heritage in the various ways in which it happens. Heritage is a content which has an “added value”, because it is a meaningful, motivating and useful subject in a lifelong learning perspective. It

contains the most involving elements to be interpreted, because it is lived, experienced and, if brought from unawareness to aware-ness, opens up a new world. With the 4 Key-words-content, methodology, experience, process, each reader can ask him/herself what has been the experience of heritage which has particularly affected one period of his/her life, how this happened, which was the kind of involvement, what this has led to and the level of awareness in this process.

Why not try this experience with our students and the heritage we can find on our doorsteps?Aqueduct is a strong incentive to do so.

MarioCalidoni

TAKING STOCK EXTERNAL EXPERT VIEW BY MARIO CALIDONI

Leen Alaerts, Jo Van Dessel and Ruth Wouters, teacher trainers at the KHLeuven Teacher Training College, developed the Discovery learn-ing methodology and tested it in the pilot project “School in War”, with 50 pupils (12 years old) of the Heilig Hart instituut Heverlee, a large school sharing the KHLeuven campus.

The project evokes an interesting episode of history: the Second World War, when life at school was characterized by soberness, bombings and fear, and Jewish girls were baptized and hidden there. When the school was liberated, the British army used the it as a military hospital with almost 2000 beds. As a consequence, there is a large military war cemetery next to the school. This project was an excellent opportunity to raise pupils’ awareness of their school’s history.

The project consisted of five stages:

1. In the motivation phase, the pupils were surprised by an old war jeep and a military ambulance entering the playground. Immedi-ately a lot of questions arose: who, what, why, how? After a short introduction to the project, they wrote down what they would like to know about the war. Afterwards they were divided in

groups of 4 pupils. Then the 4 possible activities were present-ed. Each student was able to do 2 of the 4 routes.

2. In the second stage the pupils received input on 4 subthemes and got acquaint-ed with the heritage of their school in 4 possible routes. In the first route they visited a reconstruction of the war hospital. Stories about life and dead were told, like the story of a 19 year old pilot who was nursed here, Otto Carbone. He is still alive and partici-pated in the project via skype. The second route took place in the archive of the school, where an old

teacher-nun told the pupils about life during the war and where pupils consulted several documents.The third route was a visit of the military cemetery. The pupils learned to read the graves and stories about the life as a soldier were told. A last route started with the story of the Jewish girl who was baptized and hidden at the boarding school. Pupils learnt about the life of Jewish children during the war through films and novels.

3. Stage 3 was a reflection-stage. Pupils came back to-gether with the initial group of stage 1. They told each other what they had learnt and they wrote down what struck them: “You really had to live in fear as a Jew in that time.” “People died in our classrooms!” Then the pupils were asked to think about their own way of learning and cooperating in a project.

4. In stage 4 all groups worked towards a multiple demonstra-tion. Some pupils made an exhibition. Others prepared a play or cooked a typical war meal. Some pupils choose for the philoso-phy session. They reflected and discussed about causes and solu-tions of war and peace, and presented their insights in an artistic collage. In every route different activities were possible: writing texts, selecting objectives, improvising, investigating documents, … The pupils could also define their degree of learning freedom. The coach suggested methods, materials and exercises, but the pupils were free to use this assistance or not.

5. In stage 5 the pupils demonstrated to the other groups the re-sult of their work. Afterwards they did a reflection on how they worked on the European Key competences.

Former teacher, school prin-cipal and secondary school supervisor for the Italian Ministery of University and Research, Mario Calidoni has edited several publica-tions on cultural heritage and is author of numerous books on teaching history and art history. He is also co-ordina-tor of various projects focused on heritage education, in collaboration with schools, local authorities and cultural institutions. The Aqueduct team invited him as the key note speaker at the final conference in Bologna. In this article, Mario Calidoni shares his view on the Aqueduct approach as an external expert on cultural heritage.

MARIO CALIDONI

The aim of the St-ART project, involving 14-18 year old pupils from two schools in The Hague and Amster-dam, was to make video portraits of elderly people. In this way the pupils learnt more about elderly people, their lives, personal histories and history in general.

The pupils from Dutch origin made video portraits of elderly people in a multicultural retirement home. They interviewed residents with an Antillean or Surinam ethnicity. Pupils with a Sudanese, Moroccan, Nepalese and Lithuanian background were matched with Dutch-born elderly people.

Before and during the project pupils got input about in-terviewing and the technical skills involved in documen-tary making and they were coached by professionals while producing their videos.

The project resulted in beautiful, touching and some-times funny video portraits that were shown during an event with the interviewed elderly, the pupils and their friends, family and others. Since the project was such a success, the project leaders developed a manual based on their experiences for other schools to run the project as well.

AN EXAMPLE OF DISCOVERY LEARNING: SCHOOL IN WAR (BE)

AN EXAMPLE OF CO-OPERATIVE LEARNING:

St-ART (NL)

“One of the pupils, who has a multicultural back-ground, puts it this way: “In this project I learned that I have to find my own way between different cultures and concepts about heritage”. (Aqueduct manual p. 64)

Heritage education is among the best projects on creating societal in-ternship, teaching cultural awareness and integrating different social and ethnic groups. It introduces a wider cultural awareness in the consciousness of the trainees and adds to the variety in the perception of our environment. (Comment by Barbara Szyper, International Cultural Centre, PL)

The Institute of Cultural Heritage of the Region Emilia Romagna, Italian partner of the Aqueduct project, together with the Department of School, Vocational Education, University Research and Labour of the same Region, has made an effort to ensure the mainstreaming of the European project at regional level with the initiative : “I love Cultural Heritage: Call for propos-als for the valorisation of cultural heritage”

Before the summer, schools and museums of the region were in-vited to submit project ideas to be carried out during the school year 2011/2012. The projects had to be developed and conducted in a partnership school-museum, with the active participation of the students and the objective of valorising a museum, a site or a cultural object belonging to the regional area. The project idea, in line with the Aqueduct approach, had to be aimed at the achieve-ment of one or more transversal key competences. The promot-ers committed to support 5 projects offering financial aid for the realisation of each one (1.500 euro to the lead school and 1.500 euro to the leading museum) and training opportunities for the staff involved. It was agreed that an additional project would be funded by “Genus Bononiae. Museum in the City”, to valorise the artistic and cultural itinerary of the city of Bologna.

The initiative was presented to the students as an opportu-nity to be actively involved in getting to know, discovering and enhancing to the cultural heritage of their region; for the teachers as an opportunity to learn more about the transversal key competences and to exchange ideas and practices; for the schools as a chance to strengthen the links with the territory, using museums as places for active learning, as ideal spaces to deepen the knowledge of the subjects in the school curriculum, but also to develop the personal, social and civic competences of the pupils.

In order to organise the competition, the collaboration of those institutions which are key partners when working with schools, was essential, i.e. The Regional School Office, The National Agency for the Development of School Autonomy and the Regional Legislative Assembly, which all actively collaborated to the dissemination of the call, the selection of the projects and will take part also in the next stages of the initiative: training, docu-mentation and dissemination of outcomes.

Thanks to the involvement of all these actors, the competition was widely advertised to all the schools and museums in the region. It was published in dozens of websites dedicated to cultural heritage and education, thereby contributing to disseminate the objectives of the Aqueduct project.Participation in the competition was very high: 85 proposals were submitted, very diversified as far as content and institutions in-volved. The latter were more than 270 (170 acting as coordinators, and more than 100 additional partner organisations, ready to be formally involved in the projects, which shows a virtuous triangle between schools, museums and territory.), about 7000 students potentially involved in the projects submitted.

This high level of participation has led the Institute of Cultural Her-itage to award five more projects than those initially planned and to consider a future edition of the competition. One should underline, on the average, the high quality of the proposals submitted.The winners provide a wide range of ideas for inspiration, thanks also to their adaptability and transferability to other contexts.

The first training event offered to the awarded partnerships school-museum will be the final conference of the Aqueduct project.

ValentinaGalloniandMargheritaSani

EXPLOITATION AND MAINSTREAMING OF THE AQUEDUCT PROJECT

Project coordinatorWWW.THE-AQUEDUCT.EU

Now that the funding period of the Aqueduct project is reaching its end, all partners are developing exploitation and mainstreaming initiatives at several levels: the Aqueduct approach will be promoted at teacher training level, and at the same time new local and regional grass root projects have been set up. Last but not least, the Aqueduct approach will be promoted and disseminated via a Comenius In-Service Training Course in Alden Biesen in summer 2012.

“I LOVE CULTURAL HERITAGE”: AN EXAMPLE OF EXPLOITATION OF THE AQUEDUCT PROJECT

SPREADING THE NEWS IN STYRIA, AUSTRIA byChristaBauerThePädagogischeHochschuleSteiermark does not only spread the Aqueduct project outcomes via its website which is a gate to initial and in-service teacher training for some 16, 000 teach-ers in the province of Styria, Austria, but also plans the follow-ing activities:

International conference: “European heritage in our hands” Christa Bauer will present the Aqueduct approach atthis confer-ence, which addresses volunteers who work within the frame-work of cultural heritage and takes place in Graz (AT) from October 19th to 21st 2011.

In-service teacher-training seminar: “Locking and Unlocking” Key Competence Acquisition in the Joanneum Museum, in the newly named world heritage site Schloss Eggenberg, Graz, December 1, 2011The theory of Competence Based Teaching will be pre-sented inf the medieval castle and transferred to practice in the exhibition rooms of the museum. The museum will take the opportunity to present the cultural heritage of Styria and ideas how to involve different age groups in practical experi-ence. Target groups: Teachers from primary schools, secondary schools, special needs (C. Bauer, E.Glavic)

International network of Unesco schools: UNESCO Associated SchoolsThe UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network is a global network established in 1953 that currently encompasses some 9000 educational institutions (ranging from pre-schools and primary to secondary schools and teacher training institutions) in 180 countries. 74 Austrian schools are members of ASPnet.

UNESCO Associated Schools serve as models of a specific educational principle. Learning is understood as an activities-focused process and they proactively commit to human rights, a culture of peace and sustainable development. (http://www.unesco.at/bildung/unescoschulen_eng.htm). BG/BRG Klusemannstraße is a member and will use the opportunity to publish the Aqueduct example “Confronting a Shameful Past” within this network with the link to the Aqueduct-website.

AQUEDUCT EXPLOITATION AT MIK, MALOPOLSKA INSTITUTE OF CULTURE (PL) Since 8 years MIK leads the competition Treasures of Malo-polska, as part of Malopolska Days of Cultural Heritage. It is addressed to students, teachers and to culture animators. Teach-ers are invited to present a workshop scenario concerning local heritage, while students are to show their artistic output. The competition comprises sessions which present new methods of working with cultural heritage. The 8th edition (2010/2011) was dedicated to key competence acquisition in cultural heri-tage contexts, in line with MIK’s partnership in the Aqueduct project. The introduction of this topic was a great success: 22 workshop scenarios have been prepared by teachers and par-ticipating pupils created 60 works of art. We will continue to exploit the Aqueduct project results in future editions of the Treasures of Malopolska competition. Furthermore we will intensify cooperation between our In-stitute and Malopolska In-Service Teacher Training Centre in Krakow by organizing workshops for teachers and museum experts which will stimulate the cooperation between schools and museums. In October 2011 MIK will promote the Aqueduct approach at a conference dedicated to development of the key competence of entrepreneurship at school.

KatarzynaDziganskaandMarcinKlag

Landcommanderij Alden Biesen, the Aqueduct project co- ordinator, is proud to look back at a successful project, thanks to the expertise of and co-operation with its partners. The proj-ect outcomes and first mainstreaming activities have been em-braced with enthousiasm, what confirms our conviction that the Aqueduct approach is useful and innovative. Therefore we dare to hope that the following exploitation initiatives will introduce a sustainable change towards competence based heritage education and key competence acquisition for Lifelong Learning in general:

Local heritage project in cooperation with secondary school IKSO, Hoeselt:The historical site of Alden Biesen is the perfect location for IKSO’s cross-curricular project which integrates cultural heritage in the curriculum of 18 year old students in the social science option.From September till May 2012, they will do research and discover the site in all its diversity. The final aim for the students is to develop activities for younger pupils to discover Alden Biesen. Both partners

hope to continue this co-operation on the long term, which will allow Alden Biesen to develop expertise in school projects, transfer-able to other contexts.

International exploitation:- As a board member of the European Network of Cutural

Centres in Historic Buildings (ACCR) Alden Biesen will pro-mote the Aqueduct material and approach among the members of the network. This process will start with a presentation at the general ACCR meeting in Neumunster Abbey, Luxembourg 15 - 17 November 2011.

- Together with the project partners, Alden Biesen will develop an international Comenius IST course based on the Aqueduct approach, which will take place in summer 2012. Teachers, teacher trainers, … willing to attend this course in the castle of Alden Biesen can apply for a Comenius IST grant before the deadline of January 2012. For more information please visit www.the-aqueduct.eu

ALDEN BIESEN’S EXPLOITATION ACTIVITIES (BE) by Renilde Knevels

In line with the development of Aqueduct pilot projects by teacher training students, the development of a competence based heritage project will systematically be added to the annual list of graduation projects for teacher trainees for primary and

secondary education. Furthermore the Aqueduct approach on heritage education has been implemented in the history pro-gramme and in the cross-curricular programme “School and World” in the Teacher Training curriculum at KHLeuven .

MAINSTREAMING INITIATIVES AT KHLEUVEN TEACHER TRAINING COLLEGE (BE) by Ruth Wouters