Lyudmyla Kokorina: “The best way to contribute to enhancing of inclusive education is to continue to roll out inclusive education at all stages of education and involve more people in its implementation”

Lyudmyla Kokorina: “The best way to contribute to enhancing of inclusive education is to continue to roll out inclusive education at all stages of education and involve more people in its implementation”

by | juny 29, 2022 | General

Since last June, Lyudmyla Kokorina is part of the “Communities for Sciences – Towards promoting an inclusive approach in science education” (C4S) project as a research assistant through the European Commission’s Horizon for Ukraine programme. Lyudmyla has a PhD in “General Pedagogy and History of Pedagogy” and worked in Horlivka Institute for Foreign Languages of State Higher Educational Institution Donbas State Pedagogical University since 2007.

How and why were you incorporated in the “Communities for Sciences – Towards promoting an inclusive approach in science education” (C4S) project?
I wish I knew the exact answer. Probably, it’s just the very moment when everything centred and focused on the project and me forming a part of it. The situation in Ukraine forced me to leave home for the second time and go abroad searching for safety. And thus, become one of the millions of Ukrainian job-seekers. Later, the project coordinators read my CV, appointed an interview, and made their decision. And now I’m being interviewed as a new member of the C4S team. I think that my professional competencies and work experience can add to the project and bring a view from a new perspective. All C4S members have proved to be a great team in creating, supporting, and promoting tools for successful Inclusive Science education at all social levels.

Did you know about the C4S project before?
Frankly speaking, I didn’t know about the project before. But now I’m glad to be a part of it since I had some experience with non-discrimination education and inclusiveness. Together with the students, we practised research tools on the social attitude towards inclusion in Ukrainian schools.

What do you do as a research assistant at C4S? Is it like what you did in your country?
The tasks are rather different but very interesting. First, I had to learn some more about the idea and details of the project by studying articles and opinion essays about the research area. And then I naturally joined the observations and further activities of data collecting and processing. Considering my work in Ukraine I was more involved in the daily routine of institutional administrating and teaching classes. And my research area was mainly from the perspective of foreign language teaching and comparative pedagogy.

You are an expert in Pedagogy. How do you think we can contribute to the improvement of educational inclusion processes in the classroom?
I never considered myself to be an expert, but what I believe is that a person should never cease doing good things. Therefore, the best way to contribute to enhancing inclusive education is to continue rolling out inclusive education at all stages of education and involving more people in its implementation. Luckily, I had the possibility to observe inclusive science education “in action”. Now I’m sure that it really functions because when a teacher inspires his/her pupils, they strive for knowledge and discoveries. Just like in my favourite quote from William Arthur Ward: “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”

The C4S project will foster inclusive science education in a European framework

The C4S project will foster inclusive science education in a European framework

by | juny 26, 2020 | General

The European project “Communities for Sciences – Towards promoting an inclusive approach in science education” (C4S), led by the Fundació Universitària del Bages (Manresa campus of University of Vic – Central University of Catalonia), will promote a more inclusive science education, especially among vulnerable groups such as immigrants, Roma community and people with disability. The project has two different lines of development: on the one hand, it will conduct fieldwork activities with vulnerable communities and, on the other hand, it will use the data collected in the fieldwork to do research and produce knowledge to share with the scientific community. C4S will work with children and youth up to 16 years old and their families through community living labs, taking also into account a gender intersectional perspective, to boost the participants’ interest in Science and produce academic papers on inclusive science education.

C4S will promote an institutional change to oppose the inequality in access to science education and will also create working-groups with experts in  Science and members of the vulnerable communities to promote a more inclusive science education. The project will take place in nine cities from eight European countries and their surroundings: Milan (Italy), Brussels (Belgium), Manresa and Vic (Catalonia-Spain), Wien (Austria), Budapest (Hungary), Sofia (Bulgaria), Lund (Sweden) and Berlin (Germany). Different universities, local educational institutions and non-profit organizations will work together during the three years of duration of the project that has already been approved by de European Commission within the framework of Horizon 2020 program with a total budget of 1,1M€.

C4S aims at approaching scientific phenomena and procedures to children to promote in them new enquiry processes but also takes especially into account that Science, as a social practice, can reflect, under some circumstances, current existing social practices within the societies it is inscribed, such as gender, racial or ableist stereotypes or exclusion processes or even invisibilising some social groups as scientific producers and experts. This invisibility prevents children and youth of some groups and communities from having positive role-models to follow in terms of Science vocations. The consortium in charge of the development of the project will work to overcome those practices by providing knowledge and tools to children, youth and families, Public Authorities, mass media and scientific community.  The main outputs of the project will be the creation an International Observatory on Inclusive Science Education, a style guide for science communicators and a White Book on inclusive Science education addressed to experts, policy-makers and educators.

The C4S consortium is integrated by Fundació Universitària del Bages (Manresa campus of UVic-UCC) and Vic campus of UVic-UCC (both from Catalonia-Spain), IB University of Applied Health and Social Science (Germany), Galileo Progetti (Hungary), Università Degli Studi Di Milano-Biccocca (Italy), Board of Education for Vienna, European Office (Austria), Municipality of Sesto San Giovanni – Socio-Educational Sector – Giocheria Laboratori (Italy), Erasmus Brussel University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Belgium), Wirtschaftsuniversitat Wien (Austria), Lunds Universitet (Sweden) and New Bulgarian University (Bulgary).