DOI: 10.24384/7jtt-dd86
title: NEW ABC. Networking the educational world : across boundaries for community-building

description: This collection provides data from an EU-funded Horizon2020 project “NEW ABC: Networking the Educational World: Across Boundaries for Community-building”, under the call H2020-SC5-MIGRATION-2018-2020. The project is led by Prof. Rachele Antonini at the University of Bologna. 

The research actions in the UK Team. 
This collection details the data collected from the team in the United Kingdom, which was co-led by Prof. Sarah Crafter at The Open University and Prof. Guida de Abreu at Oxford Brookes University. The project was supported by Postdoctoral Researchers, Dr. Nelli Stavropoulou, Dr. Eleni Stamou and researcher Ms Kelly Lambert. 

The UK team undertook two ‘pilot actions’, similar to an intervention, which used participatory action research and co-creation as a key approach. The two interventions were:

1)	Empowering young translators (Work Package 4). 
The aim of this pilot action was to produce participatory co-creative activities to emotionally and socially support young people who translate and interpret for peers, family, and their local communities. We collaborated with a highly culturally and linguistically diverse secondary school in England. With their support, we set up an after-school club known as the ‘Young Translators Club’ for young people who speak multiple languages and who regularly translate for others which took place across the academic year of 2021 – 2022. We also undertook interviews with young translators in two secondary schools. 

2)	The adventures of the Little Prince in the World (Work Package 5). 
The ‘Adventures of the Little Prince in the World’ pilot was first developed in Cyprus and then re-piloted and adapted in UK schools. Using the literary work by Antoine De Saint-Exupery, “The Adventures of the Little Prince”, the aim of this pilot action was to build the resilience of migrant children by reshaping the narratives of their experience to enable them to feel included in the school environment. In the UK the Team focused on collaborating with teachers in primary and secondary schools in 2022 – 2023 to co-create participatory activities aimed at fostering a sense of belonging, respect, friendship and community for children and young people from a migrant background and improve their smooth inclusion into school life.

Overview of the wider project. 

The purpose of the NEW ABC project is:

1. To develop real-life co-participated actions by stakeholders in education that tap into their real needs and can be used to inform policy makers on effective solutions to overcoming challenges to integration; 
2. To empower and develop the capacity for agency, inclusivity and to have voice of all the stakeholders involved heard, particularly children in diverse communities; and 
3. To ensure the development of integrated approaches at the local and (inter)national level during and after the end of the project. 

To achieve these aims, the NEW ABC implemented nine activity-based pilot actions for the inclusion of migrant and refugee children and young people in education. The implementation of the nine activity-based pilot actions sought to engage stakeholders, especially those groups such as children and young people who migrate or are refugees, whose voice might go unheard or heeded, in the collaborative design of formal informal and non-formal educational activities that facilitate their inclusion.

The pilot actions were co-created and implemented in two consecutive stages, in order to ensure applicability, scalability and sustainability. Work Package 4 was the first stage of the pilot actions and involved the first implementation of the co-creation of activities with key stakeholders. Work Package 5 involved the partner countries exchanging the pilot actions and re-piloting in a different country context.

The NEW ABC methodological and conceptual framework. 

All of the pilot actions across the partner countries shared the same methodological and conceptual framework which combined the following:

•	Participatory Action Research (PAR).  
In the NEW ABC project, PAR binds together the project’s conceptual and methodological framework. PAR approaches involve researchers and other stakeholders (community members, researchers, interested/affected groups, non-academic, policy-makers, etc.) working together to examine a problematic situation and/or create actions to change it. Participatory approaches often draw on narrative, storytelling and arts-based research.  

•	The Co-Creation Approach.  
The core of NEW ABC methodology lies in participatory action research and co-creation, which conceptually share the same tenets: the development of democratic partnerships between researchers and local/community stakeholders; their involvement with the PAR approach in the design of the research, evaluation and dissemination of the findings; and the empowerment of interested/affected/groups/stakeholders by actively involving them through co-creation methods in the design of practices that have contextual fit and are responsive to the expressed needs of the community and the participants they serve.  

•	Care and Compassion approach to migration. 
The NEW ABC uses care and compassion as theoretical concepts that underpin their pilot actions.  ‘Care’ and ‘compassion’ are treated as foundational theoretical and moral principles running through our pilot actions. 

•	The Whole Child Approach.  
The whole child approach puts children and young people at the center and focuses on what works best for them and on what the other stakeholders in education e.g. educators, families, policymakers, community members, and associations – must do to ensure their integration and success. 

•	The Bottom-Up Approach.  
The bottom-up approach facilitates the engagement of stakeholders, the voices of children, vulnerable groups, the community, educators, and families to find expression in the co-creation of innovation pilot actions that address a variety of challenges to integration in education.