The I CO-COPE project team has been active in conducting research and preparing the first project results. In the first months of the project, corresponding to the school year of 2023/2024, the team was working on research design, creation of research instruments, their translation and adaptation.
Currently, the I CO-COPE project team is contacting the five associated schools in each country of the consortium to collect data, through a survey to school professionals (teachers, school leaders and/or support professionals) and another survey to students, in secondary education contexts. A total of 20 schools in the European Union will be actively participating in the project activities, starting from providing their responses and enabling an overall and country-based understanding of:
the needs and experience that these schools present on providing inclusive education and promoting interprofessional collaboration and students’ agency in their community;
the students’ perspectives on inclusion and facilitating factors for students’ agency in their school community.
Analysis and conclusions from the data obtained through surveys will be deepened by running focus group in two schools from each country. The research results will be available before schools start in the next school year, allowing schools to access an analysis of each school situation regarding inclusion, student agency, and interprofessional collaboration.
The design and implementation of the above steps, under the work package 2 – Mapping CoP, were thought to follow a waterfall structure that carries facilitating factors when developing each step at a time. Nevertheless, some challenges were also raised by the consortium resulting in effective solutions from the strong collaboration across partners.
Facilitators: Starting by providing a knowledge base for the four main concepts - Inclusive Education; Communities of Practice (CoP), Interprofessional Collaboration and Students’ Agency - was an important step in the definition of a common understanding of the pillar concepts, that will follow the project lifespan. For each country of the partnership, different polices orient the four dimensions in school’s context, but the literature, and specifically European documents and guidelines, enabled the agreement on the meaning (what), the application (when & how) and the purpose (why) for each concept. From here, the consortium was able to work on the identification of tools and successful practices corresponding to each concept, and on the development of a reflection tool and research instruments.
Challenges: The consortium was faced with several queries around the design, translation and application of the surveys in schools. The school context itself is complex, presenting many specificities among schools even in the same country or city. Thus, after presenting a first draft of the instrument to collect school professionals’ and students’ responses, each country of the partnership reviewed, reflected and shared national-based concerns, mainly around the sociodemographic questions included in each survey and the timing for requesting schools’ participation. For some of the other questions partners were committed to adapt some words when translating, in order to ensure that respondents understand quickly what is being asked. The calendar of school activities varies in the partner countries. So, for planning this activity it was necessary to define a longer period of time to make sure that all schools can find the best moment to gather the responses for the surveys and participate in the focus groups.
The importance of the I CO-COPE project for European schools is undeniable. But its activities are just one event among hundreds running in schools’ daily routines, and this fact demands a special attention from researchers and trainers to ease the intervention as much as possible.
