Innovative Experience with Education for Democracy: Spanish interventions

The aim of the paper is to contribute to the reflection on the practical experiences of Spanish interventions in primary and secondary school in the broader conceptual and pedagogical framework of the Democrat project. To strengthen the resilience and sustainability of democracy, DEMOCRAT aims to develop an Education for Democracy (EfD) curriculum, test it in local pilot projects, and create a toolbox of innovative EfD practices. The project combines research and innovation activities. In the six countries where DEMOCRAT operates (Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Poland and Spain), living labs have been established to donduct the open social innovation through a continuous dialogue between social and educational research and educational practice. DEMOCRAT has developed a conceptual vision of EfD and outlined a framework of competences for Responsible Democratic Citizenship (RDC). This work made it possible to produce an outline of a European EfD curriculum and a tool for assessing levels of competence. The curriculum integrates democratic values into an educational framework to prepare individuals to contribute actively to democratic societies. By promoting a holistic approach, the curriculum ensures the development of democratic competences in different educational contexts. This structured and adaptable approach aims to lay the foundations for sustainable and effective democratic education in European education systems. A robust evaluation framework, adaptable to the different contexts of education centres, is proposed to assess the effectiveness of EfD initiatives, focusing on the development of RDC competencies and the overall impact on democratic education. This framework includes formative and summative assessment, competence assessment and evaluation of the scalability and sustainability of interventions of the local pilot projects. Both the curriculum outline and the competency assessment tool are already comprehensive but will be further refined and developed as they are tested for validity, reliability and usability in different educational settings. For further background information and research on the RDC competencies, further resources are provided at the end of the document. To test the Curriculum Outline and the Competence Assessment Tool, local pilot projects have been set up in the 6 Living Lab countries, which implement interventions in primary and secondary education centres during the school year 2024-2025. In the workshop the results of the innovative approaches of EfD in the Spanish Local Pilot Projects will present: Two primary schools are framing their intervention in their strategy to address challenges related to migration. Two secondary schools are working on historical memory in cooperation with local institutions. One primary and two secondary schools will work on democratic processes within the schools to promote greater participation. Two other secondary schools will work on democratic processes in society. The aim of the paper is to contribute to the reflection on the practical experiences of Spanish interventions as a contribution to the further development of the RDC Competence Framework, the European Curriculum Outline and the Competence Assessment Tool as part of the social innovation process.