Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter no. 5 - July 2015 | Page 33

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2015 Newsletter -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------necessary for personal fulfillment and development, active citizenship, social inclusion and employment. While for some of these skills it is quite easy to identify and evaluate evidence-based products and learning assessment tools (especially for those which refer to specific subjects: mother tongue, foreign languages, mathematics and science and technology), for citizenship competences you have to devise suitable forms of assessment dealing with a range of situations and considering the learner in three main contexts: construction of the self, relationships with others, relationship with the environment. In Italy the key competences identified by the EU Recommendation have been recalled by the Decree 139/2007 "Regulation regarding the fulfillment of compulsory education", which identified the eight key competences that every citizen should get to at the end of his/her basic schooling. Looking at them, you can see that the semantic field of 'citizenship' is vast and varied and contemplates man’s life in its widest range of events. You can also clearly see that one document, for certain specific aspects, derives from the other – what follows represents a comparison: on the left there are the 8 key competences, on the right one can see the corresponding citizenship competence: 1. Communication in the mother tongue – Communicate 2. Communication in foreign languages – Communicate 3. Mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology – Communicate; Solve problems; Find out connections and relations 4. Digital competence – Acquire and interpret information 5. Learning to learn – Learning to learn; Find out connections and relations; Acquire and interpret information 6. Social and civic competences – Collaborate and participate; Act in an autonomous and responsible way 7. Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship – Plan; Solve problems 8. Cultural awareness and expression Communicate Indeed, the specific interest of the Decree 139/2007 of the Italian Ministry of Education (MIUR) towards competences relating to all human activities, beyond subject boundaries, sounds highly significant. The study of citizenship is vital to the formation of an open- minded attitude to a multi-perspective and plural view of reality, which might possibly be geared to economic competitiveness as well, but should above all aim at the foundation of an ethically anthropocentric society. This is favoured on the one hand (integrated view) by its strong link with the knowledge of documents at national, European and international levels (The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union http://www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/default_en. htm, The Charter of the United Nations http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/, Convention on the Rights of the Child http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Page s/CRC.aspx, Charter of values of citizenship and integration http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_coun cils/migrants/pom2007_104/rc_pc_migrants_pom1 04_charter-integration.html) and on the other hand (transversal view) by the several issues dealt with: legality and social cohesion, national identity as part of a European and an international and interdependent community, human rights, equal opportunities, pluralism, respect for diversity, intercultural dialogue, ethics of individual and social responsibility, bioethics, protection of national treasures of artistic and cultural value. It has become clear how crucial – for a concrete implementation of the citizenship competences – is a plural education based on social values and democracy developed not "only through the compliance to values and rules, but also through the contribution in terms of knowledge, of s a p e r i, of intellectual means, which take place thanks to the cooperation between generations and among nations. From this point of view, in order to strengthen the European dimension, the multilingual competence is the essential and necessary platform for the citizens' participation in the social and political life of the European countries, which would enable the full participation in democratic processes. A grid (see https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B470dgHMBCqDNC 1xcWtGZl9UdU0/view?usp=sharing, pp. 1-5) to assess citizenship competences is important in the evaluation, since it allows a systematic holistic vision, to verify the presence of abnormal concentrations of problematic behaviour in specific 33