Earlier this month, Trinity College Dublin’s secondary school education programme, Bridge21, launched a new project in collaboration with Erasmus + that will see the programme expanded into Europe.
Bridge21 currently aims to enhance “21st Century Learning” (21CL) in Irish secondary schools, where it works with students to build skills in technology, teamwork and cross-curricular projects.
16 Teachers from Bridge21 partner schools across Europe will come together to develop the new project, by building their skills in the area of 21CL and designing new learning experiences for their students. Irish teachers will collaborate with German, Swedish and Estonian teachers to ensure the new initiative has both an international and modern dimension.
Project manager, Aibhín Bray, said that: “This project springs from the shared recognition that we need to integrate the basic and transversal skills associated with 21CL into mainstream secondary school education.” While studies have shown that secondary school students benefit enormously from 21CL, it has proven difficult to provide such opportunities for them at a secondary level.
Bray told Trinity News that Bridge21 was originally created to give students from disadvantaged backgrounds a chance to go on to third level education and that the project was conceived with an emphasis on computer science.
She went on to say that for the new Bridge21 project to be successful, teachers will need to “unlearn” the methods they are more familiar with, to stimulate a similar transformation in the way that their students approach their education.
