Democratic and intercultural dialogue

The Erasmus+ project is primarily an education project for participating upper secondary schools located in Denmark, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Italy (Swedish upper secondary school students do not participate) and not a research project.

The purpose of the project is to promote future active social participation of European youth/students in a society characterised by freedom and democracy by developing teaching materials and learning methods for upper secondary schools. A further aim is to increase participation in European political institutions, and more specifically participation in the elections to the European Parliament in 2024.

To ensure that this aim is achieved with quality, Halmstad University has been invited for quality follow-up and evaluation of the educational project, and also to be able to spread knowledge acquired in the project within the scientific community and to the wider society. It is therefore important to distinguish between the education project Erasmus+ and the research of the education project.

The purpose of the research is to measure the effects of the Erasmus+ project and to analyse how young people and their teachers view European politics and political participation. The research questions to be answered are:

1. To what extent can intercultural dialogue through jointly developed digital learning tools influence young people’s participation in European democratic society?
2. How do young European youth and their teachers reason about issues of democracy, European politics and political participation?