Learning with All: Porto Regional Centre's project promotes academic success and equity in access to education

Aprender Com Todos (ACT) – Learning with All - is the name of the socio-educational research and intervention project promoted by the Faculdade de Educação e Psicologia and the Transversal Area of Social Economy of the Porto Regional Centre of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa.

Around 400 students, from the 1st to the 9th grade, have already been involved in the activities promoted by the ACT project, which is implemented in the Leonardo Coimbra Filho School Grouping, in Porto, and is part of the territorial approach of Community-Based Local Development.

Funded by North 2020 and the European Social Fund, the project, which began in October 2019, aims to involve the different educational and community agents in favor of promoting school success and preventing early dropout, implementing and strengthening measures that promote equity in access to education.

Lurdes Veríssimo, faculty member of the Faculty of Education and Psychology and coordinator of the project, says that "through creative, expressive and civic activities, we intend to stimulate the students' socio-emotional and academic skills, promoting greater social participation, involvement and school success.”

Project’s 7 axes of action

Prevention of learning difficulties; Socioemotional Development; Formal and Non-formal Learning; Discipline and School Culture; Human Rights and Citizenship; Parental Involvement and Research are the project's 7 guiding axes, through which multiple and differentiated activities are developed involving students from the 1st to the 9th grade of the Leonardo Coimbra Filho School Grouping, in Porto.

Phonological Awareness Training Program, Reading Skills Promotion Program, Learning in the Community Program, "Justice for All" Project, Ubuntu Leaders Academy, School Talks, Malala Yousafzai Award, "Study here!" - Community Photography Exhibition and "Let's Talk About..." - Parental education sessions are some examples of activities developed that have as main objectives:

• prevent learning difficulties, promote the development of various social and emotional skills;
• strengthen inter-institutional and interdisciplinary collaboration between students, teachers and community agents;
• contribute to building a vision and a positive experience of school;
• to raise awareness, mobilize and disseminate knowledge and practices about human rights;
• to foster the relationship between school and family.

Research is an axis that is positioned as transversal to all the others, and through which we intend to create mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness, adequacy and impact of the activities developed.

More information available here.