MILbox lessons learned led to a set of recommendations

Having so many practical activities in the project inevitably leads to mistakes (or, as we like to call them, learning opportunities). Each mistake is countered by the success of teachers in the classroom. And when you discuss and reflect on each of those experiences, you end up with a valuable list of recommendations.

Before we present the recommendations, we would like to remind you that this project’s impact on teachers and students is visible:

• access to tools increased teachers’ confidence in properly integrating MIL topics into their daily activities. This is very important, as analysis showed that not being confident enough was one of the main reasons teachers wouldn’t consider including these topics;
• teachers reported increased motivation to use more innovative pedagogies with their students. This led to using more engaging online and offline methods;
• teachers had their co-creation and cooperation skills improved;
• tools allowed students to become more active and express themselves;
• teachers reported increased student engagement and motivation. Thus positively affecting overall learning achievements;
• teachers reported that students showed higher skills in finding relevant information and assessing the information and the sources.

Isn’t that impressive? We do think it is. But to maximise such impact and provide more systemic and favourable conditions for MIL topics integration in primary education we suggest five following recommendations:

1. Include media and information literacy topics in the primary curriculum.
2. Provide incentives for initial teacher education centres to include MIL topics in ITE at primary level.
3. Fund continuous professional development (CPD) activities for the teachers to acquire MIL skills.
4. Promote existing MIL tools for primary education, based on the needs providing targeted funding to develop missing tools.
5. Establish a monitoring system that would allow the evaluation of the quality of the interventions made by the government and non-governmental organisations.