Citizenship Education

Research Centre Future-Driven Education at Karel de Grote University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Antwerp, Belgium) is looking to join a consortium on citizenship education, participation, dialogue and democratic school development.

Our centre specialises in practice-oriented, co-creative research: we start from real questions and challenges in educational practice and work together with schools, teachers and partners to develop solutions that are both research-informed and directly usable in practice.

We bring specific expertise in:

• strengthening citizenship education in schools through concrete, sustainable approaches

• supporting whole-school development, where citizenship is not treated as a separate theme but embedded in school culture, teamwork and everyday practice

• designing and researching dialogic, inquiry-based and participatory pedagogies that help learners engage with societal issues, different perspectives and shared responsibility

• building bridges between research, innovation and implementation in educational settings.

Our expertise is grounded in several projects, including Uncontroversial, Pancake Science, COSMOS, SchoolFood4Change, and Teamgericht werken aan burgerschap op school. Across these projects, we work on themes such as dialogue around sensitive issues, participation, sustainability, school culture and collaborative citizenship practices.

We see our role in a consortium as a strong research and implementation partner, contributing through:

• co-creation with schools and educational professionals

• development and piloting of tools, interventions and methodologies

• professionalisation trajectories for practitioners and school teams

• evaluation and translation of results into sustainable educational practice.

We have previous experience as partner in a Horizon Europe project and as coordinator and partner in multiple Erasmus+ projects.