News . Best Practices Education for democracy and human rights – campaign against Racism (Best Practice Brazil)
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This best practice reports an open schooling activity based on an open scenario developed by Science, Health and Education researchers and students from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro with 16 public school students (7th,8th, and 9th grades) and 4 teachers during social distance due to the pandemic. Since August 2020, the group undertook two hour online meetings for 25-weeks in the design and construction of a School Web Radio to discuss relevant issues for students and their community. It was supported by the Open University OU-UK.
Care: Students cared about “Racism” in Brazil and selected it as their first topic of interest to develop a project and to act against it.
Know: in order to know more about it, scientists (genetics and neuroscience), a social activist and school parents were invited to discuss science, health, history, and sociocultural issues related to Racism such as (human rights, equal opportunities, debunking science myths e.g. black and white peoples’ brain differences and links to intelligence.
Do: Students produced, published, and disseminated a series of 14 podcasts (available on @webradiofalamadrid – 145 followers.
Findings: 16 student representatives of the project were able to integrate non-formal learning about Racism as a socio-scientific theme; engaging local community. This process enabled them to realise that curriculum knowledge learned in different disciplines were used to produce the podcasts.
Outcomes: Students improved their writing, reading, inquiry mapping, and argumentation skills during the process of producing the podcast. Scientific and digital cultures were reinforced by these practices in an integrated manner.