20 members of the SOLIS team met “in” Sicily on the 1st and the 2nd of September to monitor the progress of the research activity and agree the best way forward for the development of the next Intellectual Outputs. Half of the team joined the meeting online in respect of the current COVID travel restrictions.

Spyros Kokkotas, form Research Paths (Greece), summarised the results of the first Report which combines data from the 7 partner countries on the inclusive education approaches and tools currently applied in School Education, with the objective of informing our understanding of each national context before developing the e-learning platform and the web portal for educators.

After having collected information and data through literature review and interviews with educators, a number of methods from each country were selected by the project team and then analysed and compared during follow on focus groups with educators at national and international level (international focus groups were organised and facilitated online).
The element of innovation is that we are mapping those methods for inclusive education at national level, but then we are facilitating an exchange of opinions on good practices from other countries, so to invite educators to challenge and expand their current practices in a way that could generate various improvements (in terms of content selection and mode of delivery). The feedback received by the educators involved in these national and international focus groups was in fact essential to inform this output, but also the following project activities. In particular this approach will guide the project team during the co-design of the IO2 and IO3 and enable us to better understand if tools with a specific national focus are needed and how to make good practices already successful in some countries accessible and effective in different contexts. It also provides additional information to tailor the digital storytelling methodology and adapt its application in various contexts and ‘environments’ (both face-to-face and digital) so to achieve the specific aims of the project.

The next face-to-face team meeting is scheduled for January 2022 in Norway.