Article ‘The Power of TOY’ in the Journal of IG Relationships
June 11, 2020
Together Old and Young: Practitioners Learning and Upscaling Skills
TOY-PLUS latest news
TOY presented to big crowd at Municipal Art Gallery of Larissa (Greece)
December 20, 2018
Assess and improve the quality of your IGL initiative with TOY!
November 8, 2018
Background
After all the research and practice carried out between 2012 and 2016 by the TOY partners, in 2017 we moved on to the next step: sharing everything we know and learned about to help practitioners implement the TOY approach. TOY-PLUS was the logical next step in our TOY-programme. We created training opportunities and sharing knowledge about intergenerational learning principles and practice to ensure the implementation of meaningful and quality intergenerational experiences between young children and older people.
TOY-PLUS was funded by the Erasmus Plus programme – Adult Education (KA2) and run from 2016 to 2018.
Impact
We provided a multi-faceted training and education experience on intergenerational learning! Practitioners have developed skills and competences to develop and deliver successful intergenerational learning (IGL) programmes involving young children and older adults. The TOY Online Course (MOOC) was designed to reach hundreds of practitioners internationally from 2018 in Europe - and even world-wide. It runs twice a year starting in March and in October.
Furthermore, we developed and tested a quality assessment tool for IGL with agreed dimensions of quality for educational and care services, which is called the TOY for Quality Programme. The TOY for Quality Programme combined with the TOY online course results in improved quality of intergenerational learning practice.
Target groups
The training and education experience was initially designed for our TOY PLUS partners; ECEC and Social Care practitioners and community development workers from 5 countries: Italy, Ireland, Slovenia, Spain and the UK. They participated in a multi-faceted training and education experience (2018) which incorporated workshops, international training involving study visits, joint reflection and exchange of good practice in IGL, piloting of a massive open online course (MOOC) and creating a peer learning community for IGL.
Other participants in TOY-PLUS were staff of local authorities and ECEC, and Social Care services, young children (0-10 years) and older adults (65 years +) .The products of TOY-PLUS are of interest to anyone who wants to establish or improve an IGL initiative in their service or community in Europe and beyond.
They are also be of interest to training organizations, universities and local authorities.
Activities
Handbook
TOY-PLUS developed a handbook for tutors and course developers with guidelines on how to use a combined teaching and learning approach which involves both online learning and face-to-face workshops.
TOY course on IGL (online)
Practitioners in early childhood education and care (ECEC), social care and community development work are more than welcome to join the online course Together Old and Young: An Intergenerational Approach.
TOY for Quality
TOY-PLUS launched an intergenerational quality assessment tool (TOY for Quality Programme) with agreed dimensions of quality for educational and care services.
Partners
The project is coordinated by International Child Development Initiatives – ICDI (Netherlands).
Our partner organisations for TOY-PLUS are: The Beth Johnson Foundation (UK) and Linking Generation Northern Ireland, Dublin Institute of Technology (Ireland), Educational Research Institute - ERI (Slovenia), Azienda Speciale ReteSalute (Italy), Hellenic Open University (Greece), Municipality of Lleida (Spain).
The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.