Lessons should be provided to teachers in order to ensure that they feel confident to give traffic safety and mobility education lessons and to ensure that they remain up-to-date.
Support can, for example, be given by having road safety education experts show teachers how such lessons could be done. These experts can also play a key role in motivating teachers to give road safety lessons to children and pupils.
Head teachers should ensure they give ample support to teachers on traffic safety and mobility education.
BEST PRACTICE EXAMPLES
European Union – KROS: An Erasmus+ Project on Traffic Safety
‘KROS: Knights for ROad Safety’ is an EU-funded ERASMUS+ programme. It focuses on open education and innovative practices in the digital age, aiming to integrate traffic safety principles and best practices at primary and secondary schools in Austria, Greece, Ireland, Poland and Spain. In addition to training activities and workshops for teachers, the project also provides resources and training materials online.
Activity sheets that help teachers incorporate traffic safety in their specific subjects, such as mathematics, physics and social sciences are also included. Moreover, KROS developed a virtual reality application with road safety scenarios. The project furthermore promotes a school-wide approach to road safety, including its integration in the curriculum and school organisation as well as parental engagement and support.
More Information
The KROS Project, an ERASMUS+ programme under KA2 – Cooperation for Innovation and the Exchange of Good Practices: Strategic Partnerships for school education, is coordinated by RSI Panos Mylonas and more information can be found at: www.kros-project.eu
Scotland – Annual Update of a Guide on Available Resources
The Curriculum for Excellence is the philosophy underpinning the Scottish Education System and, to ensure credibility within the learning and teaching profession, Road Safety Scotland has aligned all its resources with it. A guide for teachers provides an overview of the available resources and how they support the curriculum.
Road Safety Scotland collaborates with Education Scotland (the Scottish Government’s Executive Agency for Education), to review and update this publication every year. As well as being made available online, it is distributed to all educational establishments across Scotland, and throughout the road safety community as well.
More Information
Road Safety Scotland (2019), Road Safety within Curriculum for Excellence 2019-20.
Spain – Teacher Guides for Different Age Groups
Fundación MAPFRE has developed guides for teachers in Spain. These tools aim to help and guide teachers in successfully carrying out lessons, by providing teaching guidelines as well as the learning goals and content, the methodology, resources and evaluation assessments for the activities. The guides are adapted to different age groups, with guides for 3-5 year olds, 6-8 year olds, 9-11 year olds and 12-16 year olds available for teachers.
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Czech Republic – Guidelines for Kindergarten Traffic Education
The Transport Research Centre (CDV) in the Czech Republic has developed guidelines for traffic education in kindergartens consisting of five chapters: child collisions; the psychometric competence level of pre-school children; good practices related to children in traffic; and kindergarten traffic education in the context of the national curriculum framework.
In addition to seminars for teachers, a website designed for both teachers as well as the general public contains free materials, manuals and other safety-related information for kindergartens as well as elementary schools, and is continuously updated. The website also contains ten videos providing support on the practical use of the guidelines.
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Belgium – Free Courses, Information and Materials for Teachers
The Flemish Foundation for Traffic Knowledge (VSV) provides free courses on traffic safety and mobility education to both teachers and those studying to become a teacher at pre-primary and primary schools as well as those teaching physical education at secondary schools in Flanders. They furthermore support them with information through newsletters focused on traffic safety education and through free educational materials, such as lesson manuals and example lessons.
Belgium’s Walloon region also provides free courses and free educational materials, not only to school teachers but also to staff at NGOs and the police who give traffic safety and mobility education in schools and receive government subsidies to do so.
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Portugal – Training Teachers to Train Other Teachers
Teachers in preschool and basic education in Portugal have access to road safety training as part of systematic lifelong learning on the road safety education competency framework. This includes ‘training of trainers’ which, by the end of the programme, enables teachers to train other teachers. They also have online support to develop road safety projects. This training will soon become available for secondary school teachers in Portugal.
More Information
Information on teacher training in Portugal will be made available on the website linked here.
Finland – The Importance of the Head Teacher’s Support
Every year, the Finnish Road Safety Council (Liikenneturva) offers teachers further education in traffic safety, in which teachers review the basics of traffic safety education and can try out different action models. Teachers are also offered an opportunity to network with other teachers and share good practice. The Finnish Road Safety Council also publishes an electronic newsletter for teachers four times a year, which highlights current issues and introduces materials and action models for traffic safety education.
According to a teacher survey, the support of the school’s head teacher is a significant factor for teachers to actually teach traffic safety.
Germany – Support for Teachers at Vocational Schools
The German Road Safety Council, supported by the German Social Accident Insurance, develops a comprehensive set of materials for teachers of vocational schools every year. The materials focus on a different topic related to the prevention of road accidents each year. The set includes, amongst others, a power point presentation, a handbook with practical advice how to implement the contents in practice, videos, and exercise sheets.
More Information
The best practice examples are not yet available on the mobile version of the website. Please visit the website on a tablet, desktop or laptop to see them.