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Introduction

The aim of “RENYO - Re-engaging young offenders with education and learning” is to enhance educators’ capability to re-engage young people in conflict with the law with education and learning whilst in secure custodial settings in 4 partner countries in the EU (United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Spain). This involves training education staff in secure custodial settings to use Authentic Inquiry as an intervention to enrich educators’ repertoires in learning design.

Authentic inquiry is an intervention designed to build personally relevant knowledge, which is useful in education. The personally relevant topic is identified by the learner, enabling greater opportunity to connect with the learning process. This is done by taking the learners’ interest through their own narratives and stories (personal) and navigating this towards the production of an ‘artefact’ such as a piece of art, poster or other product that has some external educational value (public). In so doing, there is a connecting of the personal to the public. This intervention has been shown to be effective in re-engaging disengaged learners in both the UK and Australia.

The project is supported by a digital infrastructure which includes the Learning Journey Platform. This platform facilitates learners’ journeys (both education staff and young people in conflict with the law), enabling users to assess progress along their journey, and determine the areas of focus for them as learners. 

Official website of the 'RENYO' project

Official Facebook profile of the 'RENYO' project

Objectives

This project has the following objectives:

  • Enhance educators’ capability to re-engage young people with education and learning whilst in secure custodial settings;
  • Establish a network of partners in the EU who share this aim;
  • Train education staff in secure settings to engage young people with education through the use of “authentic inquiry” as an intervention to enrich educators’ repertoires in learning design;
  • Develop improved practice around a digital learning infrastructure so changes are more likely to sustain beyond the lifespan of the project;
  • Write a research paper sharing the outcomes and learning to support dissemination and sustainability.

Main activities

  • Train the Trainer Programme: training programme to train the trainers in partner countries;
  • Methodological Approach: training the education staff of custodial settings in the Authentic Inquiry methodology;
  • Resources for Education Staff in Secure Settings: partners tailor the resources and materials to their own context;
  • RENYO Research Paper that includes the analysis of the quantitative and qualitative indicators about changes of education staff capabilities in understanding and responding to the young people’s educational need.

Beneficiaries

  • Custodial settings' education staff, counsellors, youth workers within the juvenile justice field;
  • Young people in conflict with the law;
  • Universities and other educational institutions, NGOs and other higher engaging in prison education;
  • Policy makers, Ministries, particularly Ministries of Justice and National Prison and Correctional Administrations.

Brochure

Outputs