Mental Health
The project aims to provide arts-based interventions for youth in a slum in Nairobi, Kenya, and measure the Pre-Texts impact in preventing mental health problems, as such problems develop during adolescence and cause negative social, health, academic and human functioning problems that can last a lifetime. Preliminary results showed that o Pre-Texts reduces symptoms of depression and symptoms of anxiety.
Pedagogical Intervention at Regular Schools
The project employs Pre-Texts in a pilot school in India and evaluates how a new, scalable pedagogical intervention can improve learning outcomes in Indian schools. A school will be chosen, and its grades I-V teachers will be trained, since lower formative grades will best achieve the desired impact. Given the nature of pedagogical intervention and its desired impact, we will adopt a mixed-method approach in the impact evaluation, which includes baseline estimate studies and compare these with the post-intervention assessment done at the end of the term.
Reading and Cultural Promotion in Libraries
The project aims to promote, besides reading, peaceful coexistence and social participation. Therefore, after the Mannheim library staff became Pre-Texts facilitators, they have been developing some projects: they invite the Mannheim Schools to host Pre-Texts workshops; they receive interns from Harvard to promote workshops for Mannheim School students; they promote Pre-Texts workshops for students from community schools with limited knowledge of German language and migration background.
Bilingual Schools
The English language in Hong Kong and mainland China is treated as an independent subject, with a focus on grammatical functions, vocabulary, and right or wrong answers. Thus, the Pre-Texts project aims to provide each student with opportunities to expand their knowledge and experience of other people’s culture. In addition, the project aims to stimulate the personal and intellectual development of the students; the deepening, enjoyment and work in the English language; and the development of a series of activities to increase motivation, creativity, critical thinking, skills and communication.
Mitigating Violence in the School Context
In Brazil, the challenges for the physical and psychological safety of students and teachers are many, and mitigation proposals are of paramount importance. Thus, Pre-Texts is being implemented as a tool for innovation in public school activities. The main goal of this project is to train teachers from the Sergipe State Public Schools with the Pre-Texts methodology and to evaluate the process and the result of its implementation in the classroom.
Culture of Peace
The project aims to strengthen democratic values and cultural socio inclusion between teachers and cultural mediators using Pre-Texts as a tool to promote peace through art. Some main results observed: reading forms creative citizens; high-level cognitive capacities are stimulated, and linguistic skills are acquired; admiration is generated among the pairs; the restlessness and frustration via creativity and artistic expression are channeled; and it is enriched and recognized local cultural capital with the appropriation of academic material.