A challenge-based approach
The Arqus Winter School is the beginning of a unique educational journey. It will engage you as students in thinking about what it means to be a European Citizen, and how this citizenship is being galvanized around societal challenges. It is a challenge-based approach to educating critically engaged European citizens, and it is being run in parallel at all seven Arqus universities this semester.
Traditionally, concepts of citizenship have been connected to notions of territory and statehood and the implicit or explicit rights and responsibilities of people who live there. European citizenship necessitates reimagining this concept, moving away from concrete geographical boundaries and toward more abstract ideas and ideals suchas peace, prosperity and equality.
Contemporary universities have the power to make substantive contributions to discourses and models of active, engaged citizenship by developing interdisciplinary, challenge-based and student-led pedagogies that empower students to critically reframe, reflect upon and address the challenges we face today.
The winter school brings together six students from each of the seven Arqus universities. It aims to invest these students with interdisciplinary research ideas, skills and resources to enable them to develop group research projects on diversity, interdisciplinarity and societal challenges. At some universities the six winter school participants might be the only ones taking this course, while at others the six students might be part of a larger class, and they will need to form research groups and relate their experiences to others in their class.
