The background of the VISIONARY project (detailed information)

The idea of the project stemmed from a German project called LAPSuS (Jäger, 1999) that aimed to integrate violence prevention into a school developmental process. Based on the well-known concept from Olweus (2000), the LAPSuS project included the establishment of school teams comprising teachers, pupils and parents, questionning pupils, and introducing problem- and target-oriented planning activities. One component of the project was a compliation of materials, literature and lists of local contact persons. In order to facilitate navigation within this compilation, literature and materials were allocated to superordinated categories.

In the late 90s in Germany more and more materials, address lists, project descriptions etc. became available on the Internet. With support from the Ministry of Education, Science and Further Edcuation of the German federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate, the original compilation of literature and materials was extended to the Internet. The result was the web site “Maßnahmen gegen Gewalt in der Schule – Eine Linksammlung” (“Measures against violence in school – a link collection”) . The web site comprised a basic link collection with links that were allocated to categories resembling the ones in the original compilation, and used as the basis for the categories of the link collection of the VISIONARY portal later on.

In 2000, the proposal for the VISIONARY project was submitted to and approved by the European Commission within the Socrates/Minerva programme. The aims of the VISIONARY project and the structure of the Internet portal are presented below.

References

Jäger, Th. (1999). Das Landauer-Anti-Gewalt-Programm für Schülerinnen und Schüler – Hintergründe, Projektverlauf und erste Erfahrungen. Newsletter Pädagogische Psychologie. 4 (2), 33-44.