Evidencing the impact of informal learning on active citizenship in European projects

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This survey analyzes an innovative method for evaluating the impact of informal learning on citizenship-related competencies across European countries. Developed under the ACT project, funded by the European Commission from 2005 to 2008, the evaluation system addresses the needs of grassroots organizations that provide citizenship competence to non-mainstream societal groups. This approach focuses on the citizenship competencies required by beneficiaries in their living contexts rather than on politically defined objectives for Active Citizenship. A comprehensive European analysis of citizenship education led to the creation of the ACT-Cube, an explanatory model visualizing Active Citizenship competence. This model underpins a standardised evaluation procedure that allows grassroots projects to create individualized reference systems for assessing and evidencing relevant competencies in a process-oriented manner. The system enables users to demonstrate their impact through a standardized procedure while maintaining the uniqueness of their informal learning contexts. Historically, the challenge of balancing standardization and individuality has hindered the validation of informal learning. Over two years, an interdisciplinary team from nine countries developed a refined evaluation procedure, successfully tested in 23 grassroots projects across Europe. Additionally, an interactive evaluation software, the ACT Impact Assessment S