1. Introduction

EDC/HRE is a distinctive form of educational activity that aims to equip young people to participate as active citizens, and as such employs distinctive forms of learning. Teachers need to be fluent in these forms of learning and able to put them into practice in different settings. They include different forms:

• inductive – presenting learners with concrete problems to resolve or make a decision on, and encouraging them to generalise from these to other situations – rather than by starting from abstract concepts;
• active – encouraging learners to learn by doing, rather than being told or preached at;
• relevant – designing learning activities around real situations in the life of the school or college, the community or the wider world;
• collaborative – employing group-work and co-operative learning;
• interactive – teaching through discussion and debate;
• critical – encouraging learners to think for themselves, by asking for their opinions and views and helping them develop the skills of argument;
• participative – allowing learners to contribute to their own learning, for example by suggesting topics for discussion or research, or by assessing their own learning or the learning of their peers.

To fulfil these plans, teachers need tools to support the students. Some of them are especially important for EDC/HRE. Therefore they will be described here in a very practical form.