This is me; under construction Erasmus Project

Project Title

This is me; under construction

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development)

Project Summary

All the preschools in this project build their work on the knowledge of the theory of Multiple Intelligences or have a strong focus on the talents of children and wanted to share best practices in that field. They all had difficulties evaluating and/or observing the learning of children and development. The preschool teachers needed tools to evaluate and assess children’s strengths, interests and talents. Also to involve the parents and children’s voices in the process. They thought that Process-Growth Portfolios with Learning stories, Pedagogical Documentation and the works of children would work well in the preschools.
By meeting teachers with similar ideas from other European countries and sharing best practices the teachers could help each other in developing open ended evaluation methods. In this project a group of preschool teachers from Belgian, Iceland, Norway and Sweden met, got to know different methods in evaluating/observing children’s learning and discussed best practices. The challenge was to make reliable and trustworthy Process-Growth Portfolio guidelines that would be deemed useful for teachers in evaluating and/or observing preschool activities and children’s learning. It was also the belief of the partners that using open ended evaluation tools, like portfolios to assess children’s learning would give teachers, parents and children the opportunity to discuss children’s learning and the preschools activities and by doing so improving the teachers work and how they view children’s learning. That would then result in higher quality teaching in preschools and help teachers to adopt new methods and tools in evaluating learning.
The teachers made the website http://thisismeunderconst.wixsite.com/project where prechool teachers can find good practises, guidelines, information on the project and other examples to use. The Process-Growth Portfolio guidelines will help teachers to deal with diversified groups of learners, such as migrants by respecting their culture and background. We wanted to explore and develop these methods, adapt and integrate them in the individual preschool. Learning stories, developed in New Zealand are an especially good tool for that. Portfolios are used to discuss preschool activities and how they meet the interests of the children and by doing so strengthens collaborative and innovative practices in the schools. As a result of that collaboration the necessary changes and improvements are made by the teachers in the preschools to better meet the interests and talents of the children. In the long run that will contribute to the will for lifelong learning and reduce early school leaving.
The information on the website is also useful for policy makers because European preschools long for a good start in education and good learning outcomes. The learning outcomes can well be measured with open ended methods such as learning stories or pedagogical documentation instead of narrow testing. In a project such as this the focus was on a holistic and age appropriate pedagogical framework for ECEC in evaluating the learning and the activities in preschool with portfolio guidelines. This is a new model of evaluation to implement in ECEC.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 106430 Eur

Project Coordinator

Kirkjubol & Country: IS

Project Partners

• Förskolan Bildradio Transistorgatan
• Gemeentelijke Kleuterschool Koekatoe
• Vrije kleuterschool-De Zevensprong
• Marihona kindergarten