Partnership Inderøy, Grankulla, DNSB Erasmus Project

Project Title

Partnership Inderøy, Grankulla, DNSB

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 : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); Pedagogy and didactics; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Sakshaug and Sandvollan school from Inderøy (Norway) and Granhultskolan and Hagelstamske school from Grankulla (Finland) have previously had successful Erasmus cooperations and wanted to expand this cooperation. For several years, Inderøy has sent kindergarten teachers to practice at the Scandinavian kindergarten at Campus Argenteuil, the same campus as the Norwegian School of Brussels (DNSB). The representatives from Inderøy contacted DNSB and invited the school to participate in the renewed collaborative project with Grankulla.

The schools from Inderøy and Grankulla applied and received fundings to attend a mobility meeting in Brussels in January 2020 with DNSB as hosts. Prior to the mobility meeting, there was several video meetings to agree on the foundations for the collaboration project, and which points of interest the schools wanted to incorporate into the project. Each school came up with areas they wanted to raise their competence, while also presenting their strengths. Based on this, it was agreed that we should focus on the following criteria:

– Interpretation of the new Norwegian curriculum
– Digitization
– Station training
– Method variation

For Inderøy and DNSB, it was natural to focus on the interpretation of the new Norwegian curricula, with particular depth learning as a new and central concept. The competence from Finland would be useful, as similar methodology has already been practiced in Finland for many years. Grankulla has also worked extensively with digitization, and are ahead of both DNSB and Inderøy when it comes to digital expertise, although DNSB and Inderøy possess good digital equipment parks. Over time, DNSB has worked systematically with age-mixed station training. The program is mainly designed to train students’ reading and writing skills by applying different strategies and methodologies, but with varied content, clear goals and fun end products, station teaching also serves as a motivation for the students. Inderøy also works extensively with method variation where they facilitate playing on the various individual strengths of all their students, with a goal that all students should have a sense of achievement. Similar methodology is also used to facilitate customized training.

Based on this, all schools have different areas to contribute to a competency-sharing project, while everyone is also introduced to areas they would like to strengthen.

The school leaders agreed that the desired plan was for two teachers from each school to work together to develop a teaching program that integrates the selected focus areas. The teachers will visit / exchange at all project schools and develop a teaching method during a project period of 24 months. Three exchange trips will be carried out with five days per exchange. During each exchange, the host schools will present the visitors for how they are working locally on their contribution to the project. Participants will be able to see how the host school plan their teaching, they will observe the implementation of the programs, and they will also discuss the program together with the staff from the host school. After gaining insight into how the host school implements the program, the project group will have room to discuss how the program can be integrated into the project.

The principals of the five partner schools have an overall joint responsibility for developing project criteria for the teachers participating in the exchange. They will develop the criteria and guidelines through scheduled meetings on skype, and create a common document online (eg Google docs). The principals coordinate plans in advance of each visit. They also participate in the school visits to supervise the project groups, and at the same time conduct evaluation meetings.

The selected teachers puts together and concretizes their project plan on the first visit. Their responsibility will be to plan, execute, reflect, document and finalize the entire process the group has been through while creating the teaching plan. They will document everything in the form of a video blog. When not exchanging, they communicate through scheduled skype meetings and emails. Their schools should help free up time for video meetings.

In total, 15 people participate in the exchange, 10 teachers and five principals. We plan to schedule the following rounds of visits:

DNSB – Station Training (Autumn 2020)
Inderøy – Adapted teaching and method variation (spring 2021)
Grankulla – Digitalization and in-depth learning (autumn 2021)

Participants will be tasked with conducting thorough college sharing with the other staff at their schools. An expected result of the project is that the teacher participants prepare a hands-on teaching program that will be presented and put to use by the other staff, so that it is used further by the schools – even after the project is completed.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 63330 Eur

Project Coordinator

Den norske skolen i Brussel & Country: NO

Project Partners

• Granhultsskolan
• Hagelstamska skolan
• Sakshaug skole
• Sandvollan skole