Experience Art – Increase Motivation Erasmus Project

Project Title

Experience Art – Increase Motivation

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; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The project “Experience Art – Increase Motivation” aimed at students in danger of dropping out of school prematurely. We are six schools of upper secondary level from the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Poland, Spain and Turkey. Our aim was to develop and test concepts of increasing the students’ motivation by involving them in various art projects.

The concepts we developed and tested follow a two-stage process. In the first step every school prepared their students for participating in art workshops which took place at the project meetings. Every project meeting focused on one specific art form(e.g. painting, photography, film etc.) and each school invited experts on these art forms in interdisciplinary lessons combining English and the Arts. Teachers of each school developed preparation concepts for this purpose and implemented them before each meeting. During this preparation process there will be constant contact via TwinSpace and e-mail. There were teachers’ and students’ chats, preparation materials will be uploaded and announcements were made at the bulletin board on twinspace.

At every meeting there were delegations of about 5 students and 3 teachers from each school and there were be two major lines of action. The first concentrated on students, art teachers and artists. They had several stages of workshops in which they dealt with one specific art form and produce artworks. The results were presented in exhibitions and performances open to the public. The second line of action involved teachers, mainly English teachers who took part in the interdisciplinary preparation activities. Each school presented their activities prior to the meetings and the international team of teachers will combine the best ideas and actitivies into one concept for an interdisciplinary project concept focusing on Art and English. The project was planned to consist of six of these project terms and after each meeting the new term started with the preparation for the next meeting

The results of the preparation and the meetings are presented on a project homepage (www.experience-art.eu). Moreover, the project itself is presented on eTwinning focusing the underlying purpose of enhancing students’ motivation by involving them in art based interdisciplinary projects. The concept for the preparation of the students and the implementation of the workshops will be available to teachers and interested professionals in digital and printed form (Download on the homepage).

The effects of the project will be measured with the help of questionnaires. Students assessed the effects of participation on their level of motivation for school as well as on identification with school and students and teachers will give a feedback on the structure of the workshops and the organization of the meetings. The results of these polls will influence the structure of the following activities within the project and this will lead to an ongoing process of enhancing the project and the strategies used. This monitoring process shows that among the students participating in the project the level of motivation and identification developed in a more positive way than among students who didn’t participate in the project (compare: http://www.experience-art.eu/links-and-documentation/). The difference between these two groups is not huge, but nevertheless noticable and these results are supported by the personal feedback the teachers got from the students taking part as well as by the impressions teachers got by working with the students.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 132010 Eur

Project Coordinator

Lothar-von-Faber-Schule; Staatliche Fachoberschule Nürnberg & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Gymnazium Jana Nerudy, skola hlavniho mesta Prahy
• Maltepe Mesleki ve Teknik Anadolu Lisesi
• LYCEE PHILIPPE LAMOUR
• Zespol Szkol Ogolnoksztalcacych w Strzelinie
• Institut Salvador Espriu