Collaborative Re-design with Schools Erasmus Project

Project Title

Collaborative Re-design with Schools

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

CoReD – Collaborative Re-Design with Schools
“Getting together to change school space”

Research shows that well-designed learning spaces can impact on the wellbeing, engagement and attainment of learners, and provide pivotal support for school level change. It also demonstrates the impact of raising educators’ awareness of school space, so that they can adjust their setting or their practices. Meanwhile, across Europe, new schools are being designed and built, and older ones are being refurbished or redesigned. If this is to succeed in creating more innovative and inclusive spaces for pupils’ learning, we need education professionals to appreciate the impact of school space and be enabled to contribute in an informed way to discussions. Their contribution could, and should, range from evaluating their own classroom or school space, to changing local space and practice, through to engaging with national policy agendas relevant to school premises. There is an imperative to produce a coherent understanding that can support practice and policy into the future, empowering teachers and school leaders internationally to develop as ‘agents of change contributing to school development.’ (ET 2020 Working Group Schools 2016-18:10)

The overarching aim of this project is to undertake activities and develop resources that will result in increased understanding of educational environments, firstly by education professionals within their own contexts, but subsequently more widely, influencing local and national debates and policy. The project activities and outputs will support teachers and school leaders to engage more effectively with their learning environment, empowering them in decisions made about facilities, material resources and digital provision. We intend to alter the conversation about school premises through making policy-makers, architects and designers, and teacher educators more aware of how users and space interact, including the active role of the spatially aware education professional.

The key objectives of the project are as follows:

• The provision of user-friendly, online tools that will enable education practitioners to evaluate and understand their current school learning environment and how it supports/impedes learning and teaching.
• The development of online tools to enable education practitioners to determine the changes that need to be made in order to support their current practices more effectively or to help them develop more innovative and inclusive learning and teaching experiences for their pupils.
• The creation of online case studies and guides that will chart the journey and experiences of practitioners in diverse settings as they use the tools to explore and understand their school learning environments.
• The creation of a website to host the resources that will be developed collaboratively and iteratively by the university partners, the education practitioners and web designers, to be shared and disseminated via a range of social media.

The six project partners have devised general approaches and specific methods for use in their own research when working with teachers, school leaders and students to develop their school learning environments. The aim now is to develop internationally trialled resources, which can be used by the teaching profession as freely-available, stand-alone tools that do not need to be implemented or analysed by university researchers. This aim will be achieved through collaborative work between the project partners and education professionals, trialling the tools across six diverse European countries. The resulting tools, case studies and practitioner guides will be translated into a range of languages to maximise international inclusivity. The creation of an open-access website linked to carefully chosen media will direct education practitioners and policy-makers to this resource ensuring that the project outputs remain widely available. This will drive improvements in education through supporting teachers and school leaders to understand the implications of the learning environment for their pupils and their pedagogy, and so undertake informed change.

Project Website

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/cored/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 254580 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE & Country: UK

Project Partners

• LIBERA UNIVERSITA DI BOLZANO
• UNIVERSIDADE DE COIMBRA
• HASKOLI ISLANDS
• HOGSKOLAN I GAVLE
• AARHUS UNIVERSITET