Culture of Learning Erasmus Project

Project Title

Culture of Learning

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Pedagogy and didactics; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

The background of our project is the fact that the world is changing rapidly and becoming increasingly globalised. Our young people will be facing a very different employment market in the next 10-20 years. Employment opportunities will change as the use of digital skills increases with rapid developments in technology. Our project is based on the evidence that although students are overall improving their results in external tests, when students leave school many do not have the necessary skills to prepare them for future employment opportunities and life skills. Many students also feel that while they are prepared for taking part in examinations they do not have the skills to take responsibility for their own learning and become lifelong learners and that some lessons do not prepare them for post school experiences. Education & Training 2020 identifies that at school level there are still too many students that leave school early and/or do not have the competencies required for 21st century future employment. While overall standards of teaching in many schools is good there are still too many instances where the quality of teaching falls below the expected requirements. OECD International Summit (2011) states that quality of teaching is imperative to improved pupil outcomes; the challenge is to equip all not some teachers for effective learning in the 21st century. Our project’s OVERALL AIM was to strengthening the quality of leadership, pedagogy, communities and policy in school education. Our MAIN OBJECTIVE is to strengthen the competencies and learning of all students through more contextualised learning environments and strengthening teachers’ professionalism. We also had 7 Specific Student centered Objectives that included putting Learners at the centre/social/Emotional learning/ individual differences/Stretching all students/Assessment for learning & Building horizontal connectedness. We identified the OECD publication (2010) ‘The Nature of Learning’ to support our ideas to create a ‘Culture of Learning’ (CoL) in schools to support high quality teaching & learning by developing processes to meet the needs of learners. We developed our multi-stakeholder partnership (schools/universities/LA) to identify these processes using professional learning community principles for working together. We did this by developing an interactive CoL tool/matrix and guidance for schools and stakeholder to use to identify where their strengths are and what needs to be improved to create an effective CoL. This was developed, piloted, shared and refined over the three years. The resulting ‘tool/matrix’ is an overarching framework that can be used fully or in parts according to identified needs of the user organisation. It is now in process of adaptation for use with students teachers in one of the major Baltic State universities as part of their ITT. It has proved impactful for all partners involved and from our multiplier events feedback has indicated that schools find it useful for creating purposeful discussions on what their current CoL looks like and where they want it to be. We identifying these processes for developing a school CoL through a students’ wellbeing survey and a teacher’s self-evaluation toolkit. We built into our LTT events the development of teaching staff as ‘teacher-researcher’ to strengthen the professionalism of teaching profession to improve their skills in carrying out action research challenges with resulting case study reports. We also developed more innovative teaching/assessment resources to reflect 21st century learning. Project participants were also encouraged to use social media to record their research/results –these and all of the projects resources/outputs can be found on the project website at http://cultureoflearning.eu/. Our PLC used a participatory approach based to identify problems, seeking solutions from research, testing solutions in context and evaluating impact. We focused on the teaching profession at classroom & leadership level and their inter-relationship with their community (pupils/parents) LAs, universities and where feasible policy makers to create ‘CoL’. Our results and impact are wide ranging and tried and tested results include:
• A robust working CoL matrix
• Student wellbeing survey and analysis report
• Teacher self-evaluation toolkit
• Action research (AR) guidance
• AR case studies
• Website
• Resources easily adaptableby teaching professionals
Impact:
• Improved conditions for 21st century skills/culture of learning in schools
• IMPROVED PROCESSES/SYSTEM CHANGE in school culture/provision
• Increased participation of students in effective learning with improved outcomes
• Improved quality of lessons and subsequent learning
• Increased professionalism of teaching profession –through skills/competences
• More contextualised learning/resources & assessment processes
• More consideration of students’ wellbeing and improved provision

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 446711 Eur

Project Coordinator

COUNTY COUNCIL OF THE CITY AND COUNTY OF CARDIFF & Country: UK

Project Partners

• St. Joseph’s Comprehensive School
• UNIWERSYTET JAGIELLONSKI
• UNIVERSITY OF WALES TRINITY SAINT DAVID ROYAL CHARTER
• Szkola Podstawowa nr 36
• LATVIJAS UNIVERSITATE
• Zespol Szkol Ogolnoksztalcacych Integracyjnych nr 7 w Krakowie
• Lizuma vidusskola