Empowering teachers for student-centred approach Erasmus Project

Project Title

Empowering teachers for student-centred approach

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 higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Quality and Relevance of Higher Education in Partner Countries; Pedagogy and didactics; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Within the student-centred approach teachers mainly focus upon what students should learn and emphasize why (Bransford, Vye & Bateman, 2002), they take into account the already existing knowledge of students (Bransford, Brown, Cocking, 2000; Protheroe, 2007), provide different opportunities for students to learn, often change teaching methods, help students who have troubles and consider their background. Teachers discuss with students which study activities lead to good results, expose students to looking for alternatives and trying to find their own solutions. Examination questions refer to real situation and do not lead to categorizing students with regard to their marks. Aslan in Reigeluth (2013) state that modern educational systems should address the needs of the contemporary students, facilitate the study process and prepare students for social life so that each educational system should look at each individual student as a student with special needs and should not require that all students learn in the same way.
This project intends to support more teachers with the latest theoretical and empirical data about this pedagogical approach and motivate them to create new and better teaching methods and other ways of personalised approach. This will contribute to revision and strengthening of the professional profile of the teaching professions, the attainment of students, the organizational culture at universities and/or to the modernisation of Europe’s higher education systems. The objectives were to make a research of the contemporary student-centred and/or personalized approach in several European higher education institutions, write a handbook of good practices for teachers and publish several articles in peer-reviewed journals.
The first part of the project was performed by four participants from four European countries, three HEIs and one research and development SME specialized in development and support of programmes and courses for teachers and trainers. The second part of the project was made by three HEIs: IBS International Business School Ljubljana, Slovenia (coordinator), Kauno kolegija Lithuania and University of Economics Radom, Poland).
The main activities carried out within the project were:
1) A large-scale research on the theory and practice of the student-centred learning included an overview of numerous contemporary authors from the participating as well as from many other countries and the empirical research made among 634 university teachers in the participating countries. This helped to make evaluation of the present situation and directions for future development of the student-centred learning.
2) A teachers’ handbook on good practices from student-centred learning contains 100 descriptions of the learning process, assessment and other activities that enable personalised approach. The descriptions were written by 50 university teachers from Slovenia, Lithuania and Poland.
3) Seven peer-reviewed articles are published in Slovenian (4), Lithuanian (2) and Polish academic publications (1). Some of them present the complete project while others deal with specific themes that are important for development of the student-centred learning (e.g. information literacy).
4) Dissemination activities include the peer-reviewed and other articles were published on the websites of the participating organizations, on Google Scholar and in printed form. The coordinator organized an international conference on student-centred learning which took place in Slovenia. All three partners transferred the information to numerous university teachers not just in their HEIs but to many universities in their countries (in Slovenia to all universities and to all heads of departments of each university). The information about the project was disseminated also by Facebook and Linkedin.
5) Management and evaluation activities are described below.
The most important results of the project are the research study, the handbook for teachers, and the articles in peer-reviewed journals that all acquaint university teachers, managements, students and larger public with the contemporary findings of the student-centred learning, contribute to a better awareness of the benefits of the student-centred learning and motivate teachers to use the concrete cases in their everyday work. The impact was the strongest in the participating organizations but also other university managers, teachers, students, government and larger public mentioned that they would be interested to introduce this pedagogical approach.
This project will show long-term benefits – improve the attainment of young people, and reduce the number of low-skilled adults who study at universities – in the next years.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 108895 Eur

Project Coordinator

IBS Mednarodna poslovna sola Ljubljana & Country: SI

Project Partners

• PONTYDYSGU LIMITED
• WYZSZA SZKOLA HANDLOWA
• KAUNO KOLEGIJA