TalentLab – Transform my school Erasmus Project

Project Title

TalentLab – Transform my school

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

School Transformation Lab – All students got talent is a 3-year Erasmus Plus project (September 2017 – August 2020) aiming at transforming and innovating didactic models at school.
The project idea came from the 15-year experience of John Rizzo, known in Belgium as a “school transformer” and from a common need felt by many European teachers to “transform their schools” and make them more responding to the current society. Most school system experts agree about the growing gap between our (traditional) schools and society: the employability needs and citizenship needs. Are most existing schools equipping our kids to drive this civilization metamorphosis?
Most 20th century schools are structured to train students to follow hierarchical orders and guidance on performing repetitive tasks, often alone, sometimes in competition with other students.
21st-century schools should rather focus and initiate a systemic transition enabling more: • entrepreneurship, • peer learning, • equity and inclusion, • digital competences, • multilingualism, while improving the sustainability (reducing costs) of the schools. Being a teacher in these two kinds of schools are two different jobs. Moving from one to another within the same generation is a highly needed and highly challenging process.
Starting from these considerations, 4 partners, an innovation model school from Belgium, a special education secondary school from Greece, a secondary school from Norway and teacher trainer organization from Italy, worked together to propose and to create an innovative School Transformation Path including • an effective transformation process, • courses materials for training teachers, • a soft skills curriculum for pupils, • an impact assessment tool.
The main objectives of the project are the consequent results are:
– Strengthen the profiles of the teaching profession: the only way to transform a school is to make teachers change their behaviour. The first output (01) is, therefore, a process to help them achieve this change The second output (O2) is a curriculum for training the teachers, whilst the third output (O3) is a soft skills curriculum for pupils that will reflect on teacher’s soft skills;
– Achievement of relevant and high-quality skills and competences: once a school is transformed, fast students do not have to wait for the teacher or the rest of the class anymore. They learn faster than more. Slow students too have to learn tasks in their proximal development zone: challenging but achievable. They really close the gap on their missing prerequisite skills and build much stronger foundations against discouragement and school drop out. Slow students also benefit more teacher time since fast students need lighter support.
– Open and innovative practices in the digital area: in a transformed school, the teacher drastically reduces the number of collective explanations he/she gives. The heart of the transformation is to make the student autonomous in their learning. Internet is not anymore a competitor to the teacher’s knowledge but an ally to sustain that autonomy.

The project attracted a number of stakeholders (within and outside the partner organizations) to understand the specific issues of traditional teaching methods towards new and personalised learning methodologies affecting EU schools, teaching methods, target group’s needs (teachers and students). Teachers, educators and trainers now have greater understanding and responsiveness to teaching difficulties, but also the linguistic and cultural diversity of partners, students, parents with which we got into contact during the project have been greatly improved. Students, benefit from more talented and committed teachers.
All materials (and much more) produced are available on the School Transformation website: https://schooltransformationlab.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 287893,92 Eur

Project Coordinator

Ecole du Dialogue & Country: BE

Project Partners

• Glemmen videregående skole
• Associazione Euphoria
• EIDIKO EPAGGELMATIKO GYMNASIO ACHARNON (ex TEE Acharnon School of Special Education -A degree)