Teach and learn – new possibilities for teachers and learners Erasmus Project

Project Title

Teach and learn – new possibilities for teachers and learners

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Pedagogy and didactics

Project Summary

Meeting the 21st century realities demands a high quality of education and a growing level of internationality. This requires teachers that are keen on understanding the dynamics and situations that influences student’s life. This is necessary in order to establish a mutual relationship that affects a better learning. This Erasmus+project has helped all of us in order to gain a better understanding of the complexity of teaching and learning.

The participants consists of 5 very different schools (Norway, Portugal, Finland, Germany & Denmark) which have created this project together at a self-financed prep. meeting back in November 2016.

Our project: “Teach and learn – new possibilities for teachers and learners” aimed and focused on three different work fields:

1) “New possibilities for teachers”:
Teacher training in innovative, learner-centred methodologies, e.g. success with ICT in learning situations (introduction of open source programmes), cooperative and collaborative learning and flipped classrooms. Because all of our teachings and activities has been accomplished in English the methodology CLIL (contents and language integrated learning) has been integrated through the entire project resulting in a high level of benefits and new knowledge.

2) “New possibilities for learners”:
A) Active involvement of students in the teaching and learning processes. In order to document how students have benefitted from our project we have made thorough evaluations after every transnational meeting.

B) “Making an Erasmus Day” We created a concept for three Erasmus Days as events that focused on relevant topics concerning European countries from the perspective of the students; youth of today, youth in a digital world & youth and values in Europe.

3) “Challenges and possibilities when theories on learning are put into practice”
We debated how students of the 21st century challenges the professional teachers of today. This raised questions like; what describes and defines students of today? How does the students’ resilience or lack hereof affect the learning situation? How important are the relations between students and teachers in school and life in general? In order to improve our knowledge we included experts as guest speakers and read scientific articles. In every visit we have had an introduction of the national school system by highly recommended professionals and a discussion about challenges meeting and teaching the students.

FOR TEACHERS:
Intense teacher training helped us improve our own teaching skills, adopting new views, methods and tools to be able to meet complex classroom realities. Our aim was to reach the best possible level of professionalism and thus strengthen the profile of the teaching professions. Teachers from each partner school participated in the project but even teachers who were not directly involved in the project has been active in teacher training of the new methodologies and was inspired by the pedagogical approaches.

FOR LEARNERS:
It is essential to adapt our teaching and school organisation to the needs of learners. therefore we have been focusing on our students’ feedback on the new methodologies tested and trained. Among 20-30 students per school, age group 14 to 18 years has participated. Many more students has benefited from the project, as they have been active in the training lessons of new methodologies.

The topics “Youth of today”, “Youth in a digital world” and “Youth and values in Europe” for our three Erasmus Days has provided meaningful insights for students as well as teachers.

We have experienced a major impact on our students’ and teachers’ language competences. English has been our project language. Many training lessons during the project meetings has improved language skills both regarding communication and cultural understanding for both teachers and students. Teachers, most of whom are not language teachers, has been part of lessons with international classes of students in different subjects. Last but not least, host families and other people not directly involved in the project has benefitted from intense communication. We have seen that all of the mentioned groups has overcome language barriers and speaks English more confidently and fluently at the end of the project.

Our conclusion at the end of this project: only transnationality makes it possible to learn from each other in such a great variety of topics and fields. The transnational meetings, the home stays, the pedagogical discussions and the constant exchange of culture and values has been really rewarding and successful.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 108920 Eur

Project Coordinator

Efterskolen Solgården & Country: DK

Project Partners

• AGRUPAMENTO DE ESCOLAS PINHEIRO E ROSA
• Kokkolan suomalainen lukio
• Spjelkavik ungdomsskole
• Erzbischöfliches St. Irmengard-Gymnasium