Work discussion Approach in primary schools: Teachers observe CHildren Erasmus Project

Project Title

Work discussion Approach in primary schools: Teachers observe CHildren

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: Pedagogy and didactics; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); Creativity and culture

Project Summary

Children spend a great deal of their time in schools and other educational settings. Consequently those working in such contexts have a huge impact and influence on the development and thinking of the children with whom they interact. We believe such professionals need to understand and be curious about the range of influences on the lives of children, such as their families, the school context and the complex interactions between them. The promotion of the emotional and psychological well-being of pupils is a shared concern and responsibility.
Starting from these premises, our project was meant as an experimentation and consisted in the application of the Work Discussion methodology in the educational context: in turn, teachers wrote reports based on the observations made in the classroom during school-time activities linked to fairy tales, and then discussed these reports in periodically groups led by a psychotherapist and a psychologist. The aim of all this work was to understand if this methodology could effectively be able to support the management of the relational dynamics that occur in a classroom and that often turn into a real obstacle to learning.
The application of the Work Discussion approach in an educational context and the use of the fairy tales for facilitating the emerging of hidden emotions, represented the innovative combination to be tested. The methodology has been experimented in three different phases – where fairy tales have been used in three different ways and work discussion groups organised periodically.
For each partner country, participants of the project were six primary school teachers (in total twenty-four): the work discussion methodology has been for them the space where the problems have been faced and discussed with the help of a psychotherapist and a psychologist who played two roles: the “conductor “and the “observer” of the work discussion groups.
Also teachers acted both as conductor and observer of their children and each month they met the psychologists: in turn, as mentioned above, the teachers produced a report about their observations of the activities carried out in the classrooms and practiced the work discussion methodology. The work discussion ‘supervision’ groups has become an important support to teachers in their difficulties and labours that daily work requires, giving them the opportunity to be supported in a way that no individual intervention can match.
Considering that the “work discussion” methodology is helped if it is focused around concrete actions performed by the key actors, the partners decided to utilize a fairy tale venture which should facilitate also the emergence of behavioural issues. The choice of applying this methodology around the fairy tales was due to the fact that they have an enormous and irreplaceable value in the life of a child: they educate, support and liberate the emotions of children.
The periodically work discussion groups around the “Fairytale Action” helped the comprehension of these emotional mechanisms of the children, facilitating the understanding of the relationships in which teachers are continuosly involved and the reflection on how they can deal with certain situations very engaging from the emotional point of view.
Finally, we can affirm that the main objective of WATCH was to analyze the effects of the introduction of the Work discussion methodology inside the involved schools and to give a first input towards a scientific recognition of them: a publication containing the explanation of the methodology applied in the field of School Education has been produced and disseminated.
All the information can be found at the multi-language project website http://www.erasmuswatch.eu/ where also all the results including the Intellectual Ooutput can be downloaded.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 173268 Eur

Project Coordinator

I.C. 5 IOVINO SCOTELLARO & Country: IT

Project Partners

• Osnovna sola Vic
• EDU lab
• Võnnu Secondary School
• Scoala gimnaziala Centrala, municipiul Campina