Everyone responds to tasks differently. Do you need to experiment in order to understand? Do you plan everything you do in advance? What does safety mean to you? How about creativity? Or progress? If you are aware of your own cognitive processes, you have what is called metacognitive ability. It has been proven that school students who develop metacognitive abilities share a greater chance of success in school and in the rest of their life. They are able to identify what makes learning meaningful for them. resulting in a profound sense of empowerment and an improved engagement with their studies. However, this is not fully recognised in the cultural mainstream, and formal educational systems demand that students fit in with only one idea of successful working. Inner diversity - the way one learns, communicates and processes information - can therefore be a trigger for exclusion from education. Students who do not fit the model can find it hard to derive meaning from their experience and feel that education is simply not for them. They may disengage intellectually or emotionally from their studies and from planning their futures, or they may drop out of school entirely. This of course has a great impact on self-confidence and their ability to succeed in the rest of their lives.Our objective is to improve educational outcomes for secondary school age students by helping them to reflect on their individual learning styles. Our project will offer them tangible strategies to adapt better to the formal education system. To this end, we envisage this potential Erasmus+ project as the pilot process among school communities, targeting students aged 12 to 16, to develop a unique and attractive set of pedagogical activities and materials on the theme of inner diversity.We would like to pilot a programme of activities targeting school students aged 12-16, offering opportunities to students aged 16-18 to facilitate, so as to educate them about the principles of inner diversity and how they can use them to: (a) recognise and describe their own way of learning; (b) notice similar or different patterns in others; (c) develop strategies to better participate in learning environments, including resilience, self-determination and self-regulation. We will work in conjunction with partner educational NGOs who already have strong connections to schools in their local area. AMO Reliance supports young people in Belgium experiencing difficulties in their personal and educational life. Ofensiva Tinerilor EPTO has a long history of developing and facilitating non-formal educational programmes around the themes of diversity and personal development. Our aim will be to develop the programme with members of these organisations, in consultation with an advisory group of non-formal educational experts, experts in the field of cognitive diversity, teachers from the respective formal educational systems, and school students. Local NGOs will then facilitate workshops in schools directly, as well as training older students to continue the programme by training their peers. Through our work in 4 secondary schools, we will reach 75 teachers and staff as well as 225 students in our first year. We will explore different possibilities of interaction, combining the classic workshop structure developed in conjunction with EPTO with games making use of digital media. By the end of an academic year’s piloting, strengthened by an action-research process, we will have a full-blown training programme, shaped by the young people it aims to support. We would like to see students reporting an increase in self-confidence. We also hope to see teachers and other school actors reporting a deeper understanding of differences in student learning, as well as deeper confidence in developing strategies to address them. The project is sustainable: schools will retain access to the materials we will develop, and the peer education element means they can repeat the trainings for generations of students, and introduce them to new schools without us. The students reached will be helped to understand better how they function, how they learn, and what their strengths are. They will be reassured that there really is a place for them in school, as in society.
4motion (LU), the European Peer Training Organisation (EPTO - BE), the Universal Education Foundation (UEF - NL), Ofensiva Tinerilor (RO), AMO Reliance (BE) and the European Institute of Education and Social Policy (EIEPS - FR) united forces for an ambitious project aimed at radically improving the lives of school students by developing their appreciation of their fundamental inner diversity: Potential4Life (P4L). The project developed a new educational programme led by school students aged 16-18 who supported their younger peers aged 12-16 in understanding their inner diversity. This programme enables participants to: - discover their own and others' ways of learning (metacognitive abilities); - feel empowered and better participate in their learning processes and environments; - (re)gain motivation, self-determination and resilience. Interactive face-to-face activities are supported by tools such as board games and digital media: videos with testimonials and tutorials on how to implement the activities, and an app that helps pupils understand their way of learning. The project also included an action-research piloted by EIEPS which used the experience drawn from the local implementation and testing phase in 3 EU countries to feed and further develop the training module. PROJECT MILESTONES: - 1st transnational meeting (17-18/05/16) – LU: all partner organisations and the advisory group met in Luxembourg, hosted by 4motion. The action-research action methodology was defined and definitive allocations were made among each of the partner organisations of the work in developing the training programme and materials. - Prototype Programme Development (04-08/16): A core group of representatives from the partners developed a prototype programme, which was drafted in a 130-page pedagogical manual and 50-page journal, later translated in 3 languages (French, German and Romanian). - Training Activity for Partners (8-12/08/16) – Harzé, BE: hosted by AMO Reliance, the partner organisations selected representatives who would deliver the first round of trainings in the school to be trained over a five day period of introduction to the agreed materials and workshop procedures, and how to facilitate and evaluate the sessions. - Local implementation (09/16-10/17): this phase included mostly the training of young peer training, workshops by peer trainers in schools, coaching and evaluation. Local implementing partners were 4motion (LU), AMO Reliance (BE) and Ofensiva Tinerilor (RO) working in conjunction with local schools. This period included 3 “field visits” carried out by the EIEPS researcher for proceeding to interviews with all stakeholders. - Development of game and digital media formats (09/16-06/17): parallel to the local implementation, was the development of interactive game and digital-media based tools that can be used as stand-alone and will support students and teachers in fulfilling the aims of the programme. The digital media tools include video testimonials from peer trainers and secondary school students about their experience and tutorials on how to implement the activities. - 2nd transnational meeting (11-12/03/17) – Arad, RO: hosted by Ofensiva Tinerilor, all partner organisations met to share feedback on how the project was running in schools so far and made adjustments for the second half of the implementation. - 3rd transnational / evaluation meeting (16-17/10/17) – Brussels, BE: hosted by EPTO, all partner organisations met to present feedback gathered from students and teachers in each of the schools. The project was thoroughly evaluated and the materials finalised. - Multiplier event (18/10/17) – Brussels, BE: hosted by UEF, the event proposed a taster workshop and an overview of the project, its motivation, approach, methodology and results (action-research and intellectual outputs), involving the audience in a conversation about its future development. Throughout the project, 17 partners, 20 peer trainers and 175 students were trained; 3 local and 2 EU NGOs were equipped with educational resources to help youth in difficulty at school. The action-research has shown that by participating in P4L, youth are better able to: - improve their self-confidence regarding their learning; - appreciate that each individual has a unique approach to learning ; - identify their intrinsic motivation for learning – that is motivations other than grades or teacher or parent pressure (which might be considered as extrinsic motivation); - identify their preferred learning strategies; - articulate their own learning preferences and be able to ask for support from their teachers, parents and peers. Due to its demonstrated impact on students’ well-being and the momentum created among partners, P4L will continue after this EU funding, with a stronger focus on involving teachers and parents, combining the app and Board game with the pedagogical programme, and conducing a more robust evaluation process.