The rationale Even if we consider the complex institutional dynamics in which their work is done, it is fundamentally unfair to delegate to the school and the teachers alone the weight of very complex situations both from an emotional and a legal point of view. However, we all agree on the fact that the school plays a very important role in the lives of young people by providing a reference point that helps or hinders their mental and emotional growth. Teachers, therefore, as part of their role and by carrying out their work, can be helped to hone their interpersonal skills and to deal with the emotional distress that is sometimes connected to learning processes and the dynamics activated in the institutions in which they take place. The objective The project, stemming from the idea that it is essential to create appropriate spaces in educational contexts, aims to support operators in their crucial and delicate task of supporting the development of children entrusted to them. This will be achieved introducing the “Work Discussion” methodology. Training interventions addressed at teachers of primary schools will be organized, consisting mainly in seminars or meeting groups aimed at focusing on certain key aspects of child development, such as significant stages of the growth process, the relationship with food, the theme of separation... Considering that the work discussion methodology is helped if it is focused around concrete actions performed by the key actors we decided to utilize the fairy tale venture which should facilitate also the emergence of these issues. The "fairytale-action" is to create a story, children not only listen to fairytales, they produce them. Work discussions applied to this specific action will encourage in the teachers the reflection on the children and their care, on the needs expressed by them, on their relationship in the educational context. The reading and the building of the fairytales will serve only to start an important work with the teachers which will be helped in confronting one another acquiring new perspectives. The innovative aspect of the project is the application to the school context of an interesting methodology fruitfully used in Great Britain were was born. Together with the support of psychologists the teachers will be helped at increasing the capacity to understand the children in their care, to relate to them and to their parents, providing for their inclusion in the class and identifying appropriate educational strategies that can procure them a comprehensive support for development. Expected Results We expect two different kinds of results linked to the two different beneficiaries of the project: teachers and children. Teachers can train themselves to practice different ways of relating, to be in and out of the relationship, they can learn to accept, without judging, 'negative' feelings, sorrow, anger, aggressiveness of the children, as well as to understand and manage their affective requests directing them to who can really satisfy them, without the fear of getting too much involved. Teachers can learn how to manage the anxiety of the verification and evaluation of their educational intervention, as the times of emotional and cognitive growth of children in load are long and uncertain, dependent on the individual stories of each one. The acquisition of psychological tools puts teachers in the position to experience their role in an ever-changing, it helps them to eliminate rigidity and prejudices, making them flexible and able to put themselves continuously on the line, using keys of interpretation and intervention methods appropriate to the time and the situation. For what concerns the children, the project aims to try to understand how the narrative produces changes, "how" stories can also heal and in which circumstances a type of narrative can be effective. The tale represents, in a symbolic language, the development of the individual and of the culture as a historical and dynamic process, presenting the evolutionary development of the individual in an interactive manner. Moreover, the fairy tale has the undoubted advantage over other literary genres of the indisputable centrality of symbolic language respect to the contents. We expect that these contents will allow the children to establish links with the inner world, and where these links are likely to vanish due to anxiety and violent elements, it is always possible to operate a reduction of the tension, without distorting the story or altering the narrative functions. Another goal is to produce improvements in the capacity and quality of interpersonal communication, both for teachers and pupils.
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.