BACKGROUND - - - - - The inability to adequately manage stress is adversely affecting the lives of many students. Poor management of stress affects quality of life and interferes with the abilities of students to learn effectively both in the classroom and outside of it. Excessive stress can prevent student learning from happening and as the EU Joint Action on Mental Health and Well-being (2013-2016) writes, “The educational setting is the most important arena outside the family for the development of children’s mental health.” The project’s objective is to empower students with knowledge of the Science of Stress – to help students understand what is happening physiologically and why; and to teach them about research-supported strategies that can be used to manage their stress thereby supporting their progression toward becoming resilient self-regulated learners. ACTIVITIES - - - - - The project supports both students and teachers. STUDENTS: The project aims to help students better manage the stress they encounter on a regular basis through educational activities delivered in the classroom and online. The key Intellectual Outputs for students are: • Spotlighters Student Lessons: A set of classroom lessons that help students recognize the physiological signs of stress, identify potential stressors, and plan and practice self-regulatory responses. The lessons are initially developed for secondary school students with subsequent adaptations made by partners for primary and higher education students who are in transition years. • Spotlighters Student MOOC: A massive open online course (MOOC) based on the student lessons that is made available to students worldwide thereby extending the reach and accessibility of the project outputs beyond the life of the project. SCHOOL EDUCATION TEACHERS: The project aims to help teachers formatively develop their own teaching practices and to learn how to better support student resiliency through improving their self-regulatory competences. The key Intellectual Outputs for teachers are: • Spotlight – Teaching Support Tool: An online, real-time testing software used to support teachers in better connecting with their students’ learning and facilitating their transitions into active learning states. Transition activities scaffold the self-regulatory practices of students. Pre-tests enable teachers to ascertain and better connect to the prior knowledge of their students. Post tests enable teachers to identify and correct persisting misconceptions – and help teachers better understand how students are interpreting their lessons. The analytics dashboard of the tool provides real-time indicators that highlight the content that teachers should prioritize during their subsequent teaching. The learning analytics collected also support post lesson reflections and guide improvements of future iterations of the lessons that can be shared within teaching communities for reuse. • Spotlighters Teacher Training Workshops: A set of workshops that aim to teach educators how to deliver the Spotlighters Student Lessons; how to design lessons to support student resilience; and how to develop their teaching practices by making use of the Spotlight tool and supporting formative and collaborative learning design methodologies. METHODOLOGY - - - - - The project’s approach to teacher skill development is aligned with Erasmus+ Project Illuminated – Illuminating Effective Teaching Strategies with the Science of Learning (2017-1-ES01-KA201-038220) and aims to: - Support the improvement in quality of teaching and learning in school education; - Foster collaboration among teachers; - Facilitate the use of pedagogy matching technology; - Contribute to the formation of professional expertise in teaching and learning. This approach involves the adoption of formative and collaborative teacher development strategies; learning design approaches that are aligned with neuroscientific principles on learning; and the use of tools and methodologies facilitating the documentation, iterative improvement, and sharing for reuse within teaching communities of learning designs (e.g. lesson plans and classroom activities). INTERDISCIPLINARY - - - - - The consortium includes higher educational and professional partners with expertise in the fields of neuroscience, education technology, and teacher development – who are experienced in bridging research and practice in educational settings. Associated partners include primary and secondary schools. Overall, an iterative approach to developing the outputs will include early involvement of students and teachers to ensure that the outputs are appropriate and useful. Further, to take advantage of the diversity of the consortium, project outputs will be in five languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish, Danish, and Greek) and Spotlighters Teaching Symposiums are to be held in each partner country to reach educators from diverse contexts.
Spotlighters (2018-2021) brought together experts in neuroscience, psychology, educational technology, and pedagogy to develop a series of open educational resources (OER) for educators. The project aimed (1) to create tools for educators to support student stress management; and (2) to educate students and teachers about the science of stress and stress management techniques. The Spotlighters OER reach educators through lesson materials to use with their students, online materials and activities that can complement their classes, teacher professional development, and an innovative technology to use with their students. Participants in Spotlighters included the project partners (5 HEIs, 3 social enterprises); 10 associate partners (primary and secondary schools); teachers, students, and administrators (primary, secondary, tertiary schools); and the scientific community (researchers). O1: Spotlighters Teachers Toolkit for Student Lessons helps teachers teach the lessons produced by Spotlighters. The aim of the content is to educate students about the science of stress and self-regulation. The Toolkit contains lessons for primary, secondary, and tertiary students. Materials such as slides, teacher notes, and activity sheets are available in EN, ES, GR, PT, FI, and DK (http://www.spotlighters.eu/). O2: The Science of Stress & Self-Regulation (free online course) is a self-paced, online course for high school and university students available at https://tidex.upf.edu and available in EN, ES, CA, GR, PT, FI, and DK. The course helps students learn about how stress can be helpful and harmful, how it causes changes in our bodies, and how we can learn to manage it. The international team of instructors guide students through common stress management techniques that can be used by students for the rest of their lives. Further, in response to COVID, a Spotlighters YouTube Channel was created. It features a series of videos that teach students self-regulatory practises such as progressive muscular relaxation, square breathing, and pursed lip breathing. Teachers are able to play these videos for their students in class. Videos also introduce the online course, ClassMood App, teacher symposiums, and to share reflections from teachers and partners about the project and its efforts. O3: ClassMood App (https://classmood.upf.edu/) is a free social and emotional learning tool for teachers to make teaching and learning more enjoyable. It allows teachers to visualise a map of their student moods and discover mood changing activities for students. The tool helps educators teach students about emotion regulation and provides opportunities to introduce self-regulatory activities such as breathing exercises and cognitive reappraisal. The tool is available in EN, ES, CA, GR, PT, FI, and DK and has been presented in academic conferences and publications. O4: Spotlighters Teacher Workshops are two 120-minute professional development workshops for educators. The workshop materials are available on the project website and include videos by Minna Huotilainen, professor of educational sciences at University of Helsinki, Cognitive Brain Research Unit, CICERO Learning Network, University; and Eveliina Holmgren, Senior Lecturer at the School of Wellbeing, Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. Two extended training events for educators were held: 1 virtual and 1 presencial. The virtual LTTA was spread across 2 weeks and hosted by Advancis. There were 15 participants including pre-school, elementary and secondary school teachers, educational psychologists, HEI professors and researchers (PhD students). The presencial LTTA was a 3-day event hosted by Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and attended by 12 participants. Participants included school teachers, school psychologists, university lecturers, and post-graduate students. Moreover, both virtual and presencial symposiums for educators were held in five countries (Finland, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Greece) with over 150 participants in total. In the project, 30 sets of pilot lessons with university, high school, and primary school students were run. Over 1000 students directly participated in the classroom lessons. Over 1300 learners (teachers and students) participated in the online course. There were 120 YouTube channel subscribers; 258 Facebook followers; and more than 4000 users of ClassMood App.The materials have been integrated into courses for continued use at secondary schools, universities, and teacher professional development programmes. Spotlighters also led to scientific publications and new initiatives that directly build upon the efforts made in the project including European projects: Illumine (https://illumine.upf.edu/) and ReMIXED (2021-1-ES01-KA220-SCH-000032801); and local initiatives BEAM (https://www.upf.edu/web/beam).