This partnership focuses on exchanging and building ideas and innovative practices on how to find a fruitful balance between student oriented teaching methods and more teacher centred ones. Across Europe there are both teachers who sometimes teach a bit too far along the continuum towards the teacher centred end, where the teaching sometimes gets too theoretical, where the students are not that active and are not doing practical stuff. There are also teachers that have gone too far towards the other end and have handed over too much responsibility for the learning on the students. It is always dangerous to just focus on one kind of method. Students need both well-structured knowledge transmission from an expert as the teacher as well as possibilities to use new knowledge in practical situations such as experiments, discussions or problem-solving. In our partnership, we want to learn from each other’s daily teaching and to enable ourselves, by comparing our different practices, to reflect on our own practices. This opens for thought-through testing and implementing innovative practices that have optimal balance between student centred and teacher centred methods. The aim of the partnership is to explore the tension between different teaching approaches and to learn from each other. In the activities, teachers will together develop, test and implement approaches and practices that try to take the best from the teacher centred approach and combine it with teaching where the students are active participants. We will further explore this tension in three different subject fields: language learning, science and technology and artistic and practical subjects. This will give the project another dimension since there are differences in teacher/student centred within these subject fields in the same school. This will create opportunities to make comparison also in our own schools. Through shadowing in other teaching contexts, through discussions and comparison of different approaches and through co-planned teaching activities (on eTwinning and during teacher exchanges) the participants will be able to critically reflect on their own teaching practices. With help of experiences gained from teaching in the partner schools, teachers will be able to visualize and problematize what has been taken for granted in their own teaching practices. This awareness is a foundation to transform your own teaching to find a better balance. An overall objective of the partnership is to make joint explorations about how to find the most suitable ratio between student and teacher orientation in the classroom. This ratio depends on deep social structures of schools and their education systems. Teaching traditions, national curricula, exams, norms, expectations from the local community and classroom routines affect the teacher in their choice of methods and approaches. Therefore, the partnership is not about exchanging “Best practice”. Instead it is about developing “Next practice” by mirroring your own teaching in the teaching at the others. Our activities are about exploring the range of different methods and approaches in the three subject fields. By job shadowing and discussing our observations, we will learn about alternative ways to teach and organize schools. Through the variation of the school, teachers will be able to expand their repertoire of teaching approaches and develop their action competence to find a suitable ratio. Ultimately, teaching is about preparing young people for their future life. Our main objective is to develop teachers’ competences to find the most suiting ratio between different approaches during their classroom work. When the teachers succeed in this, their pupils will get the best possible preparation for life. In teacher development projects the voices of the pupils is sparingly used resource. Our pupils will be directly involved in the partnerships activities through co-teaching lessons and eTwinning activities. At a short-time pupil exchange they will furthermore get a chance to meet a variety of teaching methods and at these activity focus will be on listening to the pupils about their ideas, thoughts and experiences about student centred and teacher centred methods. This will be an important input that will guide teachers in their quest for the “perfect ratio” between different methods.
This partnership focuses on exchanging and building ideas and innovative practices on how to find a fruitful balance between student oriented teaching methods and more teacher centered ones. Across Europe there are both teachers who sometimes teach a bit too far along the continuum towards the teacher centered end, where the teaching sometimes gets too theoretical, where the students are not that active and are not doing practical stuff. There are also teachers that have gone too far towards the other end and have handed over too much responsibility for the learning on the students. Students need both well-structured knowledge transmission from an expert as the teacher as well as possibilities to use new knowledge in practical situations such as experiments, discussions or problem-solving. In our partnership, we want to learn from each other’s daily teaching and to enable ourselves, by comparing our different practices, to reflect on our own practices. This opens for thought-through testing and implementing innovative practices that have optimal balance between student centered and teacher centered methods. This ratio depends on deep social structures of schools and their education systems teaching traditions, national curricula, exams, norms, expectations from the local community and classroom routines. Through shadowing in other teaching contexts, through discussions and comparison of different approaches and through co-planned teaching activities (on eTwinning and during teacher exchanges) the participants have reflected critically upon their own teaching practices. With help of experiences gained from teaching in the partner schools, teachers have visualized what has been taken for granted in their own teaching practices. This awareness was a foundation to transform teaching to find a better balance. The different methods we would like to apply: • Project approach, building more projects into our education • Deepening applying ICT tools and programmes we have met during mobilities, lifting them in our teaching practice, for example Worksheet Crafter • Trying good exercises we have seen during the lessons such as tests at the end of the lessons, use exercise banks on tablets • Applying pedagogical assistants helping the teachers job in the lessons Our activities are about exploring the range of different methods and approaches in the three subject fields. By job shadowing and discussing our observations, we learned about alternative ways to teach and organize schools. Through the variation of the school, teachers have expanded their repertoire of teaching approaches and develop their action competence to find a suitable ratio. • We got to know widely and use the teacher centered and student centered teaching methods appropriately. • We got to know (and we are learning and developing) that pedagogical attitude when we should give more responsibility to our students during the teaching process and when we should take it back. Our students gained knowledge the participant counties’ culture, geography and national food. • Our students made projects about our national food, they collected the recipes • They made presentations and videos about making these food and we uploaded them on the e-twinning site. • They made other projects and videos about our school and uploaded them too. • They got to know our partners’ national food and culture. • Our students built relationship with our partner institutions’ students through online activities and they developed their ICT skills through all these process. Some of them have continued contact now at SnapChat Our teachers got to know useful teaching strategies through effective knowledge sharing. • We gained experiences about the Swedish, Polish, Hungarian and Croatian schools’ learning organization and their teachers’ work. • We learned how to organize international meetings. • We learned how to upload projects and virtual materials on the E-twinning website, padlets and facebook. • We became a European Talent Point. By teaching, we prepare young people for their future life. Our main objective was to develop teachers’ competences to find the most suiting ratio between different approaches during classroom work. We can say that this project, the mobilities, taking part in this programme have had great effects to our view of teaching. As we shared experiences in many fields and we gained lots of knowledge about the other countries’ teaching methods, we were filled up with new motivation, new energy to try all these new ideas that we have seen abroad. These teachers adopted this knowledge into their teaching practice. We are braver to use the time frame of project approaching teaching when we make our timetable and subject division. We locally developed a new good method for organizing free time. The school management allowed all these organizational changes (within certain limits) to realize new methods. Some changed the permanent presence of ICT methods, remodelling classroom furniture, as seen in partner countries.