Emotional and behaviour difficulties are being better diagnosed and understood. For children these difficulties increase during periods of transition. In response teachers need skills to help children manage their behaviours, and curricula to re-engage learners. This project will support teachers with the training and resources they need to re-engage children in their learning. It will directly reach 400 teachers across the UK, Hungary, Poland and Bulgaria, and create external coaches to support schools. These teachers will facilitate ‘Engaging Disengaged in Transition’ projects with over 12,000 pupils. The results of this project will be shared with 150 teacher training institutions and 2000 trainee teachers, and more broadly contribute to improved classroom management. The project will be delivered in five phases. Phases 1 and 2 will focus on training in engaging through dialogue, and using drama to support personal and institutional change. The main focus of this training will be Philosophy for Children as a technique for supporting 20 educators to facilitate dialogic enquiry, followed by Forum Theatre to explore behaviour and social change. These trainings will be attended by all partners, and will also involve them sharing their teaching experiences and approaches to engaging disengaged learners. Phases 3 and 4 involve these partners delivering cascade training to 100 teachers in each of countries. This will then allow teachers to work with their pupils on projects called “Engaging Disengaged in Transition”. These projects will take either a local or global issue, and engage learners through dialogue and drama. The ‘Engaging Disengaged in Transition’ projects will be showcased in a Review and Teacher’s Guide. This will be the subject of the dissemination phase – the project’s fifth and final phase. This phase is crucial as it will share the learning of teachers in schools, with trainees who will become the teachers of tomorrow. Each partner will work closely with providers of Initial Teacher Training to disseminate the Review to over 2000 trainees. This partnership is key to the sustainability of the project, as partners and universities will seek ways of embedding dialogue techniques into teacher training. The activities will result in teachers having increased skills to teach critical thinking, and an understanding of how this can be used to challenge extremist views in the classroom. Pupils will become more critical, caring, creative and co-operative in their learning, as teachers introduce aspects of the Philosophy for Children approach. Trainee teachers will become aware of the need for critical thinking and have access to a relevant Teacher Toolkit resource. Partners will have increased their capacity to train others, and developed networks to share their learning. This chain of activities and results will support children to engage in their learning and with the wider world around them, in positive and thoughtful ways. It will give them the thought processes and language to challenge their situation and take a fuller role as global citizens.
This project brought schools teachers and educators together from four countries to explore what makes learners disengaged they worked together in training and classrooms developing professional and lasting relationships these then helped achieve the project outcomes despite the challenges of COVID. The breadth of this project’s impact is seen in the 407 teachers who were trained, and the 1260 pupils directly reached. The depth and quality of this work can be seen from the 41 case and country studies that were collected. HEADLINE PROJECT ACHIEVEMENTS The project achieved and exceeded its original expectations, as can be seen from the headline project information: - 41 educational case studies and country profiles collected – exceeding the expected 40 - 407 teacher educators reached by cascade training – exceeding the expected 400 - 1,260 pupils directly reached – exceeding the expected 400 - 12,180 pupils reached indirectly through the educators attending training - 6 national and international events promoting the project - 89 teachers, educators, policy makers attending 4 multiplier events across partner countries - 1,102 trainee teachers and tutors in teachers training reached in the lifetime of the project - 1,056 views/downloads of Toolkit produced in English, Hungarian, Polish and Bulgarian - 5,609 verified visits/likes/views/ of project website/facebook channels and in person/online event attendance - 62, 268 web users/viewers targeted by partners to promote project and findings through 135 dissemination activities across the partners.