The project will need three years for its development because of the teacher-training aspects, the forming of projects for the centre, and the development of these projects as well as their later dissemination.

 

1 st year.

This has been concerned with the initial and continual training of the teachers. There was an initial seminar on co-operative learning techniques with all the participating institutions together in order to find a common-ground position of the training needs in each institution. The seminar was a great opportunity to bring all the participating institutions together in an initial meeting dealing with techniques of co-operative learning.

There will be an intensive course in order to gather together the training needs that each institution requests on the techniques of co-operative learning and the presentation of practical experiences. This will be one day long and will be attended by approximately teachers and co-ordinators. The language used will be English.

There were training courses in the different institutions.

Based on work-groups in order to acquire the necessary means for developing the project, their content has been related to knowledge of the project. There was an analysis and experimentation with new learning techniques related to the cooperation and integration of minorities and students with special learning needs. The length of this was approximately 40 days and 30 hours of direct training with different speakers in each participating centre.

A plan of attack was created in each centre in which the teachers are involved, in order to put the methodologies studied into practice. The number of teachers was different on each institution; we estimate that in Spain this affected approximately 45 teachers.

 

2 nd year.

There was a planning and staging of activities to be included in the curricula of each school that will appear in the general programming of the school centres participating.

There was a development in the schools of the activities that have been designed and agreed on through consensus with all the others, fixing what will be finally produced in this second year.

A general inspection roster was designed for all the centres, which will be used in order to make future assessments and reports.

A summary has been made in different formats (through computer or audiovisual mechanisms) of the experiences developed with the students.

We have been assessment up-date of the proposed objectives

•  Significance

•  Integrating learning

•  Intercultural learning

•  Collaborative learning

•  Learning between peers.

 

3 rd Year

The experiences carried out by the institutions of each country (teacher an student) will be presented on a web site.

There would be a forming of conclusions that will permit the design of a training course for teachers (Comenius 2.1), concerning the integration of students via co-operative learning in a European context. We would try to have it included in the Comenius catalogue

A practical guidebook of the experience will be circulated in printed form, explaining the experience of the European teachers.

 

WORK METHODS:

 •  Teachers:

•  Large group meetings during the training period

•  Group work for decision-making and assessment sessions.

•  Interdisciplinary work in small groups, in each centre, in order to design specific activities.

•  Individual work with each group of students in order to develop the activities.

•  Individual communication (telephone, e-mail) with the different European participants.

•  International work encounters.

Students:

• Interdisciplinary work in groups
• Individual interdisciplinary work
• Dialogue and debate
• Multilevel work

 

EVALUATION

There has been an assessment of each different participating institution and the country's involvement in the initial seminar and the degree of consensus reached in the general training needs.

There has been an appraisal of the acquired training via assessment questionnaires created by the self-same original institutions of each country.

A staging of the plan of action has been created in each centre in order to unify general criteria to be applied to the students of the different institutions/countries participating. International assessment meetings have been carried out at the end of each year.

The inspection roster has been carried out throughout the duration of the project. A common ground was reached on it and it was assessed in the international meetings to be carried out in the second year.

The assessment of the objectives proposed in the project has been carried out via evaluation questionnaires, to be applied to the co-ordinators of the project in the different institutions and to the teachers and students participating. This has been elaborated at the end of the second year.

There will be an assessment of the process of creating the experience guidebook and the web-site, of its practical usefulness, and of the inspection of its circulation through the visits made to the site (number of consultations, contacts maintained with the different institutions and centres involved in the project by teachers, centres and institutions who do not belong to the project, etc.). This appraisal will continue throughout the third year, with a staging at the international meeting to be celebrated at the end of the third year.

The means to be used in order to assess the project are:

• A general inspection roster for all of the centres involved.
• Assessment questionnaires about the development of the international meetings carried out throughout the project, agreements reached, and the carrying out of those agreements.
• Analysis of the annual reports elaborated by each country.
• Assessment guidebook, to apply to co-ordinators, teachers and students.