SUMMARY OF THE PROJECT

 The general purpose of this project is to investigate and apply new methodological forms so that we would be teaching and learning via a co-operation that would facilitate interpersonal relationships and integrate the cultural diversity of our students. In this way an improvement in scholarly efficiency would be achieved.

We would work together with other countries to analyse the practical application of new forms of teaching and methodological strategies. Our aim would be to obtain a greater co-operation and involvement in the learning process from our students. Equally important would be the training and research work of the teachers through educational practice, at the same time strengthening the European dimension of scholarly education.

The activities would be centred around the training of teachers in co-operative learning techniques with students from different linguistic and socio-cultural backgrounds in order to (a) achieve a methodological reorganisation that would allow the integration of the student, and (b) design, with the institutions of the participating countries, activities which could be included in the curriculum of each centre in order to develop these in an interdisciplinary way with their students.

The results of the project would be centred in three aspects: (i) the elaboration of curriculum materials for later use, (ii) the realisation of courses and seminars discussing and working on the experiences in order to circulate these amongst teachers, and (iii) a further circulation of these experiences and materials through European channels.

 

OBJECTIVES

 The current project was derived from the experiences of the institutions participating in diverse activities within the Socrates programme, above all in those referring to the integration of different cultures and other programmes related to “getting on with each other” in the centres.

Amongst the experiences obtained we detected the need to utilise new methods in the teaching-learning process that would improve and motivate our didactic technique at a European level.

We will try to apply techniques that allow our students to be the protagonists of their own learning, facilitating interpersonal relationships and integrating the cultural diversities in order to improve learning.

We have detected a need in the teachers to stimulate a debate concerning the methodologies that stimulate the kind of learning created by the new social situation of the European environment.

With this we would try to improve students' performance, above all the students who are in danger of being excluded from the school-system.

Within the detected needs is the concrete training in techniques of co-operative learning in order to be able to share innovative experiences between different European institutions. There is also the need to initiate a process which can circulate the didactic experiences amongst the different local environments, national and international, and thereby linking them to other “Actions” of the Socrates programme, for example as a possible training course for Action 2.2.

The final aims of the project is to facilitate interpersonal relationships, integrating the cultural diversity of our students and thereby, via the techniques of co-operative learning, improve both the art of living together as well as students' performances.

Objectives:

•  Imbue in the teachers the need for continual training.

•  Research new forms of learning that will excite and motivate an improvement in the work of the educational teams.

•  Train teachers in co-operative learning techniques in order that they may be applied to diverse cultural contexts.

•  Develop understanding and skills in the students that will be needed in order to express themselves in the multicultural world.

•  Learn, via co-operation, how to improve interpersonal relations.

•  Integrate the multi-cultural diversity of our students.

•  Provide all the students with experiences of academic success, adapting activities to the cultural peculiarities of each one.

•  Reduce intercultural prejudices through co-operative curricula activities in which all students have an equal academic status.

•  Facilitate co-operative contexts, which will stimulate pupil-pupil interaction.

•  Encourage the teachers, students and their families to become sensitive to, and able to reflect on, the notion of local, national and European citizenship through the dissemination of materials, tasks and experiences carried out in this project.

 

PRESENTATION: