Education For The Future – Quality Markers Of Effective Further Education

Author(s):

Frank Brueckel(presenting / submitting)Rachel Guerra(presenting)Marco Snoek Bert van Veldhuizen Klemen Slabina Enikö Zala-Mezö

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

15. Research Partnerships in Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

15 SES 06, Case Study (Part 1)

Paper Session to be continued in 15 SES 07

Time:

2017-08-23

15:30-17:00

Room:

K6.16

Chair:

Magali Hardouin

Contribution

The European Commission and the member states recognize that education is the key to address successfully common challenges with respect to society and global competition.

To meet those challenges schools need to be innovative and adaptive to trends that are shaping society and education. Within schools, the teaching professions - including both teachers and school leaders - need to take leadership in these processes of innovation and adaptation. Therefore developing leadership competences both by teachers and school leaders is an important topic in processes of lifelong learning.

Providing lifelong learning opportunities for teachers and school leaders that address leadership and school innovation is a challenge for both educational authorities and universities throughout Europe. Partnerships between educational authorities and universities can help to find adequate answers to this challenge.

Therefore a collaboration of three universities from the Netherlands, Switzerland and Estiona and one educational authority from the Principality of Liechtenstein developed and implemented – with the support of Erasmus+ – a joint Master's level program which aims to introduce a global vision, and critically assesses it within the local practical framework in all four national contexts and particular local contexts of each participants and her/his educational setting.

The main thrust of the programme is twofold: First, the participants and lecturers from the three countries discuss societal trends (OECD 2016) in order to deduce possible consequences for education and for their own school. Second, in order for participants to be able to initiate, carry out and evaluate change processes (Jäger 2004; Scharmer, 2009) at their own schools, themes that focus on school improvement are dealt with. During the programme, the participants are required to launch concrete projects at their schools, or to continue projects that are already running (Brückel & Schildknecht, 2011; Brückel et al., 2014).

The concept of the programme introduced attempts to fulfil this aim by combining modules on theory and praxis. It is based on a framework (Lipowsky, 2010) containing the following elements which are reconfirmed by Hattie (2013, p. 144ff):

1. Active integration of participants: Teachers should not be seen primarily as receptors of further education, but as active designers of the learning process.

2. Dissonance: Learning content effects change particularly when there exists a dissonance between expectations and convictions on the one hand and actual classroom practice on the other.

3. Equal value of theory and practice: A balance between theory and practice is crucial. This can be achieved by connecting the various theoretical inputs directly to the teaching practice.

4. Focus on practice: Learning is, on the one hand, an individual process. On the other, participants are members of a professional community and can thus ideally act as multipliers and disseminators.

5. Duration: to achieve sustainable learning, further education programmes should be planned for the long term. The themes in further education need to be connected to school practice and participants should be given enough time to implement what they have learnt.

The entire design of the programme seeks to support the participants in moving from theoretical understanding to practical application. In doing so, the content and setting of the programme are coordinated in a way that fosters school improvement projects. The setting foresees that reflection (Scharmer, 2009; Hickson, 2011) and knowledge transfer (Jäger, 2004) will be permanently stimulated within the programme. In summary the programme is assessed by the Erasmus+ committee as highly relevant and innovative because it is primarily focused on leadership – a skill which has too little attention in many master programmes (Erasmus Committee of the Principality of Liechtenstein, 2014).

Method

After a short introduction in concept and theoretical framework and design the paper will focus on the latest outcomes of the evalution of the programme. The aim of the evaluation is to gain information about «successful transfer» (Lipowsky, 2010) and to create a base for a crompehensive evaluation in each country during the next run. From the concepts outlined above, these central questions can be deduced:  How do participants view the learning setting during the programme?  How relevant do they perceive the content?  How can knowledge gained be linked to their everyday work life and reflected upon systematically?  If and how do they transfer the new knowledge into their schools? To answer these questions there are defined different phases of data collection: before the start of the programme each participant was interviewed about his/her expectations. During and after the end of the programme the interest was to find out which contents of the programme were considered most important by the participants. For this the participants are asked to write individual and open reflections after each module. In a later period of the programme, when the participants already planned their change process in their local school, the success of this process is evaluated. This data gives some insights into the change processes occurring in schools. For the long term evaluation of the program in the Netherlands and in Estonia there is written data gathering from students in the first run. The focus in this questionnaires was on changes in beliefs of the participants about innovations and change and their own responsibilities in this respect. Students filled in a questionnaire at the beginning and at the end of the program. In Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein, the participants are interviewed one year after the end of the programme. The aim was to gain more knowledge about their subjective assessment of the usefulness of content and setting. The data is analysed qualitatively (Kuckartz, 2012). MAXQDA software was used to enable a clear documentation of the coding process. Data from all countries will show how the programme is evaluated and which deductions the results will have for the future programme.

Expected Outcomes

In summary, the following main results can be summed up: According to the participants’ feedback the content of the programme was relevant; no fundamental changes would be needed for the next run-through. However, an important consideration emerged: less is often more. That includes also the length of the programme: instead of five day meetings in each country there will be three day meetings. Concerning the contents the data shows that even if the success of the transfer could not be immediately judged, the participants gained many new insights. Difficulties arose in the coordination of collaborative assignments, whereby not only organisational differences, but also cultural differences became apparent. A topic that seems more difficult to improve was that participants who did not have a job as a school principal were only successful in their projects if they had considerable support from their school principals or if their projects concerned themselves personally and not the school team. Principals could transfer more new knowledge into their praxis as participants working as teachers. The importance of a supportive surrounding in order to multiply ideas, initiate and carry out change processes has already been shown (Nehring & O’Brien, 2012). From this, a critical question can be posed as to how far a further education participant can even take on a key role in school improvement projects without being school principal. Finally, the question of sustainability still remains open. We hope that the “follow-up” interview study one year after completion of the further education programme will shed some light on it.

References

Brückel, F. & Schildknecht, J. (2011). Education for the future: an International Cooperation Programme for Education Professionals. In Phillippe Masson, Kathrin Otrel-Cass & Vivienne Baumfeld, Miranda Pilo (ed.), (Re)thinking Partnership in Education. Lille: TheBookEdition, S. 19 - 29 Brückel, Frank, Zala-Mezö, Enikö, Guerra, Rachel, Veldhuizen, Bert van, Snoek, Marco (2014). Quality markers of International further education programmes. How school principals and teachers of three countries can be supported in implementing school improvement processes. In Pia-Maria Rabensteiner & Elena Rabensteiner (Hrsg.) Internationalization in Teacher Education. Hohengehren: Schneider, S. 184 – 202. Hattie, J. (2013), Lernen sichtbar machen, Baltmannsweiler, Schneider. Hickson, H. (2011), "Critical reflection: reflecting on learning to be reflective", Reflective Practice Vol. 12 No. 6, pp. 829-839. Jäger. M. (2004), Transfer in Schulentwicklungsprojekten, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Kuckartz, U. (2012). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Methoden, Praxis, Computerunterstützung. Weinheim u.a.: Beltz Juventa. Lipowsky, F. (2010), „Lernen im Beruf – Empirische Befunde zur Wirksamkeit von Lehrer“, in Müller, E., Eichenberger A., Lüders and Mayr, M., Lehrerinnen und Lehrer lernen. Konzepte und Befunde zur Lehrerfortbildung, Münster, Waxmann, pp. 51-70. Nehring, J. H. & Brien E. J. O (2012), "Strong agents and weak systems: University support for school level improvement", Journal for Educational Change, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 449–485. Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) (2016), Trends Shaping Education, Paris, OECD Publications. Scharmer C. O. (2009), Theorie U – von der Zukunft her führen, Heidelberg, Carl Auer.

Author Information

Frank Brueckel (presenting / submitting)

Zurich University of Teacher Education

Further Eduaction

Zurich

Rachel Guerra (presenting)

Department of Education, Principality of Liechtenstein

Marco Snoek

Hogeschool van Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Bert van Veldhuizen

Hogeschool van Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Klemen Slabina

Tallinn University, Estonia

Enikö Zala-Mezö

Zurich University of Teacher Education

Center of School Improvement