16 European schools are ready for SCIREARLY
16 European schools are ready for SCIREARLY
As the new school year is well underway, the SCIREARLY project is set to start an eight-month pedagogical intervention aimed at creating successful learning environments in 16 schools across Europe.
Both earlier international research and empirical research conducted in the project has identified some essential elements of successful learning environments to promote quality education and whole child development:
- Students’ school engagement through strengthening quality relationships between teachers and students
- Safe and supportive student’s peer relations
- Collaborative and dialogic learning
- Positive and close collaboration between the school and the student’s home environment
- Implementation of successful educational actions
Earlier in the project, we looked at ways schools have been able to successfully support their student’s school engagement, learning and wellbeing. In-depth interviews with students, teachers, parents and school administrators and extensive classroom observations across the eight different countries in Europe have provided us with case studies. The case studies explored how the schools are supporting their students to gain the basic skills they need and to feel included in the learning environment, and what kind of methods and pedagogical practices they use. Based on this research, an extensive toolkit for teachers and school leaders featuring resources for planning and delivering successful learning opportunities for the benefit of the children in their school life and in terms of their psychosocial development.
The pilot will include training teachers on the three essential elements of successful learning environments and new approaches and practices to help their students to achieve better outcomes. Children and families will also participate in regular activities and discussions during the pilot period about their experiences of school engagement, learning and well-being as well as versatile support provided for it.
After the pilot period, results from all 16 schools will be combined and analyzed. The research team will meet with teachers from the schools who participated in the pilot and from schools that participated in the collection of case studies and discuss how the approaches used in the pilot can be scaled up and used by other schools after the project.
The final task in this work is to work with European policymakers to outline policy recommendations and practical guidance for scaling up approaches to promote quality education, school engagement, learning and well-being.
The work creating the toolkit was lead by KMOP and the pedagogic intervention is lead by University of Helsinki, Centre for University Teaching and Learning.