Research in the Institute for Teaching and Learning

01/11/2022

36

Erasmus+ KA220-SCH – Cooperation partnerships in school education

Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki – Greece

Alina Sarah Lemling; Biljana Popeska

European Physical Education Association (EUPEA)
Institute of Educational Policy – Greece
Historical Trnava University – Slovakia
Horizontes – Greece
University of Luxembourg – Luxembourg

The PETIC project (Reinforcement of physical education teachers’ intercultural competences) is a project aimed to equip primary and secondary Physical Education (PE) teachers with the appropriate knowledge and skills to improve their own and their pupils’ intercultural competence level.

The project idea is based on current needs in education and the understanding of the importance of intercultural competences of teachers not only in terms of education but also in terms of social inclusion, democracy, prevention of conflicts, peace building, and other issues related to multicultural societies. In this context, teachers and their competences are identified as keyfactors for change toward multicultural education and social inclusion. In this regard, Physical Education (PE) is recognized as a setting that can support intercultural learning and development of intercultural competences.

The PETIC project aims to equip PE teachers with the appropriate knowledge and skills to improve their own and their pupils’ intercultural competence level; to upscale the learning and teaching competences of PE teachers to design and implement competence-based didactic scenarios tailored to the needs of their multicultural pupils; to ensure equal opportunities for all and to encourage and involve schools and teachers without experience to work in schools with a high rate of migrant and refugee students or in remote and urban areas, as well as to transform PE into an intercultural environment open for learning, research, and expression, and to guide all students, regardless of their cultural background, towards intercultural understanding, communication and sensitivity.

The project outcomes include: Development of an eGuide for Intercultural Competences in Physical Education; Design of an ePlatform for Intercultural Competences in Physical Education; Design of didactic scenarios for the implementation of intercultural learning in PE classes; Training for teachers for intercultural competences and intercultural learning through PE in all project countries; Development of an Intercultural Competence Evaluation Instrument; and Development of network of teachers from different countries for exchanging good practices and experiences.

https://petic.phed.auth.gr

• eGuide: Intercultural Competences in Physical Education
• ePlatform: Intercultural Competences in Physical Education
• ePlatform: Intercultural Competence Instrument
• Intercultural Didactic Scenarios

03/06/2022

36

Partnership for Excellence – Erasmus+ Teacher Academies (ERASMUS-EDU-2021-PEX-TEACH-ACA)

Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union

Mats Hordvik (Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Norway)

Alina Sarah Lemling; Biljana Popeska

AIESEP – International Association for Physical Education in Higher Education
Canakkale Sehitleri Secondary School – Turkey
Colegio La Inmaculada – Spain
EUPEA – European Physical Education Association
Hacettepe University – Turkey
Haugerud Lower Secondary School – Norway
Oviedo University – Spain
Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences – Sweden
University of Limerick – Ireland
University of Ljubljana – Slovenia
University of Luxembourg – Luxembourg
Viksjöskolan Lower Secondary School – Sweden

The PhysEd-Academy Project is an Erasmus+ funded teacher academy, bringing together teacher educators and teachers from seven European nations to facilitate radical change in physical education in both teacher education programs and schools.

PhysEd-Academy begins from the perspective that the field of physical education is built on old and inefficient traditions that are not in line with current recommended practices and policies, resulting in Physical Education (PE) and Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) having little or no impact on children and youth. Identifying the need for change, the The PhysEd-Academy project aims to address current challenges in the field of PE by improving four quality factors in PE: purposes and content; school teaching; teacher education and teachers’ continuous professional development (CPD). 

The purpose of the project is to improve the educational quality in Physical Education (PE) and Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) through an innovative conceptualization of the processes of teaching and teacher education that challenges the idea of teachers and teacher educators working in different fields and identifies new ways of thinking about how teachers and teacher educators can occupy the same space. By directly addressing the four quality factors and based on current evidence in PE and teacher education research, practice, and theory, PhysEd-Academy will develop and test innovative strategies and programs for initial PE teacher education and teachers’ ongoing CPD across Europe. This will lead to the development of a set of ‘signature pedagogies’ for learning across different PE teacher education programs, carrying the potential to improve the quality of PE and PE teacher education. The signature pedagogies will be tested internationally by PhysEd-Academy partners in their respective initial teacher education and CPD programs subsequently, boosting the attractiveness of the PE teaching profession and helping to identify connections between teacher education and school’s student outcomes. 

PhysEd-Academy is committed to becoming a key factor in improving PE and PE teacher education and will benefit local, regional, and international school PE and teacher education programs – with the ultimate aim of improving public health.

https://www.physed-academy.com/

01/09/2022

36

The project is a Cooperation Partnership co-funded with 400.000 EUR from the Erasmus+ funding line, Key Action 2 (Cooperation among organisations and institutions) of the European Union.

Prof.in Dr. Michaela Vogt & Marlene Pieper, M.A. (University of Bielefeld)
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Katja Andersen (University of Luxembourg)
Ass. Prof. Anette Bagger, Ph.D. (University of Örebro)
Ass. Prof. Zuzana Sikorová, Ph.D. (University of Ostrava)

Starting points

In the context of education under conditions of digitality, Open Educational Resources (OER) are of particular importance. This refers to educational materials that are published under an open license and are thus freely accessible and usable, shareable and modifiable. They are thus seen as having an inherent potential to promote inclusive education.

However, inclusion and inclusion-sensitivity in teaching and learning settings is not exhausted in the accessibility and adaptivity of materials. At the same time, there is a lack of quality criteria for inclusion-sensitive digital educational materials in general and OER in particular. There is also a lack of information on how teachers can modify and adapt digital materials to make teaching and learning (more) inclusive. Thus, when OER are contextualized with inclusive education, this relationship is characterized by ambiguities and research desiderata.

Targets

The aim of the DigiLLM project is to establish and expand this discourse on inclusion sensitivity in the context of OER and to anchor it internationally. This is done by building a comprehensive digital ecosystem:

A digital portal has been set up that will become the central point of contact on the topic of “inclusion and OER” and offer teachers, teacher trainees, learners and researchers a space to critically engage with digital educational materials and OER.

Here, first explorative reflections of different OER platforms of all project countries as well as an international literature review are made accessible. Interviews and group discussions will be used to capture teachers’ and learners’ perspectives on OER and their sensitivity to inclusion.

Based on these initial explorations, a Framework for Reflection on Living Learning Materials (FRoLLM) to reflect on inclusion-sensitive learning materials and Open Educational Resources has been developed, which will form the basis for an in-service training module for teachers and teacher trainees. These results are openly available.

By setting up an openly accessible, interactive rating function on the digital portal, teachers, students, pupils and parents will be able to evaluate existing OER along the newly developed criteria. In this way, a broad public is invited to enter into a critical discourse on the topic of inclusion sensitivity in OER. Teacher trainees are also particularly encouraged to use these tools and digital spaces to reflect on the connection between inclusion sensitivity and learning materials. (This portion of the portal is currently under construction.)

This participatory component in turn feeds back into the academic discourse, as the assessments and reviews designed by teachers and learners become the basis for meta-reviews from a researcher’s perspective. These meta-reviews will be published in a new peer-reviewed journal, which will consolidate the discourse on inclusion sensitivity in OER and digital learning material at an international level.

https://www.digi-europe.org/

marlene.pieper@uni-bielefeld.de

digillm@uni-bielefeld.de

01/09/2022

12

University of Luxembourg

Kateryna Ivanishchenko ; Robert Reuter ; Philippe Dale

Scienteens Lab

The project aims to assess the effectiveness of two versions of a hands-on workshop called “Energy Balance” in developing energy literacy in secondary school students in Luxembourg. The workshop was designed, during a PSP classic project funded by the FNR (Energy4Life), to help students understand the importance of balancing energy production and consumption for sustainability, and to learn about the land surface area required to sustain their personal energy needs using renewable energy sources. In version 1, students use an online tool to estimate their personal energy needs and in version 2, they use an analogue tool (a weighing balance) to do so. Using a Pre-Post-Test research design and an adapted version of the Energy Literacy Questionnaire (DeWaters & Powers, 2013), we will assess in how far the two versions of the workshop generate gains in three dimensions of Energy Literacy, namely knowledge, behavioural dispositions and affective aspects. The ultimate aim of this project is to help young people improve their understanding of the challenges associated with the global climate crisis and their abilities to participate in the public debate about associated policy decisions. The intervention study will provide insights into the effectiveness of the proposed workshop and contribute to the development of energy literacy pedagogy.

https://e4l.uni.lu

01/11/2021

36

Erasmus+ KA220-SCH – Cooperation partnerships in school education

Yves Kreis, Robert Reuter ; Christian Meyers ; Gilbert Busana ; Christina Siry

Universität Linz (AT) ; Università di Torino (IT) ; Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave (SK) ; Experience Workshop ay (FI)

The STEAM-Connect project focuses on new innovative methods for STEAM education and through this initiates the acquisitions of new skills and competencies for both teachers and students. We aim to develop and trial, closely working together with the participant teachers, innovative STEAM resources and pedagogies for school education making student learning more inspiring and meaningful. STEAM-Connect aspires to utilise a range of open and innovative practices through mostly open-source or affordable digital tools such as GeoGebra, Sonic Pi, Raspberry Pi, as well as new technologies such as 3D printing, Augmented and Virtual Realities, and robotics etc. The project team already has extensive experiences in research and development of digital resources and tools. In addition, we aim to utilise Arts-related pedagogies to foster learning in schools. Finally, through getting experiences in STEAM education development as well as immersing teachers in educational and design research, their teaching profile and professional prestige are being raised so as the teachers’ who get involved in STEAM-Connect related activities besides the project participants.

https://steamconnect.education

Flyer

01/05/2020

48

University of Luxembourg

Maiza Trigo ; Christina Siry

SciTeach Center Team

Luxembourg is a trilingual country where several ethnolinguistic communities co-exist (according to official statistics, the foreign population represents almost 50% of the resident population). Therefore, at schools, students are culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) and this diversity poses both opportunities and challenges for the school community (including students, teachers and families) as it emerges a competition between the language(s) spoken at home and the language(s) of instruction.
Considering that language competences are linked to students’ overall performance and impact directly students’ long-term achievements (e.g., possibilities to also pursue higher education), this scenario is bounded by issues of access and language, as a high percentage of students do not speak the languages of instruction at home, and, considering inequalities observed throughout official documents, a discussion on equality, equity and justice is much needed.
Grounded in sociocultural perspectives, the PhD project “Supporting primary education through science teaching for multilingual learning contexts” focuses on Early Childhood and Primary Science Education, with a related focus on Multilingual Learning Contexts and Primary Teacher Continuous Professional Development, and the overall goal of the project is to support primary teachers in Luxembourg for multilingual learning contexts through science education support.
Relying on an existing school-university partnership (the SciTeach Center) that supports elementary teacher professional development (PD) in science education in Luxembourg and using participatory research approach and critical ethnography, this research took its first step by co-developing a PD offering on Science and Language, while tackling issues on “interdisciplinarity” and considering competency- and inquiry-based approaches to science education. The processes of co-developing and co-teaching this workshop, the researcher and a primary science teacher were able to reflect upon structural and systemic challenges (e.g., teacher profile and language uses).

01/01/2019

46

FNR

Kerstin te Heesen ; Christina Siry ; Sara Wilmes ; Maiza Trigo

IFEN

The Sci2School project was carried out by the SciTeach Center team, a group of teacher educators and researchers with extensive expertise in early childhood and primary school science education. Sci2School focused on developing and disseminating high-quality, research-based, science education resources, with the ultimate goal of promoting the teaching of science in Luxembourg’s primary schools through contextualized resources and pedagogical support. The Sci2School team collaborated with teachers at 8 partner schools to support reaching two central outcomes; 1) facilitating in-service teacher education courses that are school-based and focused on creating professional learning communities, and 2) developing and disseminating digitally available pedagogical resources for teachers to use in their science lessons. The project resulted in the creation of a compendium of resources: “Lët’z teach science!” which includes background information, science investigations, relevant content, and classroom management suggestions for active science learning pedagogies (e.g., Forschend-entdeckendes Lernen). This compendium emerged from a series of school-based courses that were planned and implemented with teachers. 17 multi-day courses reached 136 individuals, for over 1,100 hours of contact over the project time frame. Aligned with the national curriculum, these courses focused on teaching science in competency-based ways. Both the courses and resources that resulted from Sci2School arose from partnerships that aimed for the creation of sustainable and ongoing professional learning communities in support of innovative science teaching. The processes used to collaborate with teachers at the schools worked towards relationship building, processes that have been shown to increase teacher engagement with innovative pedagogical approaches.

https://sciteach.uni.lu/initiativen/sci2school/