Empowering the Triangle of Education (ETE)

History

The idea of the Learning Partnership was developed on the Grundtvig contact seminar titled “Creativity and Innovation in Adult Education” in Predeal & Bucharest, May 24th – 28th, 2006.

General Aims

The general objective of the Learning Partnership is to exchange and develop creative methods and experiences how to bring parents, teachers, adult tutors and children (students) together to improve their mutual understanding and cooperative problem solving capacity. An important consideration is focusing on …

1. triangular system of parents, teachers (adult tutor, nursery school teachers) and children (students),
2. intercultural dialog and
3. gender equality issues.

Main target groups

One target group are parents, especially parents from a disadvantaged background and/or from minority ethnic communities. Many of the target parents will have had little experience of second level education and may be excluded and marginalised. It is envisaged that through respectful learner-centred and learner-driven initiatives the capacity, self-esteem and self-image of these parents will be enhanced. Another key target group is the teachers/educators/tutors who will be the bearers of the new methodological insights and experiences. Their new competencies will guarantee the continuity, the lasting effect and the valorisation aspect of the project.

General Objectives

We would like to equip teachers/trainers/tutors with a set of methods for dealing with communication difficulties in order ...

• to develop and nurture a partnership between parents, teachers, children (students) and other stakeholders in education at school, care centres and within the community
• to promote parental and family learning ( in line with Priority 7, p.16, General Call for Proposals 2007)
• to motivate parents to understand the circumstances of the teachers and reverse.
• to support and relieve teachers in their professional work
• to provide opportunities for parents to play a more central role within the education of their
• children
  to foster an appropriate climate for life long learning

Main Activities

• Exchanging learning methods, theories, good practice by presentation and studying existing material
• Planning and realising the try outs with the target groups, and experimenting with them
• Exchanging the experiences made by the try outs and defining modifications following the results of the try outs
• Devising and formulating innovative approaches of working in a parent/school/community scenario

Learning methods

Learning methods will be grounded in adult learning theory and will be experiential and participative.

Playback Theatre

Playback Theatre was founded in 1975 in the Mid-Hudson Valley in New York by Jonathan Fox with Jo Salas and other members of the original Playback Theatre Company. Playback Theatre is an original form of improvisational theatre in which audience or group members tell stories from their lives and watch them enacted on the spot.

A group of people in a hall faces a row of actors sitting on chairs or boxes. On one side sits a musician with an array of instruments. On the other, a master of ceremonies, who waits next to an empty chair. This is for the “teller”, who will come from the audience to tell a personal story. Then, in a ritualized process, using mime, music and spoken scenes, the players will act out the story. After one teller, another will come. In this way, the individuals in the audience will witness a theatre of their own stories.

This form of interactional and improvising theatre brings people into a deeper understanding of each other and into a dialogue: On stage they watch what other members of the audience experienced in real life. Especially when conflict partners watch their different subjective perspectives acted out on stage in a respectful way, both have the opportunity to watch each other out of the eyes of the opponent. A deeper understanding and also empathy arises nearly “automatically”.

At the end of every performance usually the members of the audience don’t like to leave the place. They stay together talking to each other, telling about there own lives, their experiences and feel themselves connected to others they often haven’t known before.

Playback Theatre is used in educational, therapeutic, social change, and arts settings, either as performance, with a company of trained actors and a defined audience. Or as a group event led by an individual, in which participants become actors as well as tellers for each other. So Playback Theatre draws people (e.g. teachers, parents and children) closer as they see their common humanity.

“Mänz and Rossmann Organisational Development GbR” has two staff members trained in Playback Theatre Technique as conductors as well as actors. They have conducted performances on a variety of topics (migration, preventing violence) and with many different target groups (people living in a quarter, personal development officers, policemen, nursery school teachers and administration etc.).

Playback Theatre in Germany is not very common up to now. Especially in schools it has not been used in parent-teacher-conferences. Therefore we will use this method in parent’s conferences in nursery, elementary and secondary schools in quarters with a very high percentage of immigrant population. Teachers and parents will participate in the whole planning, realisation and evaluation of the performance. Together with the master of ceremonies (conductor) of the performance they will set up the goals, topics and ways of evaluation of the parent-teacher conferences. Its aim is to implement the method of Playback Theatre into the toolbox for teachers and let parents become acquainted with this form of dialogue and its benefits.

Together with the partners and learners in the partnership we will explore the different dramatic forms, conducting and training of Playback Theatre within different settings.

Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative Inquiry was developed by David Cooperrider and Diana Whitney of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA. It was first published in 1987. As a method it is mostly used in change management processes in private enterprises and administrative organisations. The basic idea is to build an organisation, a community or a team around what works, rather than trying to fix what doesn't work. Appreciative Inquiry (AI) therefore is a process for engaging people across the system in renewal, change and focused performance.

Appreciative Inquiry asks people to tell their own stories about what works, to share their connections with others where they have been at their best, to talk about what is life giving and equitable. It assists people to imagine their communities in more affirming ways and to envision policies, practices and behaviours that promote equity and that enhance the life giving forces in relationships.

“Mänz and Rossmann organisational Development GbR” is mainly using this method in team development settings and at the start of Gender Mainstreaming projects to produce a positive atmosphere in which people are consciously connected with there strengths and the part of their shared favourable history. In this resource oriented way actual problems will be treated and solved.

We will bring this method into schools and into parent-teacher conferences. Together with teachers and parents we will collect questions to find out what already works how it works and the reasons why it works. These questions will be used in settings e.g. parent-teacher conferences to enhance the dialogue among teachers and parents in schools with of pupils/students of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

Storysack

Storysacks were developed by Neil Griffiths. A Storysack is a large hand-sewn bag containing a storybook, props and activities with which a story is told to bring reading to life. Storysacks also contain toys, a tape recording of the story and a non-fiction book based on the theme of the story. The Storysacks concept and initiative is very much in line with Priority 7, General Call for Proposals 2007. It aims to promote parental and family learning in the following ways:

• By addressing the literacy and numeracy needs of the parents/participants
• By empowering the parent as Primary Educator.
• By deepening the bond with parent and child through story telling
• By upskilling adult tutors and teachers in the rationale and practice of Storysacks
• By enabling adult tutors and teachers to encourage other parents to become involved and further develop the project in a ripple effect
• By encouraging reading a story as a ‘fun activity’ rather than a chore.
• By developing community skills among the participants, sharing their ideas, skills and materials with the group

Much of this experiential activity will take place in Warrenmount CED Centre. The setting is unique insofar as it is part of the Warrenmount Campus which includes primary and secondary education provision.  Warrenmount CED Centre caters for the adult and continuing education of parents on the campus. As a model of integrated learning, the Centre is in the privileged position of exposing adult tutors, teachers and parents to the experience of Storysacks. 

Storyline

The method known as Storyline was designed in Scotland in the 60s as a means of realizing the aim of integrating many subjects in constructionist pedagogy for primary schools where the prior knowledge of the pupils should be taken into consideration. The method has then been developed and used in many different contexts as a tool for change and problem solving. In this project we want to adapt the method for creating a true understanding from within of the conditions for communication in the context of parent-school-pupil.

The method does not focus on intellectual reasoning but on empathy through the creation of a story where the participants take on the roles of others thus giving both teachers and parents and pupils tools for handling the communication process in a more appropriate way. The method has been used in Stockholm schools for facilitating understanding between groups of staff.

Results/products

A project website will be built and will show the progress of our work and results in the learning partnership. The performances and workshops will be published on the website of the organisation of our associated partners. The results will be documented in a handbook. It will describe the creative methods used within the new contexts and will give examples of good practice as an outcome of our experimental work. It will be illustrated by photographs and published on the project’s website. The main target groups for the handbook will be teachers, adult tutors, trainers or consulters in the field of education.