Description
With educating gifted students the Balassi Bálint Eight Grade Secondary Schoold aims, not simply to supply the world with future labour force, but provide it with flexible, adaptable, satisfied and motivated members. To achieve this goal key competences, like sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, social and civic competences as well as learning to learn, should be fully integrated into the learning process. Project-based learning seems to be a beneficial method to achieve this goal. The objective of the project is to acquire the basic knowledge and skills of project-based teaching via job shadowing to be able to adapt it in the schools establishment. The project is expected to prepare a staff member to implement this method in Hungary. This challenge will be addressed through field studies (visiting lessons, discussing lesson plans, interviewing) and studying curricula, evaluation method etc. As a result the candidate should have a comprehensive ability to turn these ideas into action. It is not only the students of the secondary school but further learners of the schools pedagogical surroundings that can benefit from it. Holding a lecture on the challenges of future education the headmaster of the donor partner proved to give a trustworthy example of good practices in this area. Even the partnership itself aims to emphasise that the whole concept of learning has changed. The focus should be on creativity, critical thinking, constructive attitude and cooperation which might manifest in working on mutual school projects and mobility.
Summary of project results
Balassi Bálint Eight Grade Secondary School has been ranked among the best 100 secondary schools in Hungary. Its outstanding results are due to the devoted management and staff who have always been searching for new ways of self-improvement. Boasting with the title of Talent Centre as well as local reputation are further factors strengthening our commitment to quality education and ambition to progress. Ongoing debates about the Hungarian educational system in general as well as our own results made us aware of the need to keep pace with the new challenges of the 21st century. Understanding the urge to react on the demands of flexibility, cooperation and highly developed social skills resulted in experimenting with new ways of teaching. Our visit to Ringstabekk School has been a new step made towards consciousness in the field. The project was aimed threefold objectives. In short terms its goal was to get familiar with project-based learning in practice. Regarding methodological and applicability experience, Ringstabekk has been the perfect choice to visit. For the medium terms the visit has given the inspiration and motivation to apply similar ways of learning in our educational palette. The first attempt to incorporate project days into our agenda last June is followed by a more consciously prepared project day this April. Also, forest school programmes in May and summer camps will be based on the input the visit and its dissemination provided us with. The implementation of the findings might be further developed next year on students’ day, school events and extracurricular activities. The sustainable change the visit was aiming for is to open up a new concept about teaching and sow the seeds of fresh ideas on the importance of cooperation, responsibility, sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. We are planning to achieve so by organising material into cross-curricular project work where it is applicable within the framework of our curriculum. As for short term results, dissemination through presentations, informal discussions and official forums have started. On the medium terms a series of three workshops will be organised about the implementation of the new experience into the project day held this April. Further attempts will be made concerning other programmes mentioned above. To achieve sustainable changes we encourage similar techniques in everyday use as much as possible. To involve other teachers an application for KA1 Erasmus+ project on simi
Summary of bilateral results
The cooperation of the partners was based on a dissemination event organised by Brain Bar Budapest, 2015. The inspirational event aimed at introducing innovative initiatives on different fields started a meaningful discussion among staff members as well. Bjorn Bolstad, headmaster of Ringstabekk School was one of the four members of the round table dispute on future education. The dispute was really inspirational for us resulting in an attempt to experiment with project days a year later. A personal contact was established after the call for Mobility Projects in Other Educational Institutions and Education Related Institutions through e-mail. Cooperation between the partners was mostly characterised by sharing knowledge on the donor’s side and functioning as recipient from the applicant’s side. However, the applicant institution did its best to make their results and achievements alongside with problems as visible as possible. Also, the visitor was asked to give a detailed feedback to the Norwegian staff concerning the experiences collected. Further cooperation might occur between staff members on personal level. Cooperation among students is encouraged through eTwinning platform in the future.