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How Key Competences may be developed through project-based learning or PBL.

These examples come from the project eTwinning, funded by the European Commission, which is the largest community for teachers in Europe allowing schools to carry out projects together nationally and internationally.

1.     In eTwinning a project is usually founded between two teachers from different European countries.

2.      Once it is registered the two founding teachers are then free to invite other teachers to

join the project and all the work is carried out in an online workspace, called a TwinSpace.

3.     The underlying basis of the project work is that there will be a great deal of emphasis put on exchange and collaboration, not only between the teachers but also between their students.

4.     The focus is on inquiry-based learning and problem solving, often using authentic, real-life problems as a starting point. You can learn more about what eTwinning has to offer teachers by visiting the website www.etwinning.net

5.     Of course this project work is also an ideal opportunity for teachers to work on the development of Key Competences in a practical and motivating way.

Examples:

1.     The first example involves students from the lower secondary school level age 12 – 15 year olds in a project called the Rainbow Village.It is a perfect example of how to develop social and civic competence in young people. In the project the students had to imagine they were living in a post Armageddon world, where they had to rebuild life in their newly created Rainbow Village.

2.     Let your Passions Shine, and it involved quite young students aged 9 – 11. this project really highlights one of the most difficult of the Key Competences to develop in young people, Learning how to Learn, as students were exposed to different ways of learning in various subjects.

3.     These projects is called, Pek the traveller flea, with students from the vocational school sector in France, Spain , Italy, Portugal Czech Republic and Turkey, working together. The project worked on developing competence in foreign languages, and cultural awareness and expression, through building the story of Pek and his travels in the form of a digital comic strip.

4.     This example is called Health for Life and features students aged between 15 and 19 from the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands. I think this is a good example of how both Maths and Science competence can be tackled in an authentic rather than theoretical way for students ( the sense of initiative and entrepreneurship competence. The students carried out surveys on smoking, drug taking, sexual practices etc. among their peers, and ran lab experiments on the effects of various substances on the body. This is really well documented in the project TwinSpace and you will get a real sense of the kind of commitment these students had by watching the video available in this course’s resource library.

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 A Teacher’s Experience of using Project-Based Learning to Teach Mathematics

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 A Teacher’s Experience of using Project-Based Learning to Teach Mathematics

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The Irish initiative Project Maths,

The aim of the initiative was to improve students’ mathematical competence and shift the focus in the classroom from teacher led drill and practice to developing the skills of problem solving, higher order reasoning and sense-making.

A.    Five effective strategies:

1      The first was collaboration among the department

2      The second important factor was the intensive school support we received

3      Thirdly, a supportive leadership was paramount to the success of the implementation

4      Team teaching was the fourth facilitating factor, which turned out to be an excellent experience. The young and old teachers were in a position to glean from each other’s expertise.

5      Finally, the use of IT to support learning had a significant impact on our ability to change:  GEOGEBRA, EDMODO…

B.    Top four tips

1.     Use project-based learning

2.     Create an environment where students can make connections across the
subject

3.     Create rich tasks and encourage students to use different strategies

4.     Encourage students to discuss maths and justify their solutions.

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Sandra Fay, second level maths teacher (Ireland)

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Sandra Fay, second level maths teacher (Ireland)

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A teacher’s experience of focusing on skills and project-based learning to teach Mathematics

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With this video, I could understand the value of collaborative group work in which each team member provides his personal contribution to achieve the common goal. Change the front role of the teacher, the more varied assessment   and change  his commitment. It will be a challenge to achieve all this!

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Patrick Griffin and Esther Care

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How to Design Project-Based Learning Activities

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preliminary checklist:
 What is your project idea?
 What is the time frame proposed?
 Is the project idea manageable?
 Is it a project just between you and your class or will you collaborate with other teachers in your school or in other countries
 If it involves partners from other countries, what is the language proposed?
 What subjects could be integrated into this project?
 What technical tools, if any, will you use?
 How does your project fit with the school planning and calendar?

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Step 1. Involve your students from the very beginning
Step 2. Discuss which technologies to use and how they will be integrated
Step 3. Plan well, set goals, define outcomes
Step 4. Proceed to put pupils into small groups with responsibilities for a particular task.
Step 5. Create a tangible artifact
Step 6. Arrive at a conclusion...take a stand...take action.

Step 7. Document, justify, and share conclusion with larger audience .

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I THINK THIS VIDEO IS VERY INTERESTING AND OPENS NEW FRONTIERS FOR TEACHERS. I NEVER USED THIS APPROACH IN MY TEACHING. FOR THIS REASON, I WOULD LIKE TO PUT IN PRACTICE WITH MY STUDENTS AND THUS ENCOURAGING THEIR INTEREST AND GREATER MOTIVATION TO STUDY THE FRENCH.

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Anne Gilleran Pedagogical Manager at "European Schoolnet"

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How to Design Project-Based Learning Activities

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Competence-based education in Europe today

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Competence-based education in Europe today

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·      Several European countries, including Austria, Bulgaria, the Flemish Community of Belgium, Finland, France, Norway, Spain, Portugal and Poland, have introduced new legislation or amended existing legislation to set out goals and frameworks for integrating key competences into school education

·      Most European countries have also introduced key competences and related learning outcomes into their national curricula for compulsory education, during the last decade.

·      However, the situation across Europe is rather varied, with only some countries and regions having launched overarching strategies fostering the development of all or most of the key competences, including Spain, Poland, Lithuania and Austria. In the absence of a national strategy, most other European countries have established centrally or regionally coordinated initiatives to promote specific key competences.

·      Several countries have made significant progress, in addition to introducing legal and curricular frameworks for key competences, countries have used various strategies to foster a competence-based approach in the classroom:

1.     innovative partnerships,

2.     pilot projects,

3.     the monitoring and evaluation of new initiatives,

4.     dedicated funding and capacity building.

Norway’s Cultural Rucksack Programme is a good example of a national initiative which has used an innovative partnership between the educational and cultural sectors as well as dedicated funding to ensure all young people in Norway have the opportunity to engage with high quality, professional arts and culture

Portugal is an example of a country with a specific initiative aimed at developing teachers’ ICT skills so that they can in turn develop their students’ digital competence. The EduScratch initiative promotes the educational use of the programming tool Scratch, which helps develop students’ computational thinking. Teachers were offered in-service training to support their use of the tool.

We recently launched an online survey about stakeholders’ experiences of competencebased education across Europe.

The good news is that there is almost universal agreement among teachers, students, parents and head teachers that key competences are indeed important for helping people succeed in learning and life, and progress has been made in defining and integrating key competences in national curricula

However, if competence-based education is to become a reality, improvement is needed in terms of collaboration and communication among stakeholders.

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The importance and definition of competences

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Learning objectives:

1. Understand the principles behind Project Based Learning, including inquiry-based and problem-based methods;

2. Be familiar with the preliminary checklist, basic steps and strategies recommended to design a Project Based Learning activity;

3. Understand how to set-up a collaborative problem-solving task;

4. Understand the cognitive and social skills learners need to apply and teachers need to observe during a collaborative problem-solving task;

5. Be familiar with a range of Project Based Learning examples developed by teachers and students from different countries, targeting various competences and age levels;

6. Be able to design a Project Based Learning Plan to effectively develop one or more of learners’ key competences or transversal skills.

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Module 1  Competences for 21st Century Schools

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Module 1  Competences for 21st Century Schools

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Learning Objectives:

1. Understand what is meant by ‘key competences’ also often referred to as ‘21st century skills’, and why developing them at school is so important in today’s world;

2. Understand that the definition of competences as well as national and international frameworks vary but share common points;

3. Be familiar with the basic key principles for teaching and assessing key competences, and self-assess your current practice and identify areas for improvement;

4. Be familiar with how various countries across Europe have implemented a key competence approach in school education, particularly in Ireland which is the case study country used throughout the course

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Key Points on Assessing Key Competences

As you’ll learn throughout this MOOC, teaching, learning and assessment of key competences involves new approaches – often through the provision of interactive learning environments, and through collaborative and multi-disciplinary learning. There is also an emphasis on transversal skills. Assessment of key competences should reflect these new ways of teaching and learning.

New curricula should cover the objectives identified, and assessments measure how well students have attained these objectives

This means that teachers will need to develop new approaches to assessment. These include:

·Summative assessment – that is the tests and examinations they design in order to assign course grades, or at the end of the school year.

·Formative assessment – the kind of interactive assessment that takes place in the course of learning, where the information gathered can be used to adjust teaching and learning and better meet student needs.

·And student self-assessment of progress toward the transversal competences. These are competences that do not have a learning “standard” – such as creativity, initiative and constructive management of feelings - but where it may be important for each student to track his or her development.

Assessments need to provide ways for students to demonstrate that they can use knowledge, skills and attitudes to reason, solve problems and so on. New tools such as portfolios and e-assessments will be very useful for teachers.

The key competences also emphasise the importance of transversal skills.

These are the kinds of skills that are important for personal development, and for learningto-learn.

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I agree with Sonia and Stefania. In Italy  teachers need to cooperate and working in teams.  Develop  new approaches to learn and assess  key competences is the real goal for our school.

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Key Points on Assessing Key Competences

Stefania italy

Very interesting video inspiring numerous reflections. I think learning to assess competence is extremely important if we really want to change our traditional approach but can be done effectively only if all teachers share their objectives and cooperate ,really working in teams and not as individuals

Sonia Galderisi, Italy

This video by Janet Looney is really interesting because it speaks about how  teachers can do a good key competences assessment. This kind of assessment reflects a new way of teaching based on a new learning interactive approach on students' transversal skills. In all countries are be fixed this new criteria and also the different learning objective and assessment in order to students to attain these aims. Consequentely teachers have to evaluate their students, as PBL already suggested teachers, through  summative ( at the end of the year ) and formative (in the course of learning) assessment. I teach in a Secondary school and I can say that schools in Italy are slowly aligning to these challenges in learning process. In my classes  formative assessment is a part of my learning teaching process because I, continually, adjust learning observing my students while they're working on projects in classroom. It isn't always easy and I try to adequate my learning teaching to the students' needs.

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 Key Points on Assessing Key Competences

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 Key Points on Assessing Key Competences

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Janet Looney

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Key Points on Teaching Key
Competences (Caroline) 

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Key Points on Teaching Key
Competences (Caroline) 

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Educational research by Dewey and Vygotsky promoting a social and constructivist approach to learning emphasizes the importance of competence development within a social learning context, where learners are engaged in active learning in real life situations. Simulating real world contexts has three main purposes: it can

·      motivate learners more than traditional approaches

·      learners are more likely to remember concepts they discover on their own  and

·      it provides a meaningful context for problem-based learning..
. teaching key competences involves a greater emphasis on interactive learning environments, allowing students

·      to work in teams on multidisciplinary topics

·      benefit from technology enhanced learning

·      have the mental, physical, social and emotional space to collaborate on solving problems.

Eight key principles for teaching key competences effectively:

1.     Firstly, teaching should be task-based. Learners should develop key competences through active, authentic, collaborative tasks based on problem-solving. Problems should be complex and with multiple solutions, allowing students to produce the solution in a variety of forms.

2.     Secondly, teaching should be interdisciplinary: that is, taught through contexts that combine several subject areas.

3.     Thirdly, learning should be both collaborative and individualised: Learners must collaborate to develop social and communicative competences, but also be able to act autonomously and self-manage.

4.     Fourthly teaching needs to be both learner- and teacher-led. For example, while projectbased learning encourages pupils to be active and responsible for their own learning, activities need to be supported by guidance and explicit instruction from the teacher where relevant. In particular, learners need support to develop their ability to learn independently; also known as the ‘learning to learn’ competence, which we looked at earlier in this module.

5.     Fifthly, teaching and learning where possible should be technologically innovative: Involving the pedagogical use of ICT and mobile technology can really enhance students’ digital competence, as well as an array of other competences.

6.     The sixth principle is that teaching and learning of key competences should take place both inside and outside of school. A learning environment does not have to be classroom based; it can be outdoors or even virtual. Teaching should harness the potential of extra-curricular activities and after school programmes, paying closer attention to how learners apply their informal and non-formal learning to what they learn in class.

7.     The seventh teaching principle is that teachers should collaborate with the wider community including the social, cultural and business sectors to create more opportunities for real world learning. You will see examples of this in this module as well as in module 2.

8.     Lastly, the teaching of key competences requires teachers to pay closer attention to the social and emotional aspects of learning, including the quality of relationships between and among teachers and learners. This is important as researchers have argued that supporting learners’ social and emotional needs stimulates well-rounded growth in learners, which forms a basis for the development of the full range of key competences.

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Cristina, Italy

Teaching competences is very important nowadays. I agree with the video because a significant approach is not completely good without, first of all, the interactive learning environment and the social and emotional aspects of learning.

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Marie-Hélène, France

I agree that the learning environment is very important, and I'm trying to improve it in my classes. The technical issues are the most difficult to solve.

Paola Villa

Even if Italian teachers are now requested to update their formation and encouraged to implement this new teaching approach, there are still many obstacles to overcome. I could refer to unsuitable didactic spaces or insufficient financial resources but, to tell the truth, the greatest barrier is represented by individuals. The lack of cooperation among teachers does frustrate the efforts of those who would like to bring innovation.
Changing approach is difficult but can be possible if we share our work!

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Module 1: Introducing Competences for 21st Century Schools

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Module 1: Introducing Competences for 21st Century Schools

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Competences for 21st Century Schools Course

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This video is part of the Competences for 21st Century Schools course on the Teacher Academy. Find out more on http://academy.schooleducationgateway.eu/en/we...

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The Importance and Definition of Key Competences
A useful definition is given by Hoskins and Crick who state that a ‘competence’ can be defined as
‘a complex combination of knowledge, skills, understanding, values, attitudes and desire which lead to effective, embodied human action in the world in a particular domain’.
In other words, being competent means being able to effectively apply a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes to successfully react to a situation or solve a problem in the real world.
Competences are expressed, understood and implemented within each education system in different ways according to national context, depending on educational philosophies, historical and political traditions, as well as outside influences. Countries have therefore developed their own national definitions and competence frameworks, including subject-based as well as transversal competences
The European Union Framework, developed by the European Commission in consultation with all member states, includes the following 8 Key Competences:

1.     Communication in the mother tongue

2.     Communication in foreign languages

3.     Mathematical competence and basic competences in science and          technology

4.     Digital competence

5.     Learning to learn

6.     Social and civic competences

7.     Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship

8.     Cultural awareness and expression
All 8 key competences are considered equally important, because each of them contributes to the personal fulfilment and development of all individuals. Many of the competences overlap and interlock, and they are all interdependent, with the following transversal skills playing an important role in each of them:

1.     critical thinking

2.     creativity

3.     initiative

4.     problem solving

5.     risk assessment

6.     decision taking and the constructive management of feelings

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My students have an age  ranging from 11 to 14 years. The school consists, in total between the two locations, approximately 870 students divided into 20 classes. It is inserted in an urban environment with services and cultural opportunities. It is equipped with gym, computer room, library, music laboratory, secretarial staff  and head-master’s study

image from the web site of the school

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My name is Maria Cristina Cau. I'm Italian and I teach French at the lower secondary school "V.Alfieri + Conservatory" of Cagliari in southern Sardinia. My teaching experience began about 23 years ago when I was selected to work as an Italian assistant in northern France (Montreuil-Paris).

A view of Cagliari from the sea (image from internet)