Teaching Laboratory

The project will develop an innovative curriculum for grades 4-8, integrating all learning forms (lessons, extracurricular activities, interdisciplinary projects, tutoring, e-learning, and the student's work). The program promotes an integrated view of learning, teaching, and development. The aim is to move away from the dominance of classroom teaching and the transmission of content to education for the future supporting students' independence and well-being, incorporating new technologies (ICT), and developing creativity, communication, criticality, and cooperation at school. They create conditions for the transformation of learning activities into student development. The project team comprises four researchers from 0stfold University College in Halden, four researchers from the University of Lower Silesia in Wroclaw, and 22 teachers from Spark Academy in Poznan. All students will be actively involved in the development of the program. The methodology will include formative interventions, engaged qualitative research, and Galperin's theoretical and methodological learning concepts. The project team's collaboration will include workshops in the Teaching Laboratory, direct observations in the school, research lessons, and networked analysis of multimedia data in Portfolio. The project will include the following stages: development of a school research plan; evaluation of the existing teaching; design and testing of new teaching solutions; development of publications - to improve the quality of education. A SPARK ACADEMY TEACHING LABORATORY HANDBOOK will also be prepared, enabling teachers from other schools to initiate changes in classes 4-8 adjusted to local conditions in accordance with the idea of education for the future. Polish and Norwegian researchers will publish research concerning the new teaching quality that transforms interrelated learning and teaching activities.

0stfold University College, Norway, offers a strong academic environment for teacher training and research. It collaborates with more than 140 schools and kindergartens across Norway. It has leading positions in Norway concerning online learning and enhancing teachers’ professional digital competence required in classrooms. By adopting the central premises of P. Galperin’s pedagogical theory, the Department researchers developed a model to design MOOCs and online environments to facilitate the development of students' conceptual understanding and their understanding of how to learn online. The suggested model can also be adopted in traditional education to enhance the learning and development of students as learners.                                                       

SPARK Academy Foundation, Poland, has operated an alternative elementary and high school since 2016. The elementary school has 157 students and  33 teachers. Their activities aim to accompany the student transitioning from a stage where they depend on adults to increasing independence and self-reliance. Independence from an early age needs practice, action, and experience adapted to the student’s developmental capabilities. Teachers are responsible for organizing learning, stimulating thinking, providing problems, monitoring, supporting independent exploration, and summarizing. The student actively seeks, hypothesizes, tests, makes mistakes and draws conclusions. Teachers work with innovative methods, such as interdisciplinary projects within the classroom, international curriculum (IPC), mixed-age learning (6-9; 10-12), entrepreneurship days, project days (a day off from class to do projects, develop passions and interests), and tutoring. As an element of personalized education, tutoring at SPARK supports students’ personal and educational development, building self-awareness, a sense of purpose, and empowerment, and reinforces positive beliefs about oneself and one’s ability to influence reality. Meetings of the Curriculum Council (of the school) with parents, during which parents can bring their ideas to improve the school’s functioning, also play an essential role. Teachers recognize the need to develop a comprehensive curriculum for grades 4-8 to effectively combine new forms (including ICT), taking into account the economy of effort and time, specificity of subjects, and coherence of activities of all teachers. Teachers are willing to research teaching practices and develop and test new forms of learning at school. The collaboration with Spark Academy began in 2020 by commissioning evaluation research, which led to the project’s idea.

Project Manager

Professor Sławomir Krzychała

email: slawomir.krzychala@dsw.edu.pl  

Project Management Office

55 Strzegomska Street

53-611 Wrocław, Poland

email: biuro.projektow@dsw.edu.pl  

Results will be available soon!