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INTERNATIONAL - NEWSLETTER 9
December 2002 

Students in action by Alice Jacobsen and Bernard le Roux Diversity and Democracy Conference By Bernard le Roux

Students in action
by Alice Jacobsen and Bernard le Roux

Introduction
As instant communication spreads we have the possibility to share our outcomes in education with each other, seeking the quality of teaching young secondary students in school about the reality they, and we as teachers, are facing.
The personal, professional and institutional challenge is, to frame a practical base for knowing and acting, and at the same time changing how we know and act, in a flux of continuous uncertainty, and change. At SPF we believe that our work must always relate to the challenges of the present. It is important to analyse and reflect upon our educational situation in order to improve and learn from our mistakes. At the school, which has the obligation to unfold the varied potential of our students, and ours as teachers, we are trying to meet these challenges with an attitude of experimentation and innovation.
In our description of our work at the experimental school we describe our goals as follows:

"The curriculum strengthens the intellectual, affective and social development of the student and involves a balance between physical, practical, musical and verbal expression…"

And

"The curriculum develops the imagination, creativity and curiosity of the student. It awakens in the learner the desire to experience and learn, the ability to make decisions and the courage to take action…."

In the following article from our practical experience with a project amongst 8th graders, it was exactly our aim to work across subjects. We strove to combine social and practical skills with a content, which added a subject dimension. We did this also to shift the focus from head oriented teaching to one where the students' playfulness, imagination, curiosity and practical planning were combined. From a long-term perspective, we organised this project to improve the progression of project work at the school. We wished to allow the students to experience the strength of active participation in their own education, and hopefully to discover and learn from the mistakes they were making.

Our focus in this particular project was to work with learner-centred education. It lasted for about two weeks and focused on creative and practical thinking, practical skills, subject integration, co- operation and project management.

From our assessment of the two eighth grade classes, we could see that the students now needed to be challenged to work with practical skills and to integrate subject skills. We decided to ask them to relate both the practical and subject knowledge to a product, they would make.

The Mini Project as a way of introducing project management skills
As a way of helping students to get an overview of the process they were going to follow during the project, we designed a mini project day. This mini project had a product and process focus - in more or less equal parts.
A simple product had to be produced from wood, metal or paper. It had to be something one could use and had to be aesthetically pleasing.
A planning process had to be completed before starting production. This process included making a design with measurements, making a budget (each item provided had a cost element, as did labour time) and deciding which tools were necessary to produce the product (we did not have enough for everyone and tried to introduce a booking system).
In addition there was a small research component where students had to write something about the background of the article produced in English or German.

The value of this process was that it gave students a taste of what was possible to produce by themselves, with simple material and simple tools. It gave them an overview of a planning process which could be used in their main project and in other projects.

It was certainly a lot to achieve in one day and some found it rather difficult to discipline themselves either to complete the planning process or to limit the size and scope of the product they were making. Comparing it to the main project, in retrospect, it seems as if the limitation of the range of materials was in fact a helpful thing in that it helped focus students and made teacher supervision and assistance easier.


Student's ownership helps motivation
Here are some examples of students' project ideas:
"I will make a yellow dress with a story in German written on the front", Malene considers. "In class we have just worked with German grammar, and I really should make an effort, working a little more profound with my German skills", she tells.
"At the same time I will create the dress, and work with patterns, which I think is naturally related to math."
"How does a sundial measure time? When was the first sundial in the world?
Is it possible to construct one myself? How was time perceived earlier on and now? Such wondering questions are formulated in the pamphlet of Nis, a boy in 8.a, is given to fill in his goals for the period.

These students have decided to work individually.

Others organize themselves in groups. Such group is a group of six boys of 14 years, who are passionate skaters, and spend a lot of their spare time skating. The problem for them is, that the school doesn't provide them with this possibility during their breaks or after school.
"Why don't we build a ramp ourselves?" Jonas suggests. Martin is immediately excited. "My father works at the railway. I'm sure we can get some materials for free." In the following lesson they work out their calculations, make a budget and start sketching the measurements on paper. After a while they are busy making an exact model of the ramp, visualizing how the ending product is going to look like. During project time they are enthusiastic staying after school to finish the skater ramp in reality.
They are developing their co-operative skills in an amazing way through their own decision-making and planning and sharing of the common work.


Framework
The teacher's wish was to qualify the practical skills, and also to let the student look for an angle, where there was a natural need of working with one or two subjects.
In the pamphlet we wrote for the students we described the task as the following:

                          
   
Time planning
In our time planning we calculated with some common input for all the forty-eight students, and the programme of the schoolwork was given in the task description papers. The students were given 12 schooldays to fulfil their project from the beginning phase to the exhibition of their work. The students were allowed to work in the wood workshop, in the classroom and in the big common area, the pedagogical service centre.

"Provospiration"
This word is taken from a Danish author, Frode Boye Andersen, who describes the meaning of this word in order to understand the energy in starting off. It means that we, as teachers, bring in ideas, photos or statements, or a visit to a certain place, all with the purpose of provoking the thinking and the imagination of the end product of the project. In this case we took the students to a relevant exhibition at two of our famous museums in Copenhagen. One was the Design Centre and the other The Danish Museum of Industrial Design and Art. The students were watching, sketching, taking notes and even listened to one of the guides, who told the story of five different materials used in our national production of furniture, industrial design for the home and gave also a historical dimension in, what had inspired the different periods of fashion.

Statistics in learning areas
Woodwork
21 of the students chose to make a
product of wooden material. Such as: a
bench for the school, the skater ramp
for the school, two basket ball boards, a
table for a girls room, a bow, a cd-
holder, football goals and a wooden
game.

Sewing clothes
13 of the students (girls only) made their
own clothing. Such as party dresses,
skirts, housecoats and t-shirts with
decorations of beads.

Paperwork   
One student decided to make greeting
postcards with stories or fairy tales in
paperwork, and with written parts in
German.
                

Environmental   
Four students were working with an
environmental issue. Two of the boys
made a windmill, one made a computer
part and finally we put in the student, who
constructed his own sundial.

Personal outfits   
Among this group of students we found
products as baskets, mirrors, decorated
bottles and lamps for private homes.

Many of the students did not find it difficult at all, to find an idea of what they were actually going to make. Others found the visit to the museums quite helpful as an inspiration to create e.g. baskets of recycling materials, lamps of wood or metals etc.
The big group of wood workers were busy working in the outside area and in the wood workshop at the school. It had indeed some implications. Only two teachers were scheduled, and not always for the whole school day. We couldn't allow students to work on their own with dangerous tools, and the risk of getting hurt.
We also discovered that an incredibly big group of students seldom work practically. They needed much help and guidance from us, also to add the subject part of the product. Besides Malene and Simone, who were working with their written skills in German, others worked with the origin of materials, the kind of wood they were using, or mathematics about calculation and sketching the geometrical dimensions of their work etc. Others wrote stories in English, or had a historical view on fashion of clothes or as, we saw it in the beginning of this article, the story of time measuring by an old sundial. The subjects sometimes fitted in naturally, for others, like the basket makers, they found it not so easy to find an obvious angle of "content".

Exhibition for parents
And important part of the project work is also to learn to present work in an aesthetical way and to put some words on the process and outcome. There fore we invited the parents to come for an exhibition of the result of the two weeks.
And they were indeed impressed, not only by the creativity, which they met, but also of the enthusiasm amongst the students.

They eagerly spoke about their process, what they discovered, which difficulties they had overcome, what didn't work at all, like the lamp, which broke in the last minute, and others who hadn't had time enough for their subject angle. Some of the girls made a catwalk with all their fashionable dresses and clothes. The skaters showed and demonstrated the new ramp with music from the loudspeakers and the newest skating movements. Some of the not so expressive students were just telling and showing in smaller groups of interested parents.

What is there to learn?
In the team of teachers we made an evaluation afterwards. We came up with our successes and mistakes, according to the criteria we made from the beginning.
We only saw products that were all useable, (except for the broken lamp) and from a scale of 1 to 5, the majority had made products that had been finished off nicely and in an expressive way (5). Some products, though, a third part, needed to be worked on an improved. Some of the students weren't used to work practically, and we should have limited their choice as teachers. Others ended up with a fine product, but it took such a lot of time, that they never challenged the intellectual part of their work.

Many of the students found out a lot about their material and which tools were the best to use for different parts in the process. Louise, one of the girls making a housecoat, discovered how much patterns were really useful in her understanding, on a practical level, how it works with geometrical forms, and that they can be mirrored when you are designing a piece of clothes, folding the pattern around the symmetry axis. Others were so keen to sew their party dress correctly, because the clothes, they had bought was very expensive. Ida, one of the girls, there fore made a "prestudy", by making her dress in a cheaper material, before the real one was made. It was amazing to see how she really learned from the first part of the "training" product to the end result, transferring all her best learning points to the finished party dress.

Also it never turned out to be a success with the coaching part as a process tool.
We wanted the students to go together and have a look at what they were making. We made the pairs, and we made worksheets to fill in assessment according to the criteria. But we haven't seen results, which proofed the idea as a success. Again we presume it was because of the lack of time to organize them using and sharing questions and ideas in the ongoing process of work.
As teachers we found ourselves very busy, not only because of the guidance and help, the students were asking for, but also because we were in the midst of a period of examines. That had a negative impact of the timing. We summarized that it wasn't the framework, which wasn't good; it was lack of timing and human resources. It would there fore have been helpful for some of the students to have a much more narrow task of creating their final product. And for us it would have been better not to go to other schools to be external examinators in this period.
In the end we were happy to have seen many students staying at school even after their scheduled time, so much creativity and a positive atmosphere in the learning conditions they were given. We are sure that a period like this has an impact of the energy and feeling of ownership it gives the students to take action in their own education and learning.

Head planning and planning in action
One interesting experience is worth noting. A point is often made of accommodating different learning styles in the classroom. The group of boys who chose to make a skateboard ramp produced, in their mini project, a scale model of their final product.

            

They asked if they submit this as their design and plan for their final product in stead of a design on paper. At first there was some hesitation as they did not follow the task we had set, namely to make a design on paper, but after some consideration, we agreed to accept this as an alternative. The interesting thing with this group was that they knew exactly what they had to do. They knew the measurements, they could visualise their plan as they had the model before them. The lesson for us as teachers was indeed that in a practical project, practical planning should also be a possibility.

Project work - striking the balance between form and freedom
Project work, in the Danish context, implies that the student should have free choice in as many aspects of the project as possible. The debate amongst the teachers planning the period was to what extent students could be limited in their choice of product. The two schools of thought were: first, that there should be a wide choice, limited only by the availability of materials and the broad criteria set for the product, and second, that there be a limitation on the kind of products produced - for example, textiles, wood and copper.

It is our view that it would have been more helpful to the students and the teachers if the product range had been limited. Comparing the mini project to the larger project, it was clear that teacher supervision was a major difficulty where there was such a diverse range of products. The other observation is that it was difficult for some of the students to focus and get started with a choice that was too wide.
This balance between the freedom to choose and limitations is a constant question we face when working with projects. It is chiefly for the sake of the students who struggle to find self-discipline or an inner structure, that we believe that structure is necessary. It should however be possible for a student to argue that she wants to work beyond or outside of the limits imposed by the structure, but here there has to be a clear agreement about resources and assistance the teacher is able to give. For if a student wishes to work outside of the framework given, it is possible that she will need more help from the teachers or resources the school cannot provide. These have to be taken into consideration by the teacher faced with the request.   

Diversity and Democracy Conference
By Bernard le Roux

Torben Nissen and Bernard le Roux recently attended a recent conference organised by the Danish Centre for Human Rights and the British Council.
The conference considered the theme of Diversity and Democracy and focussed on citizenship education in schools. Delegates from Denmark, the United Kingdom, Lithuania and Romania attended.
Presentations set out difficulties experienced in the teaching of democracy and diversity in many of the countries concerned. Much emphasis was placed on democratic practice in the classroom, in the school and in the broader school community as being as important as the content of lessons. The same was true of the treatment of diversity in schools. In both areas it was felt that a combination of example, practice and sound content was essential in shaping attitudes of young learners.

The conference ended with an undertaking to develop relationships between participants and, in some cases to start joint projects.