meetings > 1st Plenary Meeting - Montegrotto Terme - Italy > MINUTES OF THE MEETING

MONTEGROTTO MEETING MINUTES

Montegrotto Terme - Italy - November 3/6 2005

November 3 THURSDAY 17.00

List of participants:

 

The group in Venice

1. WELCOME

Gianfranco Musumeci welcomed everyone to the start of this new project..

In the chair Giovanna Barzanò – Minuting secretary Jane Jones.

2. INTRODUCTIONS

All those present introduced themselves and their institutions.

Three guests have been invited by the co-ordinator to provide some contributions on the topics of the project: Maria do Carmo Climaco, former deputy general inspector of the Portuguese Ministry of Education, specialist in evaluation; Francesca Brotto, from the Italian Ministry of Education; Roberto Serpieri, from the University of Naples, specialist in qualitative research and methodology.

3. The project co-ordinator, Govanna Barzanò, suggested we begin by considering the feedback from the Brussels’ experts.

John Rullestad wondered if ECTS could be accredited to the course and he was asked to investigate.

Andreas asked about the role of the External Evaluator suggested by Brussels. Various models were discussed. There was a consensus that the role should be a strongly supportive and developmental one and that self-evaluation should be part of our project evaluation. Carmo Climaco emphasised the importance of evaluation as learning cycles to raise awareness and for feedback about whether strategies were being met, also to highlight project problems and successes. Giovanna rejected the "critical friend" model although the External Evaluator certainly plays the role of challenger and problem-buster. The External Evaluator needed to be someone expert in international settings.

The project team proposes to ask Carmo Climaco to be the external evaluator of the project. Carmo thanks for the proposal and promises she will prepare a document concerning the role and the tasks of the external evaluator and the possible outcome of her role.

4. Participants were asked to tell about their project expectations and possible outcomes. These included:

an understanding of multicultural perspectives

concrete ideas that can be taken on board and adapted by schools in different ways

new ideas to help improve learning and teaching

a focus on social, organizational and cultural dimension, not just content

emphasising learning and cooperative processes.

Andreas said " keep it simple, keep it practical" and "we should be able to do something concrete in our schools. We should be able to approach issues from different perspectives".

Our Czech representative said the issue of school culture was very important and that we would be able to learn from comparison.

Giovanna and Jane commented on the importance of products as part of the process and the sense of pride and identity that they engendered. A sense of belonging from schools is important. We have a terminology problematic to explore as in the metaphor of a grape.

The co-ordinator of the project said that the relationship between school culture and citizenship is a strong one. Jane suggested we create an evolving conceptual road map that will allow deviations off the main route.

Giovanna said we needed to consider the overarching questions of what we value in citizenship education.

Jane said we needed to derive practical research questions from these.

 

November 4^th FRIDAY 9.15

Gianfranco Musumeci explained the budget reductions that had been imposed by Brussels and explained the partners’ percentages, entitlements and possible expenditure (see attached sheets)

The External Evaluator needs to be paid from general funds, but we might also make use of other aspects to undertaken certain tasks.

Meetings plan was defined:

The first Comenius 2.2 Course will be run in the second year of the project, from 16 to 22 April 2007, in Italy – Montegrotto Terme or Viareggio

Giovanna asked the Norwegian colleagues to prepare a course outline and a one paragraph description.

 

Francesca Brotto gave a presentation about international projects and her perspective on the SEEDS project. She talked about:

the use of English and asserted there is no such thing as a world standard English

interrelatedness and cultural webs

‘crossing bridges’ to the most different outputs – there are many types of bridges

different interpretative communities with different voices

the need to negotiate and construct meaning together about terms and concepts

the better understanding of one’s own culture that can be derived from this process.

Francesca after a visual Power Point, engaged the group in a very interesting exercise. After hearing a recorded discussion of an international group discussing ‘intelligence’, we then read the key issues arising from a discussion on ‘education’. We then did the exercise as a group on ‘school culture’. It was much appreciated.

 

November 4^th FRIDAY 21.30

Viewing of the blob "Ways of Learning Ways of Teaching", produced in the Comenius 2.1 project "TECINS", and discussion.

 

November 5^th SATURDAY 9.30

Giovanna reviewed discussions so far. She emphasised the need for research results to be able to have an impact on schools. We also need to develop observational skills and do exploratory and rich case studies to deepen our understanding. We might undertake a literature review either done by project members or by an external consultant.

A subgroup meeting to be held before May will be able to provide feedback on colleagues’ plans and progress. We also need to decide the logistics – how many schools, what type, etc.

Carmo said that Giovanna’s perspective is a bit reductive with respect to project contents as we have not yet tackled issues such as school identity, European dimension, education for democracy(justice and equity) that have an important role in our project.

Andreas commented that we bring our own cultural expectations and ways of working.

Emanuela thought methodological considerations were as important as the conceptual framework and the way they interface.

Giovanna proposed Sturman’s definition and that we take on board Yin’s defining characteristics of case study.

Jane said we could identify key ‘pegs’ to make observations useful and map out the most useful methods to use. Giovanna stressed the idea of developing action research case studies; all liked the idea of case studies running throughout the whole project or at least 2 years.

Andreas presented a spidergram and showed key citizenship interrelating issues – participation, rights, responsibility and relationships.

Carmo said that we should make not only an analytical case study but a product from collect materials in the case studies. The concept of complementarity was proposed instead of the comparison one.

Giovanna recommended a story approach, exploring and getting stories from the schools that we can share at the next meeting. She stressed the idea of case studies "in evolution"

Carmo said we need to keep thread of continuity over if there is some variability of schools

Rosangela said it was important to start with something ‘short’ as a starting point, a kind of exploration, in the sense that it is important to have defined materials for analysis and discussion in order to check the coherence and appropriateness of the methodology in the partnership.

Giovanna stressed the importance of identifying the unit of analysis.

Carmo proposed an overall evaluation structure (see below) stressing the idea that we have to compare ourselves with what we have produced and to decide how to use benchmarking and knowledge.

Then she illustrated a possible analytical approach of case studies (see below)

 

Giovanna reviewed issues raised so far and suggested we had undergone deep learning as a group in that we had shifted opinions about how we could do our case studies i.e. starting from exploration and progressively by focusing in the light of data. These would work alongside our courses and training opportunities. A key focus would be to motivate schools through involvement. The unit of analysis would be the ‘pink box’ (insert GB model) and the participating schools. We also need to think about the interests of our institutions and the value-added for ourselves and what’s in it for schools.

We can create a new ‘forest’ of different types of trees for the project to investigate the ecology of the forest. We start with a kind of pilot exploration in the first instance that begins a project spiral of research, as suggested by Francesca. She suggested partners be asked how comfortable they were with the longitudinal approach. She also said that discovery and acknowledging differences was an important part of the group’s enacting citizenship for itself.

Jane suggested we ensure our descriptions are rich and provide evidence with ‘voices’ and ‘stories’ from a variety of stakeholders. We should constantly ask for responses to the question ‘how do you know?’

Subgroups were then organised to report back in plenary.

 

FEEDBACK FROM NATIONAL GROUPS

CATALUNYA

Cristina presented this proposal

- General aim

To contribute to develop citizenship as active and responsible people in an open and wide perspective (as European and world citizen).

- Operative aim

To identify critical elements and to define strategies to include in our educational policies in order to reach the first objective.

- Methodology

1. To develop every element present on the Norwegian map under the perspective defined as our general aim

examples:

2. Case studies

To select 2 or 3 schools. To focus the research on:

school values

school organization

school climate

learning and teaching process (go further of subject structure)

external relations

To look for relevant indications that facilitate the general aim.

ITALY

Emanuela presented this proposal.

First spiral of school case study

ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP

What analysis to better define the contents of the map (participation, responsibility, relationship, values, right)

strategies of learning and teaching

relationship among students and teachers

school norms and rules

school documents (what school says)

school project and school co-operation with municipalities

climate and atmosphere

evaluation criteria

conflicts and critical incidents

What kind of actors?

students

teachers

non-teaching staff and take cares

head teachers

What kind of technique?

interviews

focus group

brainstorming with pupils

analysis

peer observation

external and participating observation

CZECH REPUBLIC

Vlasta wants something very practical for his school. The focus will be on ‘rights’ and ‘responsibilities’ especially for pupils. Out of school activities will be included. The use of questionnaires with students, parents, teachers, all beginning with a conference. The aim is to get some basic data and to use the data to make certain innovations and changes. This will be the case study and results will be fed back into the project.

NORWAY

Norwegian colleagues like the notion of ‘responsible citizenship’. They will work on the themes in that spidergram. It is important to explore values, develop relationship, look at structures that power the other dimensions. Pupil participation is very important. School colleagues will briefed as to the research possibilities and procedures.

 

CONCLUSIONS

Roberto Serpieri emphasised the need to identify processes, results, actors, actions and micro political simultaneously issues. An investigation of change must be over a period of time. A comparison stand focuses on answering the question "how does it work" and sharing knowledge on this. There needs to be a great deal of communication and interaction.

Roberto sketched a structure for some methodological key points concerning the research approach. (see below)

 

TWO DIFFERENT STRATEGIES OF RESEARCH

1. positivistic epistemology
   strategy/vision -> process/context -> results

2. constructionist epistemology
   process -> actions -> policies, micropolitics, negotiations (of relations, meanings,
   ecc.) -> results=process itself

3. dimensions of case studies research in a constructionist epistemology:

   1. in search of "thick description"; examples:

      a. a very rich collection of data;

      b. qualitative techniques such as in-depth interviews, videos;

      c. …

   2. in search of participation; examples:

      a. not only story-telling but also story-producing;

      b. coparticipation when coding categories;

      c. …

   3. longitudinal perspective; examples:

      a. decision-making, not only the formal decision;

      b. not only the net of relations, but also its evolution;

      c. …

      d.

…ah! the joke:

the logic of survey absolutely forbidden …

…but some questionnaires admitted!

 

Giovanna talked of the importance of developing a culture of research as part of the school teacher.

Jane stressed the importance of engaging schools in researching their own practice and on training heads and teachers and others to undertake quality research that can be useful for themselves and to abolish the notion that research is something distant.

Francesca said the question is to look for what can be found that builds and sustains a vibrant citizenship school culture.

Giovanna suggested we work on creating guidelines and to share them by January.

Roberto stressed the importance of ‘voice’ in case studies.

Francesca said in future it is important to get more ‘voices’ involved in the project group and with schools. There needs to be more networking and interactive strategies. She then described some interactive reflection activities e.g. A/B, A’s making a shopping list of key elements of school culture, B’s some with citizenship education, then group negotiations, sharing etc.. A synthesis would emerge form such an exercise.

Giovanna said that, in spite of the importance of listening to all voices, in the early stages of a project it is also important to allow colleagues less confident to speak English to ‘grow’ and develop their confidence by listening. There was general agreement that we should develop more ‘voice opportunities’ but also that in a project we have to give time to participants to feel more confident using another language.

 

November 5^th SUNDAY 9.30

The grand finale was the discussion on the logo of the SEEDS project. Then the tasks to be undertaken were discussed and agreed on. (see annex 1)

The meeting concluded to everyone’s great satisfaction with thanks to the Italian co-ordinators and to all participants for their valuable contribution.

 

Jane Jones

Minuting Secretary – November 2005

 

 

Annexe 1: Tasks for the first phase of the project