THE EXPERIMENTATION CARRIED OUT IN GERMANY and … · also including the dramatic aspects as the battle fields of Spicheren, but also describing its inhabitants as honest and authentic

LETHE – LEarning THrough Emotions Agreement n° 2006-2888/001-001

Project n° 129937-CP-1-2006-1-IT-COMENIUS-C21 This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.

This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

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THE EXPERIMENTATION CARRIED OUT IN

GERMANY and FRANCE - University of Saarlandes

FINLAND – Euneos Corporation

TURKEY - Firat University

ITALY - Centro Studi e Formazione Villa Montesca




GERMANY In Germany two schools participated in the project, the Gesamtschule (“integrated school”) at Bexbach and the Gesamtschule (“integrated school”) at Gersheim. In both German schools, the project was organized as additional (optional) tuition in form of project groups (in Bexbach the “Africa project group”, in Gersheim two project groups that focused on the partnership with respective groups from the French partner school; one group there with a focus on famous French singer P. Kaas, a former pupil of the partner school, and the other one with a focus on the ‘free will discussion’, exemplified through German-French history and the moral dilemmas that went with it). The fact that the Lethe experimentation was integrated in project groups (and not in ‘ordinary’ classes) meant that there existed already a certain proximity or at least openness towards emotional didactical methods. So only pupils participated that were interested. They especially enjoyed the multi-medial experiences (and in case of the Africa project even a holistic experience as that included drumming and making music). This was, of course, one part of the emotional switch, too. The other was the participation of musicians from West Africa, so the pupils experienced authentic information on everyday life, culture and art of West Africa. The next step “Understanding through emotions” was reached not only by getting knowledge about the foreign culture but to actively experience it, performing African music and dances.




At Gersheim, the switch was reached in the Kaas project with watching her music video on her home region that includes the Saarland, in the “free will” project by watching the recent movie “Valkyre” with Tom Cruise. The next step “Understanding through emotions” was reached by German pupils collaborating, doing research and discussing online with




their French equivalents. Our biggest success was with the Kaas project that even made French television “France 3” to shoot a film on the project.

FRANCE

The experimentation phase in France was held at Collège N. Untersteller. This school is located close to the German border, so it seemed easy and interesting to conduct the experimentation as a collaboration with the German partner. We had a huge success with a project on a former pupil of our school, famous French singer P. Kaas who in this year represented France at the Eurovision Song Contest at Moscow. Her career began at the other side of the border, in Germany. So it was a perfect theme for the collaboration with the German partner school. Kaas has written a song that describes her home region, referring on the border situation and also including the dramatic aspects as the battle fields of Spicheren, but also describing its inhabitants as honest and authentic people. The song is not without clichés, but very charming; indeed, it is important for pupils from this border region that an international star is singing about them. As her birth region of Lorrain is located in the very east of France, the song’s title is « Une fille de l’est ». The French pupils, together with their German counterparts, did research on Kaas, the region and made a music video of their own. This was so spectacular that French television even made a reportage on the project.




The subject of the second experimentation also dealt with a cross-border topic: the ‘free will’ and the question of how it is possible in situations as those of recent German-French history and the moral dilemmas that went with it. Whereas the German partners focused on World War 2, the French pupils did research on World War 1 as the Lorraine region suffered very much in this period.

FINLAND

The project created, developed and promoted new pedagogical and teaching approaches based on emotional intelligence. Euneos OY helped to develop the curricula and guidelines for the experimentation plan and contributed to the content for the LETHE space, a special learning environment. It was created to provide teachers and students in all the involved countries a possibility to work on a certain topic using EI philosophy and by following the project methodology learn in a different and more efficient way.

Two schools took part in the experimentation of the curricula in Finland: Pääskytie School Porvoo Finland and Vihti Upper Secondary School. Social and emotional learning and a special methodology was implemented into schools that joined the testing phase. The project provided teachers and students with new tools (ICT) to teach and learn with the help of EI. Annika Ruohonen who performed the LETHE experimentation in Pääskytie School Porvoo Finland benefited a lot from her LETHE activities and so she used her LETHE experience for planning the new Nordplus project funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers together with teachers from Denmark, Lithuania and India.




There was also quite a lot of dissemination done during the project in Finland among which we can mention: Media Event of Vihti Upper Secondary school May 7, 2009 coordinated by CIMO, the Finnish National LLP Agency. Anna Heinonen, history and religion teacher of Vihti upper secondary

school Finland reports on experimentation of LETHE:

I tried LETHE platform with my religious education group of students at the age of 17-18 years. The subject of my course was religious history in Europe. The emotional switch on this platform was very well connected to my subject and I wanted to test it with my students. The video clip was a bit difficult but at the same time it represented the versatility of religion very well. At this point we were only able to try step one (seeing through emotions). Students had many different feelings about the film. I found it interesting to learn about their feelings and opinions. I asked my students to watch the film, think of three emotions that arose from it and think about the meaning of the film. Then I asked them to think about how the film was connected to the titles in our course. Our course is just about ending, otherwise it would have been interesting to progress from step one Annika Ruohonen, English teacher of Pääskytie school Porvoo, reports on

experimentation of LETHE:

This Learning Through Emotions project with the title "Storytellers" was a success for us, both the teacher and the students. Feedback from the students, 13- 15 years old, has been positive and encouraging and I'm sure that I will do this again every year with new students.




My pupils have published 31 stories in : http://www.ejournal.fi/finnindia06/index.php?action[]=IBrowsing::gotoFolder(6264), and 12 of them were also published in http://www.era-edu.com/lethespace/?q=node/176 I got excited about the topic as soon as I heard about it. It was nice to give students a creative task to think about, involving their feelings. Task giving went really well. Students got excited about the pictures rigjht away and it was easy for them to start writing about it. I think that the exercise is very nice and useful for the students in their learning. We had 1 h 30 min for the whole thing: group discussion and writing. It was just about enough, but we could have used another 30 minutes more. I am very happy with the results, and I am going to do this again. Then it will even be easier since I already know how it all works.

TURKEY

LEARNING WITH EMOTIONS IN TURKEY

Although Fırat University is a technical university, significant work is being carried out in the Education Faculty and the Educational Sciences Department of the Technical Education Faculty. This has been encouraged by the recent efforts of the Turkish Ministry of Education to develop cognitively and affectively oriented curricula. Today it is clear that a cognitively oriented educational approach which excludes and even ridicules emotions and other inner processes, and is solely based on reason and perceptions cannot make people happy and cannot show the way to self actualization. In the process which started with the Enlightenment and continued with visual technological inventions, many Western philosophers marked the eye and the ear as




superior senses and the emotions as inferior senses. This approach later came to be known as the “universal truth” with the help of materialist philosophy and behavioral psychology. Under the influence of this approach, schools largely concerned themselves with external arguments, and learning was treated within the context of stimulant-reaction for all organisms. For many years, “good education” was defined as the transmission of well-designed content by well-educated teachers in well-equipped schools to individuals seen as passive organisms. With a modernist approach, education was long accepted as the major tool for adapting the individual to the society. Individuals were only seen in relation to their social roles and tasks. However, it should not be forgotten that people have souls. A rather cognitively developed individual who has a lot of knowledge can at the same time be an egotistical, self-centered brute. The holistic development of humans is only possible with the satisfaction of the mind, body, soul and emotions. Neglecting the human soul, inner processes or emotions may lead to the production of unhappy, dull, anonymous, unnoticeable people. Contrary to the approach which restricted science to logic and senses, the famous 12th century Turkish poet Yunus Emre brought together the scientific and metaphysical dimensions as follows: “Science is knowing science, science is knowing the self, if you do not know yourself, what good is it to have an education”. By this, he emphasized the importance of inner processes. Similarly, a Turkish proverb says “That who does not know what he feels, cannot know what others feel”. Another one mentions maturity in education: “A bird needs two wings to fly: one is material, the other is meaning”. Recently, modern psychology has also seen the rise of inner processes and emotions in learning, understanding the universe and knowing self. Examples for this trend may be Gardner’s intrapersonal and existentialist definitions of intelligence, Goleman’s emotional intelligence, and concepts such as sensitive and spiritual intelligence.




It should not be forgotten that emotional intelligence increases human competence and that the mind cannot work properly without it. In order to develop healthy, balanced, self-actualized individuals with strong personalities, investment should be made in emotional intelligence.

ITALY

In Italy five schools partecipated in the Lethe Project: four in Città di Castello (Istituto di Istruzione Superiore “Ugo Patrizi”, Istituto di Istruzione Superiore Umbertide “Leonardo da Vinci”, Istituto Tecnico Commerciale e per Geometri “Ippolito Salviani”, Istituto Professionale di Stato per i Servizi Alberghieri e della Ristorazione, Commerciali e Turistici “Felice Cavallotti”) and one in Mestre, Venice (Istituto Tecnico Industriale Statale “C. Zuccante”). The “Learning through emotions” method was implemented during the elaboration of didactic subjects following 5 consecutive steps: 1. Training seminars for trainers. 2. To see through emotions. 3. To understand through emotions. 4. To travel through emotions. 5. To learn through emotions. Teachers have used the Lethe method to develop arguments of literary and historical of ministerial curricula. Training seminars for trainers.

As far as participants were not familiar with the concept of emotional intelligence, the project team decided to introduce training seminars for trainers and tailored meetings with each teacher and class, as preparatory step to go before the four stages of the method, since it




would be ineffective to use emotions for stimulation of the cognitive process, if children are not sufficiently familiar with them. The various parts of the method were clearly explained by both teachers involved in the experimentation and operators from the Organisation, before and during the experimentation. The teachers, individually or in cooperation with the operators studied and elaborated the method and the available teaching tools. To see through emotions.

For the Emotional switches teachers have used the videos or images made available by the project coordinators or by themselves. Teachers have used didactical aids like interactive books, images, or films, in order to promote a better comprehension of learning contents, and it is always intended to provide the teacher’s specialized knowledge to the learner, which in consequence reinforces a clear teacher-learner (encoder-decoder) relation. The use of digital media brings inevitably more open (that is, increasingly networked) as well as more intense interactive communication, and also more active reception. To understand through emotions & To travel through emotions.

Conforming with the experimentation steps, individually or in small groups, participants discovered and shared materials on subjects appointed, expressed their own opinions and arguments. They justified their choice with the emotions that led to it. They discussed materials through personal comments or in work meetings, led by the teacher at school. They had many new insights and chances they wouldn’t have gotten without the project. They enjoyed the multi-medial experiences. Most students enjoyed learning about their emotions while watching the YouTube link. They had fun, since some scenes were familiar to them through movies; they also enjoyed the music themes. The multimedia game was particularly appreciated since it helped to teach and learn through emotions together with the experimentation in class too.




To learn through emotions.

In the fourth step each teacher presented his/her working materials, as summary of the class work experimentation. At the end of the experimentation, during the meeting the students filled in a questionnaire with open questions, so that they could share their overall impressions and evaluation of the Project. The level of participation in the experimental phase and in the activities on the platform has generally been high. Using “emotions” and an “enjoyable” learning method, for students, have both contributed to improve interpersonal relationships, develop and increase cooperation among students and between students and teachers. The method has also contributed to improve both the “attitude” and the “judgment” of the students both towards the subject and the topic, thus making both of them “appealing” and sufficiently favouring individual elaboration. The teachers appreciated both contents and didactic tools. They also fully recognised the “evocative” value of the Switches supplied by the Organisation.

Documents

THE EXPERIMENTATION CARRIED OUT IN GERMANY and … · also including the dramatic aspects as the battle fields of Spicheren, but also describing its inhabitants as honest and authentic