Educators’ Consultation in Hamburg – Exciting links between students' research questions and school development projects were created

Students from the Faculty of Education at the University of Hamburg have during the fall term attended a course on the topic of school development, where they also got familiar with qualitative and quantitative ways of exploring student participation and democratic school climate. During the next two terms these students will also have the opportunity to apply these skills and knowledge when evaluating the impact of development projects in Hamburg schools. 


During the 2-day workshop in Hamburg, 13-14 January, the research perspectives the students had developed based on their work in this course were successfully linked to concrete democratic school development projects in the Hamburg region.






The workshop was co-organized by the University of Hamburg, the Institute for Teacher Training and School Development in Hamburg and the European Wergeland Centre

The event was opened by Prof Andreas Körber and the German EDC/HRE coordinator Kurt Edler who both stressed the innovative quality of this event; introducing a new type of universitz-school cooperation.

Prof. Angelika Paseka presented the Project “Do Students develop School? Students and student representatives as co-actors of school development and system reform” which has been conducted within the framework of the Austrian Sparkling Science Programme.

More input on international perspectives, including the ICCS and the Council of Europe’s EDC/HRE Charter were provided by the German EDC/HRE coordinator Kurt Edler and EWC’s Claudia Lenz (see attached presentation).

The main part of the event involved an interactive process in which school teams, consisting of teachers and pupils (and some school leaders) “paired” with the students focusing on the following themes:

• Improvement of participation and democratic school culture through development of digital platform for pupils' self-representation
• Participatory development of educational module on EU related political topic
• Fostering pupils' ownership in “school without racism” project, related to service learning
• Developing pupils' feed-back impact in educational processes
• Improving pupils' awareness and use of participatory opportunities
  

Appointments for cooperative school development/research projects at four of the participating schools were made during the final day. More students will join the process in the spring term, when the research module over two semesters will start.

In the evaluation of the workshop, some participants expressed that they entered the process with skepticism towards the open and participatory approach but that this approach in fact had been turned into a “success story”.

A midway evaluation of the project is planned for June 2012. The EWC will follow the process and document its results continuously.