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MOBILE - MO-saiksteine der BI-ldung - LE-rnbiographien
Start date: Jul 1, 2014, End date: May 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Project members participating in job shadowing could observe quite different contexts of learning and biographies of learning. The partner institutions involved focus on using diverse methods and on offering various materials in order to interest students in and motivate them for a particular course of education. The partners: in Bonheiden (BE), in Tallinn (EE), in Leitir Moir (IR), in Liepaja (LV) and in Wroclaw (PL) stand for quite different levels of education: among them a society of senior citizens, a museum, a centre of education and universities. However, all the institutions concentrate their work on offering educational programmes. The focus is on proposing individual help and support in order to encourage students and reassure them that learning efforts are meaningful and important. In this context it is imperative to distinguish the target group (for whom?), their specific interests (which?), and conceive and offer respective measures (course, seminar / block seminar, platform work). The institutions concentrate on a professional performance and try to attract learners with tailor-made offers. People working for our society have realized that cultural differences are, indeed, of importance for their work: e. g. women in Ireland and Poland still marry relatively young and are engaged in taking on their roles of family-minded women for some time. During this time it is not important if they have completed their educational studies. When, however, they look for work on the job market after some years, they find that it is, indeed, important to have relevant qualifications. That means that there is a certain group of learners to be dealt with who have completely withdrawn from learning processes for some time and now are looking for ways to catch up. In Tallinn, project members observed that traditional roles are still present, particularly with learners coming from the environment of the Russian minority. Girls are granted a basic education, but beyond that they do not really need historical, cultural or artistic skills and knowledge. This is where the museum makes a special effort to appeal to children and parents alike in their additional educational programme and involve them all in an educational process. Here, the intergenerational offer was particularly interesting as it appeals to participants from different levels of knowledge and talents and approaches them by way of implementing an internal differentiation. The situation is different in Belgium where the society of senior citizens is active especially in places where migrants (including the 2nd and 3rd generations) have difficulties in achieving a level of education and/or taking up the following (higher) course of education. This is a system that is primarily focused on individual counselling, targeted advice and support of those young adults who are intellectually able to pass courses successfully, but often do not know how they can start a course, what formal conditions they have to observe, etc. During all the job shadowing scenarios project participants could observe situations which held interesting ideas for the KokoLeLe’s participants. New modules which are being planned can be conceived as interactive ones with the help of partners, small impulses can be adopted which will enable learners to deal with issues independently. Many suggestions have been made to prepare material differently, more individually. However, the question remains whether the society KokoLeLe with its few honorary members can actually accomplish so much work. The idea is that based on the job shadowing scenarios all partners may compile a guide which will document “ways of learning” and “biographies of learning”. The concept of this guide has still to be worked out further, the observations of the job shadowing scenarios are to be documented and continued in the process. But this can only be done by all partners together and has not yet been discussed conclusively. The meetings have succeeded in sharpening people’s sensitivity for decisions concerning education. The necessity for comprehensive counselling and support during the process of learning has been recognized during the meetings and respective guidelines and measures are to be developed. Newly conceived modules may eventually be applied for helping and supporting refugees. The co-ordination in the local and regional context will still take place. Observations and Improvements A highly important observation obviously made by all colleagues who visited the partner institutions is that everywhere people are “moving step by careful step”. All measures, offers and counselling proposals were about taking the next step, finishing the immediate process of learning and not giving up what had been achieved so far. Teachers often worked with learners (between 6 years => museum in Estonia / 40 years => educational institution in Ireland) who were insecure and frustrated, had little trust in their own faculties and got little support from their social surroundings. That encouraged our colleagues to go for small, short-term aims instead of striving for “the big hit” at once. Thus it means a success when a student comes for his next lesson, when communication can be established and maintained per email or what’s app in small steps, when small counselling units can be conducted and accomplished successfully (=> which questions can be answered with the help of the material? => how can I structure the source? => what information do I need to take the next step?). It was in this context that advice given by the partners at the university in Wroclaw was highly appreciated: they called attention to the aspects “communication and marketing”. The partners in Wroclaw rely on the assumption that simple structures and direct address will accomplish more with students than complex flyers and texts drowning them in additional information. At the university in Wroclaw teachers care about their students in two respects: on the one hand there is a well-functioning mentoring programme, on the other hand they revise and edit material at the university’s own graphic workshop so that students enjoy working with these particular materials. Each student feels appreciated and has access to many technical gadgets to help him shape his studies in step with actual practice. Our partners work in the field of “communication and marketing”. There is a conference room with CCTV. This device can provide the “chairperson” with additional information from outside the room during a “sales talk”, etc. The project members had the opportunity to visit and test this room in 2014 as well as 2016 – both, as people involved in the action inside and outside the room. Each time they were equally fascinated by the various possibilities of informing, influencing and guiding a sales talk – fascinated, in the end, by the act of manipulation which they could experience and try for themselves. The University Liepaja is a small university which formerly was a college. This partner has become a member of the current project at short notice as the partner in Cyprus stopped working in the second year when the musicological society dissolved. Since that made job shadowing impossible in Cyprus project partners went to Latvia instead. The observations at the Sambucusforum in Belgium, too, were highly profitable for a group of four young women (relatively new colleagues in our society) who went there for job shadowing. For they have experienced that members of this group simply shared “success stories” from their working lives – just as they did “stories of failures”. They talked about what worked out for them and what not, and together with their guests they have found criteria which characterize a successful development or are typical of a negative result. Some biographies of learning show that learners have been disappointed or been left alone early on. In the meantime we at KokoLeLe have conducted interviews based on these new insights and one student e. g. said that while attending regular schools (first grammar school, then secondary modern school, then comprehensive school) she had repeatedly been asked to “learn correctly”, “to learn more”, and “to concentrate on working”. But NEVER had anybody told her how to do it. She had sat at home for hours, stared at books, riffled through them, read them, learned by heart – but all this had not brought about the desired success. Thereupon her parents and she herself had come to the conclusion that she simply was “too stupid”. Yet nobody had ever explained to her “learning strategies” or “mnemonic devices”. She has not learned what brainstorming means and she does not know how to examine and compare approaches to solve a problem. Such a feedback is highly important in order to improve one’s own learning programme since it is precisely the faults which are revealed by the interviewees that may lead to improve and enlarge the offer of the programme. Currently the executive board of KokoLeLe discuss the question whether there is enough material to produce a short film: “10 Tips!” (provisional title) – but we know from experience that such projects require a lot of work and time. The project depends on what our human resources will be like in autumn and what kind of agreement we can come to with our partners.
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