About Open schooling

90’ duration - support: slides

 

 

 

→ About Open schooling

Starting from the awareness that the current educational methods, and the traditional school model does not meet the needs of a fast-changing world, nor bring the skills needed to face the 21st century challenges, the Open School concept tries to envisage the school as an open space, connected to the local community around and to real-life contexts.  Following this understanding, an Open School is defined as an “open, curious, welcoming, democratic environment which supports the development of innovative and creative projects and educational activities. It is an environment which will facilitate the process for envisioning, managing and monitoring change in school settings by providing a simple and flexible structure to follow, so school leaders and teachers can innovate in a way that’s appropriate for school local needs. It will provide innovative ways to explore the world: not simply to automate processes but to inspire, to engage, and to connect (Sotiriou & Cherouvis, 2020).

Open Schooling means therefore transforming the school from a closed environment, to an innovative ecosystem interlinked with the development of thecommunity around the school and the territorial actors. Concretely, schools, in cooperation with other stakeholders, are encouraged to become agents of community well-being. Families are encouraged to become real partners in school life and activities. Professionals from enterprise, civil and wider society are actively involved in bringing real-life projects into the classroom (EU Commission, 2015).

Moreover, as a major infrastructure and integral part of the community fabric, schools can have a profound impact on the social, economic, and physical character of a neighborhood.

 

 

→  The pedagogical framework 

the Ecological Systems Theory

The Open Schooling idea is undoubtedly in debt with Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory, which conceptualizes the child/learner within a system of concentric and permeable environments (Bronfenbrenner, 1992). Bronfenbrenner deducted that all the five different levels of the environment should collaborate in the development of the child. Therefore, as Open Schooling explains, school should never been separated from the family and the rest of the society.

 

Democratic Education

There is much similarity between the Open School idea and the philosophy of democratic education, that is anchored on self-directed discovery, where learning can happen inside or outside of the classroom, but most often real-life experiences are encouraged following students’ intrinsic motivation and pursuing their interests. This “most appropriately meets the needs of the learner, the community and society. It does this through developing reflective individuals who are collaborative problem-solvers and creative flexible thinkers'' (EUDEC, 2020).

Below you can find some videos that explains what Democratic Education is, and its relationship with the external and local world.