The Hungarian Institute for Educational Research and Development organised an Erasmus+ KA2 project workshop conference on the 30th Aug 2018 called ’Student Voice – The bridge to learning’. The conference was held at The Hunfalvy János Bilingual Secondary Vocational School of Economics and Trade of BGSZC.
In the international project of the Erasmus + program started in 2016, five European Union countries (Netherlands, Ireland, Hungary, Scotland and Slovenia) have educational institutes for education and development and 15 schools. The aim of the project is to develop a methodological toolkit, training models and teacher training courses, and to develop good practices that enable students to actively participate in the management of their own learning activities. As a result, mutual trust between teachers and students can be enhanced. The personality of students can develop, while learning can be a joy to them.
Gábor Kiss, head of the EKE OFI Knowledge Management Directorate in his introductory speech, said that 2018 is an important year in the first place, because this year the graduates of the 21st century have been born, but their teachers were born in the last century. The tension between the new and the last century should not hinder the participants of the education to recognize and develop such up-to-date and key competences as pupils 'activity, ie students' decision-making responsibility in their own learning processes.
At the workshop conference, interested teachers could attend four different learning-by-doing workshops, each presented an aspect of the Student Voice project. Dr. Mária Szabó, an expert at EKE OFI, leader of the Student Voice project, ran a workshop called Well-being and Success workshop. Participants could work with their own well-being and discussed the impact of the school on student well-being and how it interacts with the success of the learning process. Anna Imre PhD, senior research fellow of the EKE OFI ran the workshop called ’The Voice of Students: Background of the Question and Research Experiences’, and discussed personalized teaching as a paradigm shift with the teachers visiting the conference. Julianna Varga and Katalin Görög, teachers of the Children's House showed different ways of how to get to know students in a playful way. Lucia Kákonyi is an English teacher at Hunfalvy and a former pedagocial development officer of OFI. In the workshop called ’Individual Learning Paths’, she talked about the possibilities of implementing the learning outcomes approach and using the learning standards and leveled tasks developed by the OFI. János Eőri, a Hunfalvy mathematics teacher, co-leader of the workshop, presented the practical application of the learning outcomes approach with the project of stress-free evaluation for the participants. Viktória Hamvas and Máté Ferencz 12th grade students shared their personal experiences in order to make the effectiveness of evaluation based on personalized learning even more credible for student participation and responsibility.
We can infer from the activity and feedback of the teachers participating in the workshop that it is important for students to develop their own learning processes responsibly in the 21st century.
