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ERASMUS+

LINPILCARE NEWSLETTER 6

Erasmus + KA2 strategic partnership 2014-1-BE02-KA201-000432

LINPILCARE

www.linpilcare.eu

Word from the coordinator:Vzw Nascholing in het katholiek onderwijs Flanders – Belgium (Rik Vanderhauwaert)

Here under you can find newsletter 6 from the Linpilcare consortium. Linpilcare is an Erasmus+ KA2-project and aims to link practitioner inquiry with results of aca-demic research by using real professional learning communities. Working with the principles of Linpilcare in your organisation is a very sustainable way to realise 21st century education in your school.

The consortium has already been collaborating for 2 years and, thanks to the commitment of all partners, we can show the first results.

You’re invited at:• first international conference - Tartu Estonia: 3 - 5 October 2016• first international course - Tartu Estonia: 14 - 18 November 2016 - price € 950 (hotel, half board and tuition)• second international course - Tartu Estonia: 8 - 12 May 2017 - price € 950 (hotel, half board and tuition)• second international conference - Ljubljana Slovenia: 24 - 26 August 2017 - price €250 (registration, tuition and breaks)

You can subscribe by sending a mail to: Elke.Verpoorten@katholiekonderwijs.vlaanderen

Looking forward to meeting you at our courses or conferences.

September 2016

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PLC and improvement of student learning – the challengeAlmadaForma – Portugal (Cristina Loureiro dos Santos)

A professional learning community (PLC) involves much more than a staff meeting or group of teachers getting together to discuss something. A PLC represents the institutionalization of a focus on continuous improve-ment in staff performance as well as student learning. Called “the most powerful professional development and change strategy available,” PLCs, when done well, lead to consistent progress in student learning.The focus of PLCs is continuing “job-embedded learning,” rather than one-shot professional development sessions facilitated by outsiders, who have little accountability regarding the successful application of staff learning. In addition, PLCs emphasize teacher leadership, along with their active involvement and deep com-mitment to school improvement efforts. PLCs therefore benefit teachers just as much as they do students.

PLCs require whole-staff involvement in a process of intensive reflection upon instructional practices and de-sired student benchmarks, as well as monitoring of outcomes to ensure success. PLCs enable teachers to continually learn from one another via shared visioning and planning, as well as detailed critical investigation of what does and doesn’t work to en-hance student achievement.

Typically, this process includes six steps — study, select, plan, implement, analyze, and adjust. Prior to beginning the process, teachers review student achievement data to identify a specific standard or standards on which many students are not meeting goal.

During the first year of application, staff teams usu-ally need to complete several cycles of the six steps in order to lead the process. For the next few years, most schools also benefit from the support of an external facilitator.

PLCs work best when schools have the following best practices:1. A culture that supports collaboration;2. The ability to take an objective/macro view of school efforts; 3. Shared beliefs and behaviours.

A Collaboration-Friendly CultureCollaboration cannot be forced. Instead, school leaders should help all members of the school community feel involved and committed to the work. Some ways to do this include: articulating a clear, specific and cap-tivating vision; matching tasks and roles to staff members who are personally invested in them; expanding leadership roles; making coordination easy.To facilitate the coordination, one can consider tools such as online platforms (LMS or project-coordination). Observed in a different way, several things must stop happening in order to enable meaningful collaboration. Schools must stop pretending that only presenting teachers with standards is sufficient for ensuring that all students receive a common curriculum. Districts also need to make sure that the intended curriculum mat-ches what teachers are actually teaching. Furthermore, educators should stop making excuses for failing to collaborate.

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Course for PLC facilitators in the NetherlandsFontys – The Netherlands (Rutger van de Sande)

Project Linpilcare focuses on realizing evidence-informed teaching by stimulating teacher inquiry that is infor-med by scientific research findings and supported by the PLC as a platform for teacher professionalization. It is obvious that skilled facilitators are needed to help start teacher PLCs. In July, the first meeting of a course for PLC facilitators took place at Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Tilburg, the Netherlands. The 17 par-ticipants, mostly teacher educators, intended to develop their understandings of how professional learning communities work in practice and how their effectiveness could be increased. Themes that were covered were: (1) different types of PLC’s and their strengths and weaknesses, (2) teacher inquiry as a professional learning strategy, (3) quality criteria for PLCs and teacher inquiry, and (4) scientific research as source of inspi-ration. The course was also partly set up as a starting PLC so that participants experienced what working and learning in a PLC ‘felt’ like and how a facilitator could act during meetings to enhance thinking, learning and sharing. To complete the course successfully, participants needed to make arrangements for a starting PLC, either with experienced teachers in local schools or with teacher students who were enrolled in one of the teacher education programs.

The current (monthly) course meetings will take place up until January 2017. Possibly a new course will start in February 2017. More information can be found at https://fontys.nl/Professionals-en-werkgevers/Opleidin-gen-en-cursussen/Professionele-leergemeenschap-plg.htm (in Dutch).

After the first year of Linpilcare – midterm reflexionZavod Republike Slovenije Za Šolstvo – National Education Institute - Slovenia (Tomaž Kranjc – Barbara Le-sničar)

On 1st July 2016 the National Education Institute (NEI) organised the annual review after the first year of the Linpilcare project. Our lo-

cal partners (22 schools teams) came together to Slovenska Bistrica Secondary School to exchange experience and make plans for the second year of the project. They presented the key issues their learning communities have been facing. The participants paid special attention to the professional development of the teacher and the role of the school principals in this process. The participants agreed that in the 21st century teachers should be able to do both: respond to very complex circumstances which are created in school environment as well as be willing to participate in the lifelong learning process. That is why in education one should develop the 21st century skills: critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration and creativity and innovation. On the one hand the individual initiative is very important but on the other hand it is not enough in the modern society. That is why it is crucial that each school operates as the learning community. Professional learning communities should be the platforms for practitioner inquiry and the place where teachers can grow personally and professionally. One could claim that the role of the principals as mo-

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Keynote speaker at the Linpilcare conference in Tartu – 3 till 5 October 2016

Vzw Nascholing in het katholiek onderwijs Flanders – Belgium (Rik Vanderhauwaert)

The Linpilcare consortium is proud to announce that Dr. Nancy Dana will do the keynote on practi-tioner research during the Linpilcare conference in Tartu, Estonia. Dr. Nancy Dana is professor at the University of Florida (USA)

Dr. Dana ‘s research focuses on practitioner re-search as a professional learning strategy. She examines the ways this form of professional lear-ning impacts individual educators, as well as the schools in which they enact their practice.

Dr. Dana’s research encompasses three subthe-mes. The first is teacher leadership as experienced and new practitioners engage in inquiry and take evidence-based actions to promote student learning and school improvement. The second focuses on the contexts in which teachers learn to teach and expand their knowledge of effective practice. The third is related to the study of specific groups of educators.

Dr. Dana has received numerous awards, including the Association of Teacher Educator’s Distinguished Re-search in Teacher Education Award, and has published ten books and over 80 articles in professional journals related to her research.

tivators and coordinators in this kind of communities is of the utmost importance.

One of the key activities at the event was the round table discussion where the panel speakers looked for answers to some of the key issues of the 21st century education: the role of different project in the Slovenian school system and their impact on the pedagogical practice, how teachers if at all combine the evidence of the research of their own practice with the outcomes of the scientific research, what is proof in the pedagogical practice, the issues in relation to the critical friendship and the obstacles which may occur in daily practice, the place of the professional learning community etc.

Finally the participants emphasized the importance of teacher-student cooperation and the fact that know-ledge construction occurs through processes of interaction, negotiation and cooperation.

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Tartu – Welcome to the venue

University of Tartu – Estonia (Anita Kärner)

Tartu, with its population of 100,000 in an area of 38.8 square kilometres, is the second largest city of Estonia. Tartu, lying 185 kilometres south of Tallinn, is also the centre of Southern Esto-nia. The Emajõgi River, which connects the two largest lakes of Estonia, flows for the length of 10 kilometres within the city li-mits and adds colour to the city. The slogan of the City of Tartu, “City of Good Thoughts,” since 1999.

Tartu connects to the world through Tartu Airport and Lennart Meri Airport in Tallinn. The distance between Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, and Tartu is 186 kilometers, or about 2.5 hours by ex-press coach or car. Tartu Airport has connections to Helsinki. The distance between Tartu Airport and the city center is about 10 kilometers. Tallinn Airport has direct air links to numerous cities, including the nearby Baltic capitals, Riga and Vilnius. It is also easy to fly in direct from Amsterdam, Brussels, Copen-hagen, Dublin, Frankfurt, Gothenburg, Hamburg, Helsinki, Kiev, London, Moscow, Munich, Oslo, Paris, Prague, Stockholm, St. Petersburg and Warsaw. You can also reach Tartu easily from Riga Airport (245 km from Tartu). If you are flying AirBaltic, you can also use the free AirBaltic bus to get to Tartu from Riga.

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The first written records of Tartu date from 1030. Find a brief history of Tartu: http://www.tartu.ee/?lang_id=2&menu_id=9&page_id=787

Walk in the city centre:

http://info.raad.tartu.ee/teated.nsf/0/9B8350E731281FF9C225794F0030ACDB/$FILE/Tartu_kesklinn_brozyyr_INGL_WEB.pdf

Tartu University belongs to the top 3% of world’s best universities by ranking 400th in the QS World University Rankings 2015/16 and within the 351–400 range in the Times Higher Educati-on (THE) World University Rankings 2015-2016. Founded in 1632 by King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden; the first university to teach in Estonian since 1919. With its 4 faculties - Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Faculty of Social Sciences, Fa-culty of Medicine and Faculty Science and Tech-nology; 13,400 students (including over 800 international students from 70 countries) and 3,500 employees, The University of Tartu is the largest university in Estonia. The university has 71 partner universities in 27 countries. Accord-ing to information on the ISI Web of Science, the University of Tartu belongs to the top 1% of the world’s most-cited universities and research institutions in the fields of Clinical Medicine, Chemistry, Environment/Ecology, Plant and An-imal Science, Geosciences, Social Sciences (gen-eral), Biology and Biochemistry and Engineering. A total of 20 UT scientist belong to the top 1% of most quoted scientists in the world.

Follow the university virtual tour:

http://virtualtour.ut.ee/en