This post summarises
ADEPTT pilot experience in Asturias, a spanish region with a well-known
reputation for Enterprise Education in all levels of the education system. A
regional action plan, “Off the shelf” solutions (mainly in the shape of
mini-company programmes), fantastic-looking teaching resources, a vision
of the entrepreneurial “übermensch” with its
long wishlist of skills attached and specific teacher training to make
this happen in schools are the main features of what’s become the well-trodden
path of Enterprise Education in Asturias. Stepping out of it was our main
motivation to participate in ADEPTT project and this is how we’ve done it.
Training
proposal was built bearing in mind the four learning outcomes agreed by ADEPTT
partnership in a previous meeting in Berlin in February 2013. Thus, upon the successful completion of this module we
expected participants would be able to:
1.
Explore and
understand creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship development in an
educational context.
2.
Identify
research and appraise an entrepreneurial opportunity for teaching a particular
subject, and pitch the idea to peers and/or other stakeholders.
3.
Prototype
(produce a novel and fully functional model) and test the idea engaging
potential users and real stakeholders.
4.
Reflect upon and
evaluate the application of the entrepreneurial opportunity.
A common assessment protocol was derived from this list of learning
outcomes. A rubric was created to enable course participants rate their
confidence on achieving these learning outcomes before and after the training
took place. Previous work had led to the identification of the four basic
building blocks of enterprising teaching: Creativity, Reflective Practice,
Community Engagement and Learning Environment (CRCL) and course contents were
designed accordingly in order to fit this model. All piloting partners agreed
to stick to the Learning outcomes, CRCL model and assessment protocol as
essential ingredients in all pilots. As long as these ingredients were present
partners were given freedom to design and craft their own training proposals. Back in Asturias, some decision-making was
needed.
Preaching
to the converted was the first thing we wanted to avoid. Thus a hazy title was
deliberately chosen. The pilot course
was announced in the website of our partner in crime, CPR Nalón-Caudal, one of
the branches of the Professional Development Service for teachers in
Asturias under the hazy title: “ADEPTT.
A methodology for the design of innovative educational experiences.” The
strategy bore fruit and a mixed group of 15 teachers and education
professionals signed up (Primary
(3), Secondary (6), VET (4), Career Counsellors (2).All of them taught
non-economic subjects and just one of
them acknowledged previous experience in EE.
Learning outcomes 2 and 3, asking teachers to
identify opportunities, pitch, prototype and test ideas with potential users
and stakeholders was an absolute “must” in our list of priorities and fits
neatly with the “turn ideas into action” imperative so dear to Enterprise
Education experts and policymakers at European level. As it happens VALNALON
has recently devoted some time to experiment with the use of Design Thinking to
bring forward innovation in the classroom so the use of some of the strategies
just came as natural coupled with elements of Project Based Learning that were
also added to the mix.
While designing the activities we had a sort of
Bovine Excrement Bingo in mind and we committed to do our best to avoid terms
such as: Entrepreneurial spirits and
haunted houses, narrative fallacies in the shape of entrepreneurial success
stories, wishlists and pseudoscientific tests of entrepreneurial skills, Zen
quotes and creepy tales about the upcoming overtake of the world by the
Chinese. We were not brave enough to
avoid the Post-It Imperative though (we did not want to offend the whole
pantheon of entrepreneurial gods) but one thing we took great care in was providing
some theoretical underpinning or evidence-based research AFTER any practical
exercise (involving Post-Its or not) included in the training.
The
training took place in April and May 2013 and consisted of 12 contact hours
distributed in 3 different sessions plus 8 hours of homework. A lapse of time was deliberately introduced in
between sessions (a week between session 1 and 2, 4 weeks between session 2 and
3) We did this in order to avoid “premature articulation” and jumping to
conclusions too quickly. To guide project
participants through the process we tapped into the “School as Basecamp”
concept first coined by Learning Futures and kind of extended it into a sort of
climbing expedition metaphor divided in 4 stages:
April, 23rd (4 hours)
Basecamp: Firstly participants were asked to share stories
about their perceptions and experience in teaching, work context, most
memorable moments, things they are interested in. This is all about Reflective
Practice, one of the elements of the CRCL model. At this stage participants
realise their backpack is not empty at all. It’s got some interesting gear that
will be of great use during the climb. With this information basecamp was set up and it
was time to start identifying opportunities or summits worth to be climbed. This
was an individual task although some participants with shared interests worked
in teams. At this particular stage he role of creativity in education (another
element of the CRCL model), divergent and convergent thinking strategies and basic
principles and stages of design thinking were presented to teachers. Day 1 comes to an end and participants are
asked to observe and engage with people in order to build empathy and spot an
adequate opportunity that could be transformed into a project idea. They were given a week to interview at least
5 different users and/or stakeholders.
May, 7th (4 hours)
Possible climbing routes.
Interviews and observation during the previous week led to the framing
of the challenge they wanted to tackle, or metaphorically speaking, the peak they
wanted to climb. Participants were asked to switch to divergent mode and
produce at least a basic draft of 3 different ideas, 3 possible climbing routes
to reach the summit. These 3 ideas were further enriched with comments from the
rest of course participants using the 6-3-5 technique. This exercise worked as
a fantastic introduction to a research paper on the benefits of parallel
prototyping in the generation of creative and disruptive ideas and the need to
avoid premature articulation. Convergent
thinking led to idea selection using a dot-sticking technique where teachers
were asked to consider the impact of different criteria such as desirability,
feasibility and viability in the “innovativeness” of the ideas selected.
Attempt to summit . At this
stage participants were expected to prototype selected ideas and pitch them to
their peers. Four key questions are
introduced in order to help teachers scaffold their ideas: “What needs to be
done next?”, “What do we already have?”,
“ How are your going to engage your users?” and “Who can help us?” Community
engagement was introduced through a stakeholder mapping exercise and the
question “How Might We Connect students Personal Interests with Academic
Contents?” sparked a discussion about the changing landscape and
blurring boundaries of Learning Environments.
In the session wrap-up teachers were reminded they had four weeks to
venture into the wild and make an attempt to the summit no matter how high they
reach.
June, 4th (2 hours)
Back to the basecamp. Four weeks later we sat around the
fireplace and the bruises and the ragged clothes were shown, enthralling tales
of avalanches and storms, sleepless nights out in the cold were told and in
some cases proofs of summit were provided.
Projects devised by teachers covered a wide range of topics. To give you a flavour Nieves, a primary
school teacher came up with the project idea “Fuera de…/Out of…) which aims at
developing primary school kids mathematical competence using real contexts.
Carlos, a secondary school PE teacher combined coaching and technology to craft
a emotional education project for year11-year12 called “Emotional Zombies” and
Andoni, a VET teacher in the Basque Country managed to design and carry out
KUDEA-TU, a P2P teaching project where a group of VET students organised a
creativity workshop for Secondary Schools. But above all, this was an
opportunity to discuss and evaluate the whole ADEPTT learning experience.
ADEPTT is
not a shining path for enterprising teaching, not even a success in the making.
It’s just a prototype from which we have derived some useful lessons on how to
expand the battlefield of enterprise education in close collaboration with
teacher participants in the training to whom we will be always grateful. Training will be done again in Autumn 2013.
In the meantime some changes in structure and content will be introduced so as
to make sure teachers have enough time to put into practice their project ideas
throughout the course.
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