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Reflecting4Change

November 2019 – November 2021

Focus: Promoting the use of self-reflection tools to support innovation and systemic change in schools.

The project Reflecting for Change (R4C) aims at proposing an advanced support framework, as well as a set of core policy recommendations, to schools seeking to introduce a type of holistic change that will ensure a meaningful uptake of sustainable innovation, with an emphasis on achieving improved learning outcomes as set by the Europe 2020 strategy. In R4C approach, innovation is understood in terms of a school’s pathway to digital maturity (e-maturity) and its comprehensive relationship to the use of ICT, as well as a school’s pathway to openness demonstrated in its relationship with external stakeholders, in parental engagement, in fostering the well-being of its community as a whole, in its ability to combine the delivering of the curriculum with a study of local challenges, in its willingness and capacity to share its achievements with other schools and in its engagement with contemporary Responsible Research Innovation (RRI) challenges. 

The consortium organizes and coordinates large scale pilots with schools to evaluate the effects of, and systematically validate the proposed approach by implementing numerous activities and exploiting at the same time the opportunities offered by major ongoing initiatives and reforms, in Greece, Portugal and Italy. The project is implemented with a bottom-up approach in 300 primary and secondary schools, in urban as well as in rural areas while the sample for the validation of the proposed approach consists of 1,500 teachers and 15,000 students.

Deliverables

  • School Innovation Model
    • It defines the specific elements of innovation in schools (based on SELFIE and OSOS-SRT indicators).
  • School Profile and Analytics Framework
    • In order to populate school innovation profiles, the fields of Teaching, Learning and/or Academic Analytics is utilized in order to propose an overarching School Analytics framework towards providing holistic decision support to school leaders across all school layers. 
  • School Innovation Profiling Tool and the School Innovation Planning Recommender System
    • The school innovation profiling tool that is used to profile the innovation status of the school involved in the R4C pilot activities and for visualizing the different elements of the individual schools innovation profile for the school heads, and the school innovation planning recommender system is used for providing recommendations (and tracking the implemented innovation pathway) to school heads and teachers for strategic school innovation based on the school innovation profile.
  • School Innovation Support Mechanism
    • The consortium designs and sets in action a community support mechanism that empowers teachers and learners and facilitates innovation in the participating school settings. The core activity in this framework is to build a group of change leaders who will share leading innovative practices. 
  •  School Innovation Strategies 
    • This document describes the necessary strategies that will help every single school to improve, reinvent, supplement and transform according to its profile and identified needs.
  • School Innovation Roadmap
    • The roadmap is a set of guidelines that is informed from the implementation findings. It aims to support the schools to be engaged in the innovation process setting up their innovation pathways based on a self-reflection process that will help schools to identify their weaknesses and needs. 
  • School Innovation Academy 
    • The School Innovation Academy proposes a school innovation support service, which facilitates the process for envisioning, managing and monitoring change in school settings by providing a localised and flexible structure to follow.

Partners

Ellinogermaniki Agogi – Greece (coordinator)

ESHA 

European Distance and E-learning Network (EDEN)  – UK

ScienceView – EU level

University of Bayreuth (UBT) – Germany 

Institute of Educational Policy (IEP) – Greece

Fondazione Idis-Città della Scienza – Italy

NUCLIO – Núcleo Interativo de Astronomia – Portugal 

ESHA’s role

ESHA leads the work package on Dissemination & Sustainability and plays a key role in the work package on “From School Reflection to School Development” by having the responsibility for the preparation of the Training Materials and the on-line Support for School Heads and teachers. ESHA also coordinates the preparation of one of the key documents of the project, the School Innovation Strategies. ESHA is extremely well placed to activate its entire network of head teachers from around Europe, spreading and multiplying the impact of the proposed project by supporting and guiding head teachers and encouraging them to involve their schools to adapt the open culture promoted by R4C. R4C project is promoting a bottom-up approach as the consortium trusts that the practitioner-led innovation holds a unique potential to effectively introduce sustainable innovations in contrast with time consuming top-down approaches. ESHA offers a sustainable framework for introducing the project outcomes and findings to a large number of schools.

Project website: https://reflecting4change.eu

For more information on the project please contact luca.laszlo@esha.org