Stimulating environments for Professional Development and innovation in Schools

By Professor Åsa Morberg, Dean of faculty, University of Gävle

What is Climate? Who participated? Knowledge production for whom? Theoretical background The result What did we do? Why Climate? Voices from participants and leaders To sum up

Climate is the acronym for Contextual Learning in Management and Teaching.

Climate is a Comenius multilateral project Under lifelong Learning Programme of the

European Commission Carried out in RDC 9 (13) of ATEE Partcipants from Belgum, Germany, the

Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden and Tallin,

Colleges from RDC 9 In service learning and teachers in working team from schools in the countries

Belgum, Germany, Slovenia, Sweden, The Netherlands.

Teacher traineers School managers Head of department Teachers School advisors Consultants Colleges in other countries

Historical overview

Knowledge productivity

Corporate curriculum – organizational plan for learning, a set of work conditions they will experiences

Turn a work environment in to a learning environment – work place learning

Experiences of different kind Concepts Instruments

Strategies to make schools and work unit more effective and productive learning environments for teachers

The main instrument of the Project was a validated questionnaire, that investigated:

Professional learning processes, Element in the work environment (the

corporate curriculum) Performance in the area of coping with diversity

which can be applied by work-units in schools, for examples teachers in one subject, of one class or of a certain level

The questionnaire is an instrument for teachers to analyze their own work environment in order to explore if and to what extent it is a learning environment to teachers in schools.

A detailed feedback report was given to the work units stimulates the development of action plans for further improvment.

” it is an eye-opener to fill in this questionnaire. It shows how we could cooperate ….Better!”

” The feedback report was revealing.”

We have decided to invest more time in collective problem solving.”

Some examples om experiences from the Project leaders

Slovenia The Netherlands Sweden

Comparative projects are very useful To compare your country, with another

country, or even compare within your own country is productive.

Many new aspects on professional development came up

New aspects on School Development The questionnaire can be used

Visit the Climate webbsite ”Plato Climate”

If you like to use the questionnaire you may contact PLATO at Leiden University