In celebration of World Teacher’s Day 2018, the final international conference for the CARMA project was held in Brussels on 4th – 5th October.
The event brought together school principals, teachers, researchers and policy makers in the field of education from seven countries to discuss collaborative learning as a successful educational strategy, reinforcing its importance and relevance to school education and reducing early school leaving.
Held at the Royal Library of Belgium, the keynote speaker was Stijn Dhert, National UNESCO ASPnet coordinator for Flanders, assistant lecturer at KU Leuven and co-founder of ‘The Mystery of Education’ (Mysterie van Onderwijs). Conference participants experienced presentations, interactive workshops and visited GO! Atheneum Unesco Koekelberg school and ART BASICS for CHILDREN – ABC House Brussels during the two-day event. Participants had the chance to meet with local people to explore different practices that have been developed and proven to help foster interaction, creativity and reciprocal learning between teachers and students using non-formal learning. The conference also offered an informal setting to share best practices in innovating school environments, whilst offering a platform to share new ideas and suggestions on how to build better schools for the future.
“What the final conference for CARMA has demonstrated is that we can all learn from the impact that CARMA has made to teachers and students, that how you teach ultimately effects how you learn, and all schools should make it a priority to ensure the learning environment is a place where all can benefit,” said Rosina Ndukwe, Coordinator of the CARMA project, CESIE.
The project is co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission (Erasmus+ Key Action 3: Support for policy reform, Prospective Initiatives Forward-Looking Cooperation Project, addressing the Priority 3 “Promoting innovative, collaborative teaching and learning”)