 Hello again everyone and thank you for participating in this webinar offered by the European School Education Platform, the European Commission's platform for school education in Europe. My name is Magelena and I will be your host for today. So for this webinar we have invited Mr Fernando Seis who is a university lecturer with a strong knowledge and background on the field of education and he will help us explore the different methodologies that assist the skills development in the classroom emphasizing on the concept of academic optimism. Before we begin again I would like to remind you that this is a recorded session and moreover towards the end of the webinar we will serve with you an evaluation form. This we kindly invite you to fill in and finally we invite you to share your thoughts and questions through the tab and we will reply to all of them and discuss them at the end of the webinar. Thank you all. Fernando the floor is yours now. You can now start sharing your screen if you want. Thank you indeed Magelena and thanks everybody for attending this webinar. I'm really thrilled to have the opportunity to share some of my ideas and works with you today and I hope some of them may be interesting or useful or at least thought-provoking so that we can think about them and we can take some of these ideas to our schools and classrooms. I have prepared a short presentation I would like to share with you if you don't mind and as you know today's webinar is titled the schools as skill generating environments and most of the ideas are included in this title. We will be talking about skills and how we can generate and help our students develop skills but we will we are talking about this skill generating process from the school perspective. Obviously first of all thank you indeed for being here and attending this webinar. Please feel free to use the chat to write your questions and to write your ideas or to share your worries about this topic. Well I would like to start with something we all share that something we all agree upon ancient declaration 2015 stated that education is the public good a fundamental human right and a basis for guaranteeing the realization of other rights but this basic idea education as a fundamental human right is not just that by attending a school you are enjoying that human right in fact is skills development which is the basic key to other basic human rights literacy numeracy the capacity to interact with other people the capacity to use technology those skills are the keys to open the doors for all our basic human rights so it's not just a question of being there at school it's a question of school helping you and helping our students to develop skills successfully. In fact students as the OECD stated will need to apply their knowledge in unknown and evolving circumstances and it's for that that they will need a very broad range of skills including and this is what we are going to be talking about cognitive and metacognitive skills for example critical thinking creative thinking learning to learn or self-regulation but also social and emotional skills empathy self-efficacy or collaboration for example and practical and physical skills for example using new information and communication technology devices or also to be able to use their bodies in the way in the best way to perform the different tasks they have to realize during the day so skills are needed for life and they are going to be applied in unknown and evolving circumstances but the problem is that in 1966 the Coleman report in the United States definitely stated that socioeconomic factors determine learning achievement and that the teaching institutions are unable to counteract the impact of these factors the Coleman report 1966 and this is one of the longest standing statements and truths in our profession in education so socioeconomic factors determine learning achievement well this is the end of this webinar isn't it we cannot do anything against these socioeconomic determining factors or should we I mean do we have to fight the Coleman report or do we have to accept it and comply with it and say okay we cannot do anything about it what do you think do we finish here or should we go on with the webinar well obviously the question is how can we teach and how can we help our students develop their skills despite the Coleman report failure at school is not genetic it is a social construction it's something we build or we do not build at our schools at our cities at our societies school failure is not genetic it's a social construction for example according to the educational philosopher Gert Wiesta there are three domains of educational purpose the first of these three domains is called by Wiesta subjectification and and the call is be a self be a self the learners develop their own sense of initiative their own sense of responsibility rather than being objects to the actions of others so the question is how can we help our students subjectify themselves despite the Coleman report the second domain of purpose of educational institutions is qualification that is the transmission and acquisition of knowledge skills and dispositions so the second question is how can we promote our students qualification despite the Coleman report and thirdly socialization according to Gert Wiesta's proposal socialization meaning the construction of identity and oneself's location in relation to others in relation to traditions and social practices these are the three domains according to Gert Wiesta subjectification qualification socialization so how can we promote subjectification skills qualification skills and socialization skills in a school context and despite the Coleman report that is the question we want to try and answer today learning is not a simple process learning in fact is quite a very complex process according to Nude Iris two different processes which are with which are woven together must happen for us to learn anything the first one or learning the first one imply an external interaction process between the learner and his or her social culture or material involvement so first a process an interaction between the self and the environment and then an internal psychological process of elaboration and acquisition of that interaction which has previously occurred so these two processes are in fact how skills appear skill development happens in and I love this expression point of service sessions that is activities which are experienced by the learners in which teachers staff offer high quality instruction and high quality content but the role of the staff of the teachers the faculty is to promote the due engagement in that learning situation promoting tins interest behavior and the level of challenge that they experience so skill development happens as a consequence as a consequence of this point of service sanctions so in this new paradigm we are not mere content providers teachers are not mere content providers teachers are something else a bit more complex but also I would say much more satisfying that being just a mere content provider in this new paradigm learning is understood to happen as a consequence of change learning means change as a consequence of participating in a situation and an experience that allow us to acquire new knowledge or develop new skills so learning is change because of that participation in a learning situation in a learning experience so a new vocabulary for this new paradigm teachers create and use the affordances which surround the learning situation the possibilities the opportunities which is what hides after that expression of affordances and the teacher's role is to provoke investment students investment what is investment well we are at our research group we have we are stopping about talking on motivation because we want to emphasize that motivation is not enough in the 21st century it's not that your students bring motivation in the backpack they must invest in the learning situation they must invest their resources they must invest their their cognitive resources they must invest their time they must invest their interest so they must put into play all they have so to get out and so to bring out of the learning situation all the learning opportunities and that means being aware of the assets and the constraints of the learning situation and it means to provide the students with agency and it's that agency which provokes learning so a new vocabulary for learning in the 21st century and also new questions how to provoke investment well let's try and answer these three questions can learners make sense of the learning experience in the light of their own knowledge beliefs and experiences and the situation in which they find themselves can they make sense of the learning experience a second question about ownership does the learner own the learning activity which provokes the learner's mental and physical investment in it does the learning situation belong to the learner or is it is the learner an external person someone who is not in control of the situation and finally agency does the learning situation and activity allow creation or intervention in our environment so sense making ownership agency these are the new words the new vocabulary for learning in the 21st century agency is particularly important because agency understood as the capacity of people to act upon to influence and to transform their activities and circumstances is the basic element for learners to make use and to get the most of the learning situation so thinking in terms of agency is what is what allow our students to develop their skills and in that sense there is a radical change in what teaching means I really agree with this quotation many instructors have now moved away from a sold out of traditional lecture with the occasional short answer question to the class in which students just listen repeat and occasionally apply toward a modified menu of pedagogical platforms meaning those pedagogical platforms different ways of teaching and in those new pedagogical platforms students are active participants in the learning process in fact what lies behind that quotation is the answer to this question by Misuko Eater in 2016 why should be should we be sitting kids down in rows to learn maths in the abstract when it is both more engaging and effective to learn it in the real world or through meaningful social activity that is the question which makes us teachers need new teaching platforms new ways of understanding teaching so that we can bring efficacy to our teaching task David Perkins in his book making learning whole explained this new way of teaching as playing the the whole game and he wrote in settings of learning playing a whole game a whole game is generally some kind of inquiry or performance in a broad sense and it involves program solving explanation argument evidence strategy skill craft and often something something gets created a solution an image a story an essay a model so this is the new paradigm in which teachers are not just content providers they are there the people who design the whole game who write the rules and then give out that game to their students so that the students can develop their agency and through their agency the skills that they need and in order to design that whole game and make the educational experience more immersive more experiential more real world and more hands-on the possibilities are numerous for example experiential learning challenge based learning project based learning inquiry driven learning activity focused team based case based gamified adaptive or personalized learning so many new possibilities to design learning situations let's go through some of them only some of them those who are under the umbrella term of inductive teaching methods inductive teaching methods normally start from a question or a problem which is settled within a context and they create a real game but with complex and open-ended real world problems and they offer a context for the learner to understand the the problem and in that context students must self direct must be proactive must collaborate must cooperate with other students and the possibilities are many in this context for example inquiry based learning which is a pedagogy which enables students to experience the process of knowledge creation coming from a question we enter an inquiry we enter a process of discovery of bringing together information to find an answer or to find a solution for our question or problem based learning which as you know appeared to help medical school students learn basic science knowledge in a way that would be not only more lasting but also useful in clinical context so problem based learning was not just an occurrence that teachers might have had it was a way a very efficient way of preparing doctors in order to be more able to stand in clinical situations or case based and problem based situations in which authentic cases are studied and analyzed normally in a real world setting ending which the students must apply basic knowledge in order to solve that case or to solve that problem or move into vocational and training education work based learning which means to create the learning situation in a workplace and try to solve the problems which normally happen in a workplace and in order to do that the student the students the learners must apply knowledge from different fields from different subject matters they may they may be studying so work based learning means solving real work problems in a workplace situation so these all these elements may also be related to what we normally call project based learning and in fact when we are asked about our proposal for skill development our answer is threefold we believe that the sum of project based learning together with multiple literacies and a whole school approach can help our students develop their skills in a more efficient way well project based learning is a cycle of discovery is a cycle of design is a cycle of uh getting hands into real life problems project based learning starts with engagement starts when both teachers and learners face a driving question or a driving problem or a driving situation in which they have to solve a challenge they are facing and after that there is a cycle of planning and producing which means searching for and managing information then knowledge building and skill development and with that knowledge and those skills they must create some sort of final project and after that we have the two final steps of closure and dissemination well first of all the challenge in fact at that step the challenge is where we must think back about those three questions we have stated a few minutes ago ownership sense making agency well is the challenge and consequently the project relevant to my students does it promote ownership sense making an agency that is those are the questions to consider when designing the challenge of our project planning is the moment in which we invoke the knowledge we need to solve the question the driving question or the problem because in at that step planning is where we ask ourselves how we can face the challenge and what we may need to solve that challenge and normally in a school context or in a learning context what we need our knowledge and skills and that is a moment when we need to read when we need to write when we need to talk to other students to learners to agent and people to external people who may help us build our knowledge and build our skills and after that we apply that content knowledge and those skills into the implementation phase in which we create the final product and in fact one of the features of project based learning is that the creation of products of real products maybe analogical maybe digital are of real importance because they help the products the final product helps learners to integrate and reconstruct their knowledge the process of the discovery and to improve in case we are in a higher education context or in a workplace context to improve their professional skills and increase their interest in the discipline and the ability to work with other people and then after that we must devote some time to the closure that is to reconsider what we have been able to do and how we were able to do it and after the closure we must disseminate what we have done so that other people may learn from us and also so that we can be assessed through self-evaluation co-evaluation or hetero evaluation and in case you may be thinking that project based learning is another occurrence obviously project based learning is one of the most well-known pedagogical strategies it's more than 100 years old and there are plenty of research evidence about the validity of project based learning i bring here a publication 2019 revisiting the effects of project based learning on a student's academic achievement it's the latest meta analysis about project based learning that we can find in the literature and the results are quite conclusive the meta analysis of 20 years of research present a quantitative effect size estimate of 0.71 based on individual studies so we have evidence of a medium to large positive effect on a student academic achievement in project based learning in comparison to traditional instruction and also the results of project based learning are better now than 20 years ago which means that we teachers as a profession we are learning on how to descend we are improving how we design projects and we are much more effective now that in the 20th century concerning projects we are improving our professional skill too in case you want to design projects we created a canvas that you can find there on that website i'm sharing with you right now using the chat which i find quite empty that's it now i can read the chat and on the chat you have the url to download that canvas both in Spanish which is our mother tongue and English and in that canvas you can you can use that canvas to design creatively projects and and then digital transformation because we are not teaching any longer in an analog in an analogical context in an analogical setting we are in the midst of a digital revolution perhaps we could make the distinction between digitization digitalization and digital transformation and and it means digitalization is when we use digital products just using a pvf is digitization but we are not in that moment any longer we are not on that position any longer digitalization is when the processes the teaching and learning processes are being digitalized and we are establishing contact with our students through digital means and we are creating knowledge together through digital means and we are assessing our students through digital means and digital transformation is when the whole school is changing to become digital so many possibilities because educational technologies are a real challenge for education using learning management systems using social media and collaborative technologies using curating evidence in and showcasing learning and professional capabilities the digital communication the use of mobile applications assessment and evaluation in digital contexts presentation and learning resources through digital tools and finally the use of learning objects and resources all of these are real challenges for us as teachers and the problem is that there are a wide number of reports that are telling our institutions that if we want to be relevant in the 21st century we need to embrace the opportunities afforded by technology particularly in relation to teaching and learning practices and really happy to know that many of you are participating in e-tweening experiences are participating in Erasmus Plus digitally concerned projects because we must as a school as a learning institution keep relevant in digital terms but the problem is that many of our efforts are being expended trying to replicate models of in person schooling we could say 20th 20th century schooling in digital spaces and we learned and somehow our students suffered many of these experiences during the pandemic and the lockdowns online and virtual environments demand new types of learning content and new pedagogies it's not just to move what I did what I was doing in in person schooling to digital platforms but the problem is but the real problem is that we have constraints we have limits and we also have problems and as Michael Fulham writes when we try something radically new there are immediate and practical losses while the potential benefits are longer term and theoretical so asking anyone to change is asking too much only if at if our schools we have strong social pool factors we will change only with very strong social ties we will change and we will adapt ourselves to this crazy 21st century because in fact people's capacity to cooperate as richer senate wrote is much greater and more complex than what normally institutions allow so we are much more powerful as people who want to cooperate at schools than what the institution normally allow and that is how I want to end this webinar building on our capacity to cooperate because in fact more than individual actions schools are the lever to generate skills for all our students it's not the individual teacher but the whole school who can affect the whole childhood in fact children and adolescents need a balanced set of cognitive social and emotional skills in order to achieve positive outcomes in a school in work and in knife but how can we build that balanced set if it all depends on individual teachers on the lottery of having a good or bad teacher if we rely on that lottery for our students and learners to build this balanced set the likelihood is that we will be unfair and we will build we will be building inequity at schools if we rely on individual teachers we'll be building inequity because in fact research indicates that interventions are more successful when they are integrated into everyday practice into the school culture in when they engage the whole stuff when they reinforce the skills outside the classroom in the hallways in the playgrounds when they invoke the importance of that partnership with the families and when they also coordinate work with outside agencies the whole school the whole community to attend the whole child a whole school approach aims to work to integrate scale development into all those moments using the collaborative power people may have in the field of health and education at that point in which health and education meet which is so important to get successful important educational outcomes there is a model there is a theory the whole school whole community whole child model which is telling us that we must focus on the student but at the same time remain we must think in terms of whole school and community to offer the children all the resources for them to develop their skills in fact in this a whole school whole community whole child model they are using these 10 point element to promote health and education and we should think in similar terms to promote skills because in fact all these elements are important also for a skill development so let's finish talking about academic optimism academic optimism is a label evidence based research based to make us think about our own institutions to make us think about our own schools so so what is academic optimism well let me tell you what it is not academic optimism is not related to being an optimistic person we are not concerned with you being optimistic or pessimistic be as you prefer to be if you like being optimistic that's okay for us if you want to remain pessimistic about the future hey that's okay for us too because this is not related to being optimistic or pessimistic it's a bit more complex in fact academic optimism is the teacher's optimism about teaching and learning in their own school so it's the way we think about teaching and learning at our schools and in fact schools can improve despite the Coleman report schools can improve in spite of low socioeconomic status by cultivating an optimistic perspective shared by teachers academic optimism is malleable can be learned and can be increased and we can make it grow and provoke better outcomes thanks to our academic optimism because there is a positive relationship a positive correlation between academic optimism and achievement and the higher academic optimism is the higher school achievement learning achievement learning outcomes are so there is a positive correlation these two concepts academic optimism and achievement are not only compatible but also complementary and and it's not just a question of the whole school being optimistic academically optimistic but also when we consider teacher after teacher it the same happens with academic optimism studies not only of a school academic optimism but studies of teacher individual teacher academic optimism also suggests that this is a crucial factor for fostering student academic achievement and and what is academic optimism well it's made up of three elements three factors teachers collective efficacy the academic emphasis of the institution and trust and let me start with trust because in fact trust is the moderator in the research terms a moderator is a factor which may rise or put down the other two factors and trust is the moderator in academic optimism when teachers create a safe and trusting environment students feel comfortable to take chances and learn from their mistakes we cannot have agency without trust we cannot have ownership without trust we cannot create efficient appropriate learning situations without trust in students fostering trusted trusting relationships between teachers and a student is one of the most potent ways a school leader can create the conditions for innovation in their schools so trust is the cornerstone for academic optimism and academic optimism is the key for this whole school approach to skill development but after trust we need teacher efficacy that is we want teachers to believe that they are able to affect student learning to help them to be that scaffolding their students need to set higher expectations for our students to exert greater effort from them and to be more resilient when things are difficult and also when teachers have a great knowledge have great knowledge of teaching and learning then they are also more appreciated and they are more effective in their teaching task this is a quotation by Linda Darling Hammond the North American expert on education teachers with greater knowledge of teaching and learning and finally teacher sense of academic emphasis and this is the end of this academic optimism factor teachers sense of academic emphasis or sometimes called academic press is the degree to which teachers find ways to engage students in inappropriate academic tasks is the way we move our students to the best possible learning outcomes so these are the three elements of academic optimism trust collective efficacy academic emphasis and when school academic optimism rises we consist we have consistently been fine we have consistently found that these promotes student achievement regardless of a student population or nationality so this is the key to solve the the Coleman report this is to the way to fight the results of the Coleman report academic optimism and a whole school approach to a skilled development and that is and that is the role that is a task we have ahead to build a future in which academic academic optimism is possible at our schools and a future in which we turn as our schools into enabling settings into enabling institutions for teachers students and families so that they can achieve the best learning results through these elements of academic optimism there is not just one future but many possible futures and now it depends on us and our present actions to think and create the the best possible future for all of us so the future is open I hope some of the ideas that we have that I have presented maybe useful for you maybe interesting and relevant for you and now let's start imagining let's smart let's start designing our schools to be as powerful as possible to develop skills and to become enabling institutions for academic optimism thank you indeed and Maria Lena the floor is yours to to see if there are some questions or or some debate in the chat indeed we have some pretty nice comments here teachers are mostly concerned about the time that they need to implement all those changes they are so they are very concerned about this and I think it's normally if you could provide us some input on that sure because in fact time is probably the most important factor to consider if any process of change will be realistic and then to consider the likelihood of its final result the question is that any innovation or any process of change in school terms is plurian well that is we must think always in long periods of time because in fact there is a very interesting concept in the philosophy which is called heterochronicity which means that there are some fields which go forward very fast for example technology we are learning to use chat gpt now and perhaps there is something which will appear tomorrow and will change everything radically once again but some fields change in a very slow pace that is with what happens with school so any school which is trying to implement any process of change cannot think in terms of a semester we must think in terms of one academic year two academic years three academic years and I would even suggest that any process of change should start with a zero year that is a year in which nothing happens apparently but we are just building the change and we devote that year in which everything runs as always to read together to talk together to design but not to implement to write down but not to change anything to have all the elements gathered together in that zero year and then on the following year we start implementing changes for example we have worked with literally hundreds of schools implementing project-based learning in Spain and we always demanded them to be calm keep calm keep calm use that zero year let's watch other colleagues work let's visit other schools let's read because we are a reading profession zero year and then a plurianual perspective towards change and in fact time is the basic word to be successful in any process of innovation no this is a very useful advice because sometimes we expect change to happen the next day certainly yeah and it never happens in education and when it happens and in terms of sustainability that change is quite questionable it normally happens that these rapid changes provoke more problems than solutions and normally they are changed back to the previous situation in a very short period of time so it's much better to to move slowly but in a very sustainable way yeah this is a very useful advice small changes on step at the time and as you mentioned during the whole webinar collaboration is a very important collaboration and effective communication between teachers I would really say Mariana that before any change we must build up those strong social ties that we mentioned using Michael Fulans statement strong social ties if we have an education on institution schools or non-formal non-formal institutions in which the faculty the teachers are strong together they have a real commitment to change they they have made a diagnosis okay which are our problems seriously and and how can we solve it let's design let's think together the possible changes the possible results that we want to achieve in two years time so if this group of teachers are really well packed together and cooperation has been built using informal and formal ways of creating a cooperation there is an author Mariana called Nancy Dixon and Nancy Dixon explains how important corridors corridors are to to to build strong social ties if your corridors are empty you have a problem because people are not sharing knowledge if along the corridors and it's important to to use those informal situations to create knowledge in the community of practice which is a concept which has not appeared but it is so so important we are communities of practice and we must think about our practices the results that our practices are are having and how we can change it and that takes time going back to the first question indeed and I would like to read a last comment from Athanasia and hands-on activities connections with the community critical thinking metacognitive activities through students creations are ancient terms no and they are very stable over the over the time and the means to implement them change but the principles are there what do you think on that yeah in fact at this time at this time of the history of of educational sciences we are quite sure that there is a very strong line which is inviting us at least to enrich a traditional instruction with other ways of teaching and some of the ways have been mentioned during the presentation some of them have been mentioned by by these colleagues and we have so many evidences of its efficacy the problem is that sometimes we do not work in a context which enables us to be adventurous and we need to be a little bit adventurous and and think in this semester I'm going to use a week for projects we used that strategy when we when we were invited by a school who was interested in project-based learning but at the same time reluctant to change many things we we told them use just one week a year only one nothing bad may happen to your students where if you waste a week and then analyze that week consider what you as a teacher have learned consider the the satisfaction that you have provoked in your students so we need to be at least a bit adventurous and try new ways of teaching and I'm really sure I'm really sure that many of our colleagues here have felt that sense of being brave enough at some time of their profession to change something in the way they were teaching we need that sensation of bravery but also we need enabling structures and I insist on that because enabling structures are a result of polices polices are a result of consensus at educational institutions it's not magic it's a result of willingness to let teachers be brave thank you so much and thank you everyone as my colleagues served with you we have a survey we would like you to fill in if you have some time I am reserving the link with you on the chat some questions concerning technicalities yes this recording will be uploaded from next week onwards to our youtube channel you can find us as a european school education platform you can find it there at the power point for the power point presentation will be also on the webinar's page on ASAP I think that's it from us and Fernando we would like to thank you for for you who are interested we will also have a short course in September some point in September with Fernando he will help us delve into technology used in language education and language teaching but more we will inform you about that later in the summer thank you so much for being here today and we hope to see you in a next webinar or online course of hours thank you Fernando thank you Maranella see you all bye everyone have a nice evening