"Inclusive preschool by digital VAK"

Pr.No.2017-1-LV01-KA201-035433

Grant from programme ERASMUS+ – 91 120,00 EUR
Timeline – 01.09.2017.-31.08.2019.
Partners

„Attīstības centrs ģimenei” (Latvia),

Liceul Pedagogic "Ioan Popescu" (Romania),

Gozbebegim Anaokulu (Turkey),

Vaikų lopšelis darželis "Nykštukas" (Lithuania).

PROJECT SUMMARY

Preschool is first level in formal education system that provides entrance of kids into further compulsory education. It brings certain crucial components of European learning standards - socializing in group, development of learning skills and basic learning skills development and therefore there should be paid the most attention to this level because the skills and learning experience got in this level will influence the individuals further learning in the whole life. If compulsory education has significant monitoring tools of education quality measurements in Europe by countries (like OECD PISA research results) than pre-primary education can relate only to tendencies and non-official researches in their field.
trategy Europe2020 recognizes ECEC improvements in last decade and confirms that successful ECEC brings wider-ranging social and economic benefits for individuals and for society than any other level of education and is core for future educational achievements. It is stated that EU aims to ensure for every child high-quality of ECEC to be ready for integration in formal education.
Investment in pre-primary education offers higher medium- and long-term returns and is more likely to help children from low socioeconomic status than investments at later educational stages. It is very important to recognize that in EU 95% of whole children starting compulsory education has attended preschools. Strategy also points that addressing certain solutions in each education level brings the result as less early school leavers and the strategic target is to decrease by 10% this number by 2020. How pre-primary education level is related to early school leavers? One of core issues in learning is the child's motivation and this can be only obtained if child feels comfortable and interested in learning process. So if the attention to child special needs in education is not fullfilled already in pre-primary education level than more possible that this motivation for learning and attending school will significantly reduce.
Already in 2015 project partners started to work of preschool learning methodology development addressing the learning forms to different types of perception, because partners understood - if child with visual perception type will take part only in audial play-activities, his learning achievements will never be reached fully. This project allowed to develop and use pedagogical tools for individual learning and showed that it provides learning achievements by 30% higher than former learning organization forms. But still there was also identified that about 10% of children in pilot groups do not have any learning improvements and partners investigated reasons. As pedagogues found these children do not act to any form of proposed and for majority of them found that their literacy, mathematical or behavior competences are different from majority of early learners and can be identified as "early learning difficulties". Finland, the leader in educational innovations and achievements in Europe, has set that all of these children can be part of general education system, if their needs are respected and pedagogues can provide such intervention that compensates the lack of competencies. The problem is that the most effective tools for learning difficulties reduce foresees digital tools like applications, audio books, etc. in primary education level but none in pre-primary. Analysis sows that VAK (visual, audial, kinesthetic learners), if transformed and developed for learning difficulties in effective form, may lead to same learning achievements (30%) also for this target group.
There have been set 2 objectives to be reached within the project:
1. To develop methodology for pedagogical diagnostic and pedagogical intervention solutions to solve early lac of literacy and maths competencies and other learning difficulties.
2. To develop and provide wide range of digital tools for pedagogue that can be easily implemented in educational process and provide assistance to pedagogue in learning process with children with learning difficulties.
The main target group of project are preschool pedagogues who will directly use the outcomes of project. Primary target group are pedagogues who will design and implement digital tools for reducing learning difficulties at certain preschool groups. After project it is foreseen that at least 20 preschools will participate in implementing new-designed tools approbation. It is small number on Europe scale but it significantly influence all partners preschools educational offer and digitallity of project allows to easily bring outcomes to any preschool in Europe.
To bring wide-use content, project will benefit if realized transnational - it will take different methodological and pedagogical experiences and know-hows, different education level specialists will work on solutions and finally - project is too complicated to be realized only by one preschool and it's experience.

 

 

 

„Inclusive Preschool for Kid - Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic Learners”
Pr.No. 2015-1-LV01-KA219-013400


Grant from programme ERASMUS+ – 110 320.00 EUR.
Timeline – 01.09.2015.-01.09.2017.
Partners

„Attīstības centrs ģimenei” (Latvia),

Valga lasteaed Paasuke (Estonia),

Gaziosmanpasa Anaokulu (Turkey),

Liceul Pedagogic "Ioan Popescu" (Romania).

PROJECT SUMMARY

Preschool education is considered to be crucial part of education system not only doe to the development of basic skills / knowledge of child but mainly because fact that at this stage it is possible to develop child's learning skills which child uses in whole life for gaining education, being part of society and development of his-self. Therefore it is very important to provide conditions without stress for gaining this experience and interest of child to all three above mentioned qualities.
Still preschools quite often place care as more important part then education of ECEC (Key data on ECEC in Europe, 2014) especially for age until 3 years. That raises problem that education children receive in preschool is adapted to majority of children and does not always respects uniqueness of child's skills.
In this issue perception in one of the most used tool of child in educational process. Perception types generally are divided in three groups - visual perception (well understands visual information), audial perception (well understands information provided in audial type) and kinesthetic perception (well understands information through taste, smell, touch, etc.). If the pedagogue can find the form to use perception of child in learning process it becomes more interesting to child, usually leads to better results and still keeps the possibility to socialize children in groups by presenting their differences as advantage. STherefore project is targeted to provide full strategy and methodology of VAK (visualist, audialist and kinesthetic) concept adapted for preschool learner.
There have been set three objectives to be reached within the project:
1. To develop detailed methodology from testing until educational process result evaluation that respects preschool pupil individuality in learning process and is useful for educational process carried out by preschool pedagogues.
2. To develop and provide wide range of tools for pedagogue that can be easily implemented in educational process and provide assistance to pedagogue in teaching Nature Science as most complex and diverse preschool subject.
3. To contribute with valuable recommendations parents who are crucial party of preschool age pupil learning skills developers.
The project partnership involves 4 partners - preschools from Latvia, Estonia, Romania and Turkey.
The project foresees intellectual outputs (VAK concept based manual for pedagogues, toolbox for Nature Sciences teaching at preschool, parents handbook development and testing module for children) as well as dissemination events and short-term specialized learning activities for partners staff.
There are 4 main methodological approaches that leads to project results:
I Research, Analysis and Discussions are used to develop intellectual outputs.
II Mobilities for short-term learning provides opportunity to have intensive exchange of experience and common knowledge share about specific contents of project.
III Panel discussions and debates are methodological tools to be used at project final conference for pedagogues.
IV Intercommunicative lectures are used for masterclasses .
The project general results are the intellectual outputs of project that unites several tools / approaches based on VAK concept.
The project intellectual outputs are:
- manual for preschool pedagogue for using VAK methodology in educational process at preschool;
- toolbox of set of 400 Nature Science tasks and implementation recommendations - all based on VAK concept and useful in preschool three different age stages;
- VAK testing and profiling tool to determine child perception type;
- handbook for parents about VAK concept use and practical arrangements of educational process at home.
To provide these results partners will also have:
- two short-term learning activities about parent support systems / programs and innovative forms of teaching Nature Sciences;
- four dissemination events - international conference and three masterclasses on national level.
The long term beneficiaries of project are children attending preschool because successful implementation of VAK concept may lead to better educational achievements. It also has significant impact to development of learning skills and raising competence and teaching skills of preschool pedagogues.