C.A.RE Critical Assessment and REflection in school practice
Dates
July 2023 – December 2025
Thematics
Effective implementation of teaching practices with a focus on specific aspects such as assessment, planning, and the use of established practices
Education level involved
Lower and Upper Secondary schools from two countries: Greece and Italy.
Keywords
Discover the project in 180 seconds
Every school is different, but the institutional framework is the same for all. One of the key factors which can drastically improve the context – if approached critically- is the curriculum. A critical assessment of the curriculum involves examining the curriculum’s strengths and weaknesses, determining whether the learning objectives are appropriate and relevant, and evaluating the effectiveness of instructional materials and strategies. This assessment can help educators identify areas for improvement and make necessary changes to the curriculum to better meet the needs of learners.
The Greek team emphatises at research part : we seek through collaboration to create a community of learning and practice that will share teaching practices and whose members will be critical friends. For this, we will organize visits to schools for job shadowing. We will use the diary, observation, and interviews as the main assessment tools. We will use the questionnaires for comparison and drawing conclusions.
The Italian team hasn’t the research part. Indeed, we will dwell on administering the questionnaires, analyzing the data, and returning the results in a formative way.
Project context
In the project, therefore, we intend to observe in a transnational sample of secondary school teachers (Italy and Greece) how contextual elements affect the effective implementation of teaching practices.
Project objectives
The general objectives are to conduct action-research interventions with teachers to increase reflection:
- on the perception of the work context on the dimensions of teaching professionalism, particularly on certain teaching aspects such as assessment, design, and the use of established practices;
- on the effect of the aspects considered (professionalism and context perceptions) on student well-being.
Methodological perspective
Our methodological approach is based on an action-research (Catroux, 2002) using qualitative and quantitative data. The definition of the construct “reflection on teacher professionalism” from the adaptation of Schraw and Dennison’s (1994) Metacognitive Awareness Inventory and the elements that characterize the foundational ideas of the epistemology of the reflective practitioner (Schön, 1993; Anisimov, 1994):
- reflection on the course of action
- reflexive conversation with the situation
- use of specific means of expression and specific language
- recourse to one’s repertoire of experiences
- presence of one or more pedagogical theories placed on the basis of one’s actions
- way of setting up relationships with students
The construct gave rise to a questionnaire (Botta & Lucisano, 2023) that allows one to use the return of the findings reflectively in order to guide one’s teaching practice.
The steps: First, we give teachers a questionary. Then, we will film or observe classroom sessions to analyze the school teachers’ practices during the project implementation. We collect data from the classes ( evaluation sheets from pupils, diaries, observation sheets, and material from interviews) and analyze them. These sessions, which serve as a support for the analysis of actual practices, are followed by self-confrontation and then cross-confrontation interviews (using English as the lingua franca).The findings are interpreted in light of how successful the action has been. If we are not satisfied we will begin another circle.
In order to compare what is happening in all the schools and the actors involved in the project, we will follow a comparative approach (Lave, 2009 ; Davin & Cuq, 2015 )
Project leaders
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TSAFOS Vasilis (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)
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PAPAMANOLI Eleftheria (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)
Other partners
- Styliani Chatzara, General Lyceum of Nigrita, https://lyk-nigrit.ser.sch.gr/
- Evaggelia Vardalachou, High School of Fyli, https://gym-fylis.att.sch.gr/
- 5 teachers of 1st High School of Lavrio, https://gym-lavriou.att.sch.gr/ και https://blogs.sch.gr/gymlavri/
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