Are you a school head, a teacher, a policy maker, a researcher in education seeking to bring innovation to schools? Do you want to see schools opening-up to local communities and become inspiring knowledge hubs? The OSOS Summer School aims to offer a high-impact and transformative experience, both in personal and organizational levels, through a series of inimitable workshops, best practices and challenges.

Find out more about the summer school here: http://osos.ea.gr/

The main focus of the training will be to facilitate the transformation of schools to innovative ecosystems, open to local communities. Participants will look at how schools can be supported in using innovative tools to understand the current position of the organisation and build on the results to define and implement suitable action plans by applying a step by step support mechanism for school heads and teachers. The OSOS Summer School will demonstrate the actual processes and translate the self-reflection results to concrete actions in the school as a learning ecosystem, in key areas such as Teacher CPD, school management, school openness, technology integration, innovation uptake, community engagement, social responsibility and others.

Specially designed workshops will focus on different parameters and conditions for the school transformation process:

Creative Use of the Self-Reflection Process
Responsive and creative use of the self-reflection process is a powerful way to improve curriculum and assessment outcomes for students, teaching practices and for the school as organisation. Focused assessments and support mechanisms based on analytics could support learning and teaching by communicating evidence of learning progress and providing insights to teachers; school leaders, policy makers; parents; and, most importantly, the learners themselves. These assessments can be embedded within learning activities to reduce interruptions to learning time.

Vision and Leadership
Before schools can embark on change, they need a clear vision and leadership. More specifically school leaders need to create a shared vision for how science education best can meet the needs of all learners and to develop a plan that translates the vision into action. This vision and planning processes should be based on holistic view of the current innovation status of the school. This transparent overview will allow for more targeted planning to address the specific issues that each school is facing, thus optimizing the efforts to overcome them. The vision begins with a discussion of how and why a school’s community wants to transform learning. Once these goals are clear, the findings from the Self-Reflection process can be used to open new possibilities for accomplishing the vision that would otherwise be out of reach.

Partnerships and Capacity Building
An open (extended – beyond the school) community of practice can provide a structure for fostering growth, sharing experiences and best practices and enhancing learning goals. Partnerships and capacity building for change are equally important at this stage. To be transformative, teachers need to have the knowledge and skills to take full advantage of the process and the outcomes of these “open schooling” activities. In addition, the roles of teachers and teachers’ trainers, parents, and learners all will need to shift as inquiry enables new types of learning experiences. Building teacher and leader capacity is vital to successful transformation. A successful change strategy requires professional development, feedback and support for teachers along with a well-researched monitoring and evaluation system. Organizational capacity, strategic planning and quality assurance are also crucial parameters during the transformation journey.

Developing Innovative Learning Experiences
A wealth of recent research in cognitive psychology and the neuroscience of learning presents new pathways to efficient and meaningful education: leveraging such techniques as blended-learning scenarios, hands-on exercises, games-based-learning and other research-based interventions and techniques allows schools to operate more effectively. From whole-of-school transformation to innovative learning solutions, open and creative environments can cultivate effective and engaging learning. A commitment to personalized learning includes providing solutions that empower all students. Inclusion, accessibility and sustainability should be included in the key functionalities of the educational activities in the open school environment. In our view the school environments should provide more challenging, authentic and higher-order learning experiences. It should enrich and transform the students’ concepts and initial ideas, which could work either as resources or barriers to emerging ideas. The schools’ environments should offer opportunities for teaching tailored to the students’ needs while it should provide continuous measures of competence, integral to the learning process that can help teachers work more effectively with individuals and leave a record of competence that is compelling to students.

Participants will be introduced to an integrated framework fitting all the pieces together: providing mechanisms to monitor and assess the progress at different levels, introducing and helping to sustain a culture of change, supporting community and capacity building, providing tools and resources for innovative projects.
Post course social media will be used to support ongoing development of ideas and group support and feedback.

Target group
The target group is schools or organizations which have strategies or core aims of integrating innovative teaching methods in either primary or secondary or vocational education. School Directors and subdirectors, school rganizatio, and innovative teachers will largely benefit from the course.

Preparation
Participants will be expected to read the course program and pre-released reading material before arrival.

Methodology
The course is designed to be highly engaging and interactive. Participating teachers will work individually and in small groups and thus will be able to collaborate with teachers from other countries, discuss ideas and exchange experiences. Learning by doing is our leading principle. This means that the training is organized in such a way that the participants cooperate actively in outdoor activities, group work as well as in plenary sessions.

All participants should be able to discuss and present in English language.

Learning Outcomes

• Creative Use of the Self-Reflection Process
• Vision and Leadership
• Partnerships and Capacity Building
• Innovative Learning Experiences

Follow up
At the end of the course, groups will share their work and feedback will be provided. As a follow-up, participants will have the opportunity to share ideas and suggestions about the possibility of implementation of the program in their classes creating an international school network. On return to their home locations participants will try out the different approaches with their students/pupils and share their experience and material with other participants through social media. The trainers will also give feedback and counselling through the same platform between training sessions.