British Council Offices, Brussels, 20th May 2005
Christopher Clouder (ECSWE) introduced the Seminar and welcomed the 50 guests and participants from 18 European countries to the British Council offices in Brussels. He spoke about the complex and challenging multi-dimensional contemporary world and the opportunities and tasks which we are called upon to meet and carry out as European citizens in a global community. He reminded participants of Steve Biko's call for schools to become ‘humanised’ and referred to Andre Gide's advice to doubt those who find the truth.
Sean Feerick (Directorate General for Education and Culture) spoke of the procedural and administrative problems involved in any sort of project, which seeks to break important ground. Questions being addressed by this Project include the recognition of periods of study, credit recognition and transfer, and transparency between different systems and countries. Feerick commented that the work of the Project will inform policy-making in the EU. Work is currently underway in the Commission to develop common European principles for teacher qualifications and competences. These principles will be published in June 2005. The work of this project resonates with EU work on teacher education. The Commission is making recommendations to the member-states in the following areas:
knowledge and information
social inter-action
being part of and within society
There is a continuum of teacher education:
Initial teacher education
Professional development – the development of competences in partnership with schools, Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) and the wider community
Mobility of teachers and students, making the European dimension tangible and concrete
In the second half of 2005, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament will publish recommendations regarding the quality of teacher education.
Feerick said that the work of the Project has wide-reaching ramifications, focusing on issues that are at the heart of European Commission concerns and priorities.
Griet Hellinckx (for the Comenius Project Steering Group) made a presentation outlining the work of the Project, which began in November 2002. The ideas and aims of the five partners were summarised and the process and methods of working were described. The structure and organisation of the emerging Masters Programme were articulated and the presentation ended with a resume of questions encountered, challenges faced and successes achieved.
Dr David Parker (University of Plymouth) spoke about the concept of professional development and the nurturing of a culture of enquiry within schools. The European Masters Programme will seek to establish an educational research programme for teachers working in schools, which will enable them to refine and develop what they do normally in their work. The programme will aim to be highly responsive to teachers' professional needs; an important instrument to serve this aim will be a highly-devolved, highly-trained tutor network. The programme will offer intensive tutorial support. The aim and the intention of such a flexible, school-based, teacher-focused Masters Programme is that colleagues become research assistants and critical friends to each other.
Some of the design questions were highlighted – questions of quality assurance in a context where there are multiple languages of teaching and studying; the associated question of costs arising out of the intensive level of support and quality assurance; questions of national and professional recognition and accreditation across different credit systems.
Urs Hauenstein (Institut fuer Praxis Forschung) reported on the Swiss pilot cohort that began in Solothurn in September 2004. The cohort numbers 13. The first assignment had a 90% submission and achievement rate. Examples of assignment titles were given, including one about homework: An Enquiry of Children's Responses to a Voluntary Homework Project. Solothurn tutors are exploring the possibility of recruiting a tutor from the University of Freibourg as a tutor at dissertation level.
Andy Phipps reported on the English pilot cohort at Cotswold Chine Home School. Cotswold Chine opened as a Special School in the 1950s. It was founded as a Steiner special school. Today there are over 100 staff. In each class there are a maximum of 8 students n the care of two qualified teachers. There are 14 students in the Cotswold Chine MA cohort.
Following a 90-minute plenum of questions and discussion, Professor Hans van Crombrugghe (University of Ghent) summed up the seminar's proceedings. He spoke about the work of Comenius (the educator) being connected to the idea of the passing through of the spirit of the times, of fire and inspiration.
Skills and knowledge provide competences, but attitudes inspire. In the teaching profession today, burn-out is a feature, where there is a lack of fire, a lack of inspiration. Teaching is to have a vocation as a human being; you cannot grasp this scientifically. It is beyond psychology and science.
An educator is like a gardener and school management is like a horticultural activity – it never finishes. Herman Hesse described gardening as a spiritual activity that never ends; it continues, it develops, it does not finish.
The development of a classroom-based Masters programme for Waldorf educators has the potential to combine the qualities of fire, or inspiration and gardening, or continuing development and learning. Hans congratulated the Project Steering Group and wished the Project a healthy transition into a European Masters Programme.
As seminar participants arrived, during the coffee break and at the close of the proceedings, a choir of students from Helicon Hogeschool sang a collection of European folk songs, rounds and madrigals. The high quality of singing, together with the warmth and élan of this young and talented troupe served as a picture to the invited audience of the potential of Waldorf education in the European educational arena.
