“CREATIVE SCHOOLS: GIVING AN ANSWER TO STUDENT NEEDS IN THE 21ST CENTURY” (Melike Ҫetin)

Schools nowadays are forcing with different challenges. Inclusion, heterogeneity and long-lasting education are one of them. In our group, we are four students from three different countries, so we decided to compare the education systems in the primary school in our countries in their structures, methodologies and the relationships between the pupils and the teachers.

We found out, that the education system in Spain and Turkey are quite similar and Germany seems like to have the “better” education system. But also in Germany, teachers are facing with problems that might Spain and Turkey don’t have. Based on the discussions we had within the group, we created our ideal school.

One of the theoretical aspects of our ideal group is the importance of the relationship between teachers, students and parents which we called “cooperation”. Cooperation is mainly characterized "by reference to common objectives of different persons which are to be achieved". It is intentional, communicative and requires the confidence. It also presupposes certain autonomy and is obligate to the norm of reciprocity". Cooperation between these three actors is important and the key aspect of it is trust. It is essential for the security and to be supported and valued by others. It’s also necessary for constructive handling of conflicts and to ask others for help, e.g. to reduce the potential threat to one's self-esteem. All in all cooperation is crucial for structures and climate within the school!

Another aspect which is important for us are the breaks during the day. We found out that pupils in Spain have just one big break during the day which is really sparse. Pupils need a several break or a snack time during the day. These 15 to 20 minutes give them time to digest what they are learning and to get some fresh air. There are several neurological advantages for these breaks. According to different studies, breaks support the need for children to be physically active in order to learn.  Stagnation of the body leads to stagnation of the brain and unfocused, “hyper” children. But not only students need a break. Teachers are often used to answer emails from parents, erase the board, get ready for the next class, make copies, answer student questions, and pick up the mess left behind by the students.  In a teacher’s room, teachers can work, prepare, grab a cup of coffee, or simply rest, socialize, and mentally prepare for their next class.

Homework is also an aspect we want to change in our ideal school. Children get homework in the primary school so they don’t have time to do some hobby activities after school. So, when it comes to homework, the idea of “less is more” has more output. If pupils get the work done in class, and teachers feel that what the pupils are able to do in school is enough, there is no pressure for homework. Also the evaluation system should be rethinking: if assignments are open-ended and not really graded, students will work on it in class diligently.

One of the main challenges in school education systems is to include disabled children. Many of them go to different schools because the education system is often not able to handle with the diversity. But that mustn’t be a challenge itself, it could be chance. So that’s why schools should have an inclusive education system. The main idea of inclusive education systems is to let the children learn together, to get to know with diversity in class. This includes of course the working with disabled children without labeling and not to look at the differences. All in all, inclusion is an approach to respond to diversity in the education system. It is about giving the pupils the same opportunities in school and by this, to remove barriers. This can only succeed by working together which is established in cooperation. We need the participation, patience and time to be successful with inclusion of all actors, named teachers, parents and pupils. With cooperation and inclusion we may give an answer to pupils need.

Pupils mostly don’t want to go to school because they have just theory based classes. That’s why teachers should know how to use new methods to catch pupil’s interest in subjects. Another option is the introduction of new entertaining subjects to make the school as a place where do you want to like to go.

The educational researcher Ken Robinson describes in his talk "Do schools kill creativity?" the importance of creativity in education systems. In his opinion, creativity in school is as important as reading and writing. Children are born with the ability to be creative but they lose this ability when they get old because they are afraid to make mistakes which are considered as the worse things you can do in school. So, the creativity of children will educate out of their capacity. This is mainly because creativity is not seeing equal to other courses. There is a hierarchy of courses in education systems all over the world. On top of these courses are mathematics and language. Then follows the humanities and at the end are the arts. The reasons for this are in history. One reason is to get the industry full of workers and the other one is to prepare the students for university. He argues that these hierarchy leads to an academic inflation and therefore requires a radical rethinking about the understanding of intelligence. Here, he states three things about intelligence. It’s diverse, dynamic and distinct. As an example he mentions the famous choreographer Gillian Lynne who had learning problems in school. It transpired out that she could only think when she moves. After this little story, he pronounces for new concepts of human economies in future to develop inventiveness of human competences.

But not only different subjects can improve the education system. It also can improve by the architecture. The architect Takaharu Tezuka shows in his talk “The best kindergarten you’ve ever seen” a kindergarten in Tokyo. This kindergarten has no barriers and borders, so children can move free during the classes. He points out that children need “a dschungel of noise” to think and need to move all the time. He also recommended letting the children to be children and not to control them because children learn by making mistakes. But in this century, the worst thing children can do in school are mistakes. This is also mentioned in Ken Robinsons talk.

The main ideas of the other group workings are more or less the same. The aspect of the diversity was mentioned by three groups which shows that this is one of the main aspect of our ideal school. I remember that one group mentioned to have animals in the class to socialized children and let them to be responsible for a living being. Also the natural environment was mentioned by one group. This was also pointed out by Takaharu Tezuka. Another idea is the answer of the economic situation which I personally found very interesting. This group mentioned to have second hand workbooks for pupils who can’t pay for it. In my opinion, this is a very good aspect. Arvind Gupta for example showed in his video how to turn trash into toys for learning. I think that these are methods to show that everyone could get access to education and it’s a human right.

All in all, there were a lot of proposals which we have seen in the videos from the other groups and the three videos on TED. All these show us that there are many ways to improve the school education system around the world beginning by making learning toys with trash. Researchers emphasize the importance of the children selves. We are all talking about methods and ways to improve the education system without asking pupils what they actually want or interested in. We are going to be teachers and I think that we need to make the first step because just talking about won’t get us forward.