M.I.N.D. – Mindfulness In New Didactics

Scenario

The territory where the School operates is represented by the Benevento area, with its strong farming and wine tradition, features that were integrated into the School with the addition of the vocational curricula of “Constructions and Environment”, “Viticulture and Enology”, “Production and Processing”.

These studies mostly attract students interested in starting a career immediately after school graduation while by attending the other school curriculum, the Scientific one, students study subjects that are more theoretical and pupils are more likely to carry on with academic studies. While the students’ socio-economic background is predominantly medium-high (so they are usually encouraged and supported by their families), the background of their teachers is still outdated and would need to be brushed up to better align European standards.

The traditional education method, also known as conventional education, is still widely used in many Italian schools and applied by teachers at “Galilei Vetrone”, whose average age is 50 years. While the old-fashioned way of teaching was all very static and based on rote learning, the Italian High School reform has launched a new teaching era, made up of more dynamic teachers that are able to tailor methods and approaches according to the fast-paced society where pupils grow and are conditioned by nowadays.

Project

After the non-approval of the project proposal submitted last year, the School feels the need to develop progressive educational practices focusing on individual student’s needs and address their urge to collect competences that are easily feasible within the current labour market. Starting from these premises and background analysis, the project “M.I.N.D. – Mindfulness In New Didactics”, designed by the Applicant School “Galilei Vetrone”, intends to promote the transnational mobility of 20 teachers from both the Scientific and Vocational Curriculum towards two Countries that are considered pioneers in the field of education and innovative teaching methods: Finland and United Kingdom.

The title of the project refers to the term “mindfulness”, which is the basic human ability to be fully aware of one’s own actions and of the surrounding environment.  By realizing the project activities of Structured Course and Job Shadowing, the School wants to give its teachers the training tools and soft skills necessary to develop a more mindful teaching/learning process. The project will have a duration of 12 months, while the mobility in itself will cover a period of 15 days plus 2 days for travel from/to the Country of destination.

Objectives

The general purposes of the project are:

  • to promote an intercultural education and thus overcoming the traditional one-sidedness of knowledge transmission;
  • to modernize the effectiveness and quality of its education and training system so as to allow students to acquire the necessary skills to succeed in the labor market and to deal with present and future challenges;
  • to improve students’ performance throughout their educational development;
  • to promote the internationalization process of the School “Galilei Vetrone” and the development of EU citizenship within the local territory.

Numeric indicators have also been established to evaluate the achievement of project results form a qualitative point of view:

  • thanks to the implementation of this project “M.I.N.D. – Mindfulness In New Didactics”, participants will have the chance to get to know colleagues from different Countries and this is expected to bring about other 2 more collaborations in European initiatives with at least 1 school from United Kingdom and 1 school from Finland by 2020;
  • 2 work-related learning courses abroad will be launched by the School for the newly expanded network of foreign partners;
  • the acquisition of new linguistic knowledge and English terminology by 20 teachers of the School will favour the development of 2 CLIL units in at least 5 different subjects during 2020 – 2021 school year. This will improve the linguistic performance of students with a 10% reduction of the risk of failure;
  • the School also expects to register a long-term improvement on the general students’ performance, not only with regard to L2. Students of Scientific and Vocational curricula will be more attracted towards the learning process thanks to the new innovative methods acquired by the participants. It is estimated a 5% reduction in the rate of students’ failure, which currently corresponds to 25%;
  • participating teachers will express a degree of satisfaction regarding their experience of mobility of circa 100% and will definitely recommend the same experience to other colleagues.