Asia-Europe Case Studies: Leading Effective Educational Change in a Challenging Time
This article is written based on a Webinar conducted for the 2021 ASEF ClassNet School Collaboration on “Well-being of Teachers & Students”
The sudden move to remote online instruction has forced teachers to re-envision pedagogy. During the last webinar of the ASEFClassNet’s 2021 School Collaboration, “Well-being of Teachers &Students” participants had a chance to learn about systematic change in an school environment. Two School leaders from Germany and Singapore presented their cases and talked about changes they implemented in their schools and had a discussion with the participants to critically reflect on various teaching & learning scenarios.
The two country cases from Asia & Europe that were presented to participants during the webinar are:
1) Learning from the Singaporean School Context: “How do Teachers Leverage on Personal Learning Devices (Chromebook) to Promote Assessment for Learning”
2) The European Context: “How do Teachers Leverage Personal Learning Devices/Learning Management Platforms to Promote Innovative Teaching Methodology in Their Classrooms”
Both of these cases provided a discussion and reflection scope to the participants of the Collaboration to learn about how schools in Asia (Singapore) and Europe (Germany) integrates technology to improve students’ learning in a way that also ensures well-being. They also discussed ways to support and improve teachers’ efficiency in a hybrid teaching-learning environment.
After the webinar, participants came together in a big group to discuss their personal pedagogical story that has contributed to the overall well-being of the students in their own school where they reflected on how important it is to collaborate and have open discussions to lead effective educational change. Some of the points highlighted during the webinars that are important for leading effective education change in schools during this challenging time are:
- Embracing change
- Having an open mindset towards the use of technology
- Freedom of teacher and student agency
- Use various digital tools to innovate pedagogy instead of simply replacing the old teaching styles
- Pay attention to students’ real needs instead of focusing on whether to allow their own devices to bring in schools
Participants will jointly develop a pedagogical handbook to share their insights with teachers in ASEM Countries at the end of the project.
To learn more about the project check our ASEFClassNet website here!
