Relevant Curriculum, Open Education for All (CRED)

Alina Crăciunescu, NCPEE,

Speranța Țibu, NCPEE,

Romania

22.10.2020

Relevant Curriculum, Open Education for All (CRED) Project is funded from the European Social Fund and is one of the main projects of Education and Research Ministry in Romania in terms of areas of intervention (5 main areas) and size of the target group (55.000 teachers from primary and lower secondary education). The project duration  is of 5 years (2018-2022) and the main objective of the project is prevention of early school leaving, through systemic measures for innovative and sustainable application of the new national curriculum, aiming to increase access to quality learning experiences for students in primary and lower secondary education. Almost all activities of the project contain elements that regard counselling area or the counsellors.

Through one of its activities, the project aims to develop methodological guides meant to support teachers’ activities with students in primary and lower secondary education, in order to ease the use of the new school curriculum. The guides will aim teacher training in order to initiate and carry out didactic approaches that capitalize the cultural diversity of the students they work with, but also to initiate educational projects in partnership, resources to help teachers include in the applied curriculum elements of knowledge in areas related to the subjects they teach and to manage the so-called hidden curriculum. The competencies described by the new curriculum are implicitly elements from counselling area and this is the reason why the guides are designed on interdisciplinary basis. The guides designed for counselling area are addressed to teachers who teach ”Personal Development” in primary education and ”Counselling and Personal Development”  in lower secondary education and their main purpose is to engage teachers in relevant teaching practices, which lead to the effective development of key competencies described by the national curriculum and essential for lifelong learning. The guides create a context where teachers can understand competencies not as objectives but as a process where the students are involved in coherent approaches that open and continue their path to building competencies throughout life and are designed according to the latest news in the counselling area.

Another activity of the project is designed to support development of open educational resources. Until 2021 when the project is planned to end, there will be released a number of 7200 open educational resources meant to support teachers’ activity. These 7200 resources include open educational resources that can be used in teachers’ classroom activities and some of them to be used in school counselling activities.

Establishing a national offer of school curricula for integrated optional disciplines is another activity of the project, where 20 syllabus for integrated optional disciplines will be elaborated. In Romania, the schools can choose to include optional disciplines, adapted to the students’ needs, in their educational offer. Some of the 20 syllabus developed within the project will integrate methods, themes and competences form the personal development and guidance and counselling area.

Another activity involves teachers’ training or the implementation of the new curriculum,  which includes the development of teacher training methodology, course materials and learning resources, preparation of accreditation files for the training program, preparation of online learning environment on the dedicated platform and development and implementation of the training program. In this activity were also involved experts in counselling for techers1 training in the implementation of the Personal development curriculum (primary education) and Guidance and counselling curriculum (for lower secondary education).

The teachers’ training on curricular empowerment is the activity dedicated to 55.000 teachers from primary and lower secondary education. The target group includes also teachers, tutors and school counsellors  who can teach ”Personal Development” for children in primary education and ”Counselling and Personal Development” for children in lower secondary education. All the trained teachers attend, besides other modules, a counselling module which aims to develop teachers’ socio-emotional skills and how teachers can help their students develop these skills. Elements from counselling are used in this module in order to increase teachers’ competencies on how to teach efficiently and how to facilitate the inclusion of children with special educational needs.  Another focus of the module is on how to integrate open educational resources in teaching activities using teachers’ socio-emotional skills. The training program was designed from the beginning in blended learning format in order to have a learning process in a digital context, with 120 hours in blended format and 10 hours (mandatory) of online webinars. From May 2019, when the training program started, until March 2020 this was the design used, but after the pandemic the number of hours dedicated to webinars was increased to 70. The teachers who attended the training program before the Covid-19 Pandemic where able to teach online due to the digital competencies they developed during the training hours. Some of them were also able to design their own open educational resources that they now use in their activity and were also able to offer support to other teachers to develop online classes. Until now CRED project achieved more objectives than those described in the official documents, and the trainers were able to take teachers’ learning to a new digital level. Due to the Covid-2019 Pandemic the training program takes place online since March 2020. After 2021, when the project is planned to end, 41 national education institutions will be in charge for delivering the training program to all the teachers in the country.

Piloting complementary interventions to support students from vulnerable groups is another activity that is designed to support 2500 children at risk for early school leaving. The children will benefit from integrated, personalized measures, adapted to their local, economic and socio-cultural environment with focus on preventing early school leaving through information, counselling and mentoring, as well as through extra-curricular activities. In order to support this activity the teachers involved will develop a "Teaching Journal" which will include a description of the piloting activities carried out, as well as the results and impact on students’ learning, based on specific elements of assessment, feedback and didactic reflection. This activity provides applied feedback on the relevance and usefulness of CRED open educational resources and the new school curricula programs developed within the project, from the perspective of specific learning needs of targeted students.

Teachers’ role in this activity will be of research teacher, able to adapt the school curricula to specific learning needs and to assess the usefulness and relevance of the activities carried out in order to achieve progress in students’ learning process in schools located in disadvantaged communities.

More information about CRED Project are available on the website available only in Romanian for the moment: https://www.educred.ro/