Portugal
Brief description of the project (general purpose/objectives, number and dates of the meetings, timeline, proposed activities, starting points for discussion selected in each of the meetings, etc.)
The EACH project aimed to foster critical thinking by collaborative practices while introducing digital technologies in the classroom by focusing on climate change issues and environmental awareness more generally. During school year 25-26, 5he school applied it in four different classes (two of four years old and two of five years old).
This being the 2nd implementation of the project which continued to test the material and included the use of the self-assessment tool. The meeting mid-sessions to reflect together on the self-assessment tool, was when we felt we could use it as a way to search for weaknesses and vulnerabilities instead of a tool to feel approved in our practice. The shift proved to be insightful to share on a webinar for Montessori Europe and we thought it was great to be able to cultivate this attitude in teams of professionals who want to promote the unity within a team by looking for weaknesses and vulnerabilities instead of collaborative assent of what goes well. The goal was to explore the way the tool can be used regularly as a ground for dialogue among educators who want to promote knowledge building and digital transformation (KBDT) in ECEC. We had coordinated with teams from other countries that it would be good to use tools for dialogue at the beginning, in the middle of the implementation and finally after the implementation as to make decisions for the following school year. The first two meetings about the tool were very rich and enabled preparing the presentation of the webinar for the Europe Montessori. The final meeting will happen soon and it is made clear that it is best when practitioners of the school use their ongoing regular meetings to discuss the self-assessment tool and can use it to guide their regular pedagogical discussions.
One important change in the implementation in Portugal was that Dina and Alexis made all ten sessions in assigned specific classrooms. While the children liked the alternate format of the previous year, it made establishing a continuity between sessions harder. This decision was also in part taken because of a more difficult scenario to coordinate everyone’s schedules, and to overcome the difficulty Alexis and Dina followed a similar development in the sequence of sessions assimilating insights from the children for everyone’s benefit (for example, a question of one classroom that got turned into a philosophy activity was transferred to all classrooms and the questions was used across all classrooms).
This present narrative summary refers to four classes at Externato João XXIII two of five years old 2nd implementation, who had also been the focus on the 1st implementation in the previous school year and two of four years old who had no experience with the project the previous year. There were also ten sessions done this year which were all facilitated by Dina Mendonça (facilitator NOVA University) in two classes (one of 5years old and one of 4 years old) and the ten sessions in the other two classes were facilitated by Aléxis Trindade (one of 5 years old and one of 4 years old). Both classes of 5 years old had experienced the 1st implementation of the project the year before and in both the facilitators saw added ability for conversations and dialogue, as well as increased proficiency in use of digital technologies in taking photos, for instance. Interestingly, in Alexis' group of 5 years old there were some new students who had not experienced the 1st implementation and who quickly assimilated behaviour and dialogical attitudes from the other students.
Even though the use of P4C methodology grounded the promotion of dialogue and built upon the already visible installed habits of conversation of the group, last year it felt the dialogue was not always easy to be sustained. Because of this we decided to start the ten sessions by doing a philosophy session based on a book which would embody the core of the project EACH with the hope that it would give a sense of continuation throughout the ten sessions. The hope was confirmed and there was a stronger ongoing unity among the ten sessions than the way the implementation had been experienced the previous year.
The sequence of the sessions was thought and decided along the way by the team (Aléxis, Dina) in light of the children reaction and aiming to continue to explore the material of the portfolio while doing some sessions that had proven to be crucially important for the project on the 1st implementation (e.g. going outside and Google Earth session).
Sessions lasted 1/1,5 hours, on a more or less weekly basis.
With ten sessions it is hard to recognize the progression of collaborative thinking habits. Though it was clear that the class of 5 years old participated in dialogue in a more organized way than the 4 years old most likely because of the 1st implementation experienced in the previous school year.
One of the sessions was to go outside to a park and take photos and this was notoriously very important for the children of all classes so it was decided we would maintain this activity, as well as the one using Google Earth for the children who had not experienced it.
The dialogue in the five years old class was more philosophical than in the other classes. In this class the ability to reflect philosophically about issues was easily brought by the dialogue and facilitators (Aléxis & Dina) have several moments in which the philosophical enthusiasm for ideas was felt and could be connected to discussions carried out in professional philosophical debates.
In one session of the 5 years old classroom the discussion concentrated on what happens in playing digital games and how they seem designed to keep players playing no matter what and that the overall goal of playing seems to be to continue to play. In another dialogue of the 4-year-old group it became clear that some people could find explanations for things that seemed impossible and not veridical for other people.
Similarly to what had happened in the 1st implementation, activities outside of the classroom were crucially vital for collaborative behaviour.
The children showed that the visits were important for them, and they expressed disappointment when they were reminded the 10th session was the last one.
Given that drawing seemed to confirm when some progress in awareness has been achieved, it was even more used in the 2nd implementation than in the 1st one, and often in a more integrated way as to complement the dialogue.
And, because sessions in the 1st implementation felt too scary to focus, we decided to focus on creating a better sense of unity in the interconnection between digital technologies and sustainable environmental education while using dialogical format to increase critical and creative thinking skills, by following a line along the different sessions.
Having the collaboration of the school staff (facilitator and kindergarten teachers) was decisive for the success of the sessions and the project.
Some concluding remarks:
How have the children participated? How (if) has their participation changed throughout the sessions?
To try to overcome the way in which participation had been uneven throughout the sessions in the previous implementation, we began the ten sessions by doing a classic P4C session with a book that would somehow embody the knowledge building and digital transformation (KBDT) in ECEC focusing on environmental sustainability and climate crisis awareness. The impact and increase of dialogue throughout the ten sessions was quite visible, even if strongly felt with the 5 years old which had ten sessions of the project the previous year. Also, kindergarten teacher (Carla Gomes) was very involved in recognizing the moments of dialogue, while in the 4 years old the kindergarten was excessively worried about the children's behaviors which diminished their sense of freedom to establish the dialogue.
All sessions were then organized in light of one of the questions that appeared in the 5 years old group of children ("Why would a human be in love with an owl?”). This enables using digital tools and drawing to further explore the connection between real and imagined scenarios and constantly check the role of imagination in perception of digital tools, drawings and in daily life. Though we used a lot of drawing in the sessions to complement the dialogue, from insight reached in the 1st implementation, in the second implementation it felt more poignant for both children and adults because it was generally guided by the initial selected question that had been asked by the children. Though we never reached a final and concluding answer to the question, the question remained as a lighthouse in all the sessions and children referred to it both after the sessions and in other moments of their school life (though more insistently in the 5-year-old group).
Also, the digital transformation was part of the conversation in a more straightforward manner. In the second session of one of the five-year-old groups, the question “Why would a human be in love with an owl?” Let to a dialogue about the way in which games (computer games) use elements of reality and fiction and how people are motivated to continue playing when they lose the games and when they win the games, which enabled the only child who cannot play computer games because it is not allowed in his household to share his experience and how his parents justify to him the rule. This meant an important inclusion in a conversation which might have been excluded without the dialogical approach and helped the child to describe what he did with his time, which also led the whole classroom to share other activities they engaged with when they were not playing games. Also, the difference between digital games and board games appeared in the dialogue and indicated that there was no preference from the children for one important element in playing the games is the way in which it also connects them to other people (other children and other adults).
The first three sessions were busy with promoting the collaborative tone of the project while working within the core of the project. The first session was done by reading a story and collecting questions, the second session was done to promote philosophical dialogue upon a selected question, and the third session was done by building a philosophy game (Is this real or invented?) based on the selected question of the children.
What was the role and the activities of the adult/guide/facilitator?
We were more creative in selecting and using proposals from the portfolio. The focus was less on trying out the material, and more on how to use suggestions to make a session that would focus on the interconnection of the three areas of the project while simultaneously maintaining unity with the initial three sessions of the implementation. The overall selection was always in light of the questions of the division line between reality and fictional, as well as the role of the imagination and the fictional in perceiving reality.
In the following four sessions we explored drawing, collage and a combination of techniques to maintain reflection on knowing if we could distinguish the different techniques (photograph, drawing and collage) just by looking. The quality of strangeness appeared as the important element to invite reflection and it was often linked to details that appeared in the images and that made participants indicate that there was something different in the picture. This helped children to verbalize and explore their own imaginary processes in dialogue. In sessions debating what made something real or not (both in Dina’s classroom of 5-year-old; and Alexis session in the same age group) the discussion contemplated that while some characters were fictional (Picatchu, Disney characters too) they were also real when real people dressed up as them as in making TV programs and in Amusement Parks.
The last sessions were also rich in what concerns the dialogue. For instance, in the 5-year-old group when they were having a dialogue about how to solve the garbage that could be found in the garden next to their school, they devised a whole imagined system of engineer format between them, which was initially suggested by one of the children. This was all their own imagination. In this dialogue (9th session), which happened after they saw photographs from their sessions of going out to the garden in which there was garbage nature in the photograph (8th session). The facilitator made sure there was a sense of communication between the sessions made within the two different groups. For example, though there was questions after reading the story in both classrooms, the questions of the four years old were less rich to promote dialogue and on the following session; the facilitator brought a philosophy game inspired by the question of the other group of 5 years old and the 4year old group quickly adopted it as their own question and even stated they also had that question. Similarly, modifications made to activities based on the insights of the 1st implementation were transferred to the other class. The previous implementation had confirmed the difficulty of 4 years old to imagine seeing from above, so this year we decided to show the Google Earth and their playground from above, asked them to draw it (saying it was the real playground, as it was seen in reality) and then asked them to draw the playground from their own imagination. This proved to be especially rich and insightful for dialogical insight. For example, one child used the drawing as a way to answer the questions of the facilitator, by adding elements to the imagined playground to respond to the facilitator's question “Why are they so different?” Ultimately drawing Christmas lights uniting the drawing done of the real playground and that of the imagined playground. In turn, this modification from application of the portfolio led to a new activity in the 5-year-old classroom where they were asked to draw on one side of the page something real, and on the other side of the page something imaginary. The dialogue held afterwards showed they had different opinions on what counted as real. For example, some children placed unicorns on the imaginary and others on the real side of the drawing and both had justifications based on when they saw unicorns on tv and films, and the problematic nature of the dividing line between the two realms was placed on the table even if not further developed as there were no more sessions. Notice that this is also a difficult philosophical problem which is pertinent to face the digital transformation and specifically targets the possible uncertainty of proofs of visual perception.
Several photos of development of drawing with dialogue and registration by photo asked by child.
If different from the practitioner, what role did the class teacher play?
Often the kindergarten teachers helped children’s behaviour for them to be able to focus on session subject matter either by direct verbal suggestions, or by referring to the common practice in the classroom. In the groups of four years old sometimes this help of the kindergarten teacher made children feel confused about what were the rules of behaviour and felt a type of incoherence from what was asked by the facilitator and what was desirable for the teacher. If it had been a yearly practice there would have needed to be a session to clarify the confusion and show how both adults were on the same page.
What fostered the collaborative-participative process? Which were the factors impacting on social, critical thinking and meta-cognitive skills?
Drawing of card: Photo taken from Space 4 years old (both drawings include the perspective of a person taking the photo)Drawing of card: Photo taken from Space 4 years old (both drawings include the perspective of a person taking the photo)
What might have hindered the collaborative-participative process?
Time limitation didn’t enable the process to reach its full fulfilment, lack of training in dialogical methodologies from the kindergarten teachers prevented them from feeling useful in the sessions. The project would have gained from providing a separate training session on the dialogical methodologies for kindergarten teachers insights to be integrated into their own practice and for fruitful dialogue with the facilitators.
With the group of five years old it was felt that sitting in the chairs to have the dialogue endured the length of time they could hold the dialogue. Though we also had good dialogues with sessions where we sat on the floor. When in chairs they seemed to be able to self-regulate their behaviour in a more independent way and maintain the dialogue with everyone for a longer period of time without adult intervention. Unfortunately, we never got a way to test if the change also occurred with the group of four years old.
Often the facilitator and the kindergarten teacher felt they needed the support of someone dedicated to the image and recording of the sessions (an observer that would take photos, and prepare the visual material needed for the sequence of sessions) and designing sessions without the support of a project might be heavy on a single teacher without a team effort to support the application (either from the school or from another institution).
Have children generated a shared knowledge about environmental issues? What was the process?
Yes, the focus on nature in the ten sessions and the activities they experienced made them much more aware of difficult issues regarding the sustainability policies such as recycling as well as how difficult it is to convince all people on the planet to sustain these practices. One kid at one point even suggested that the only way to enforce these policies was to either bribe people into doing it or by law enforcement and financial penalties.
Once again, conversations highlight the importance of experience and observation in Nature and going outdoors as being crucial for making their concern concrete and more translatable in their own lives.
What fostered children's environmental awareness and the promotion of their active role in addressing climate change issues and promoting environmental sustainability?
The activities which help them verbalize what they already knew about taking care of the environment.
Fostering environmental awareness is now an ongoing concern of schools, and very present in the school we worked at. This means the subject in itself was not new. However, the way in which the confrontation with the digital world and the imagined world happened throughout the sessions made them more aware of the difficulty of the issues and more aware that it is not enough to simply tell people to do the right thing.
What might have hindered children's environmental awareness and their active role in addressing climate change issues and promoting environmental sustainability?
It might be useful to know ahead of time what has already been done regarding environmental awareness as to engage in deepening their understanding of the issues they already know. One very interesting element was that their own perception seems to be guided by their perspective. For example, in all groups (both facilitated by Dina and Alexis) the photographs showing garbage at first were taken as simply more photos of the garden. When there was a flower in front of the garbage, they named the flower and the sun before noticing the garbage and were even surprised that the photos were taken on the same day we had all gone out to the garden. This might mean that when they go to gardens they may miss noticing garbage altogether because they are focusing on flowers, insects, and activities.
How have children used Digital Technologies?
The children took pictures with digital cameras (or phones and I-pads), explored as a group Google Earth, looked at the photos they took in a power point presentation on the big screen of the class (that was visibly important in all classes), and had several discussions prompted by digital power point presentation of images.
What fostered a critical approach to digital technologies?
What might have hindered a critical approach to digital technologies?
The 2nd implementation sessions were less focused on experimenting items from the portfolio and more preoccupied with giving a sequence to the sessions, while focusing on the self-assessment tool. This felt like it increased the critical approach in general because there was a sense of reasonableness from one session to another and in the overall ten sessions. In addition, it felt like kindergarten teachers could adopt elements from the sessions beyond the sessions (e.g. building power points of digital presentations of the drawing for joint conversation about the activity) which indicated that fewer items of the portfolio in the ten sessions actually increased its impact.
Some of the activities resembled other activities they had already done in other moments of their school life and sometimes this meant they would react automatically to the suggestions without thinking too much about what was asked of them. This was very visible when we asked them to cut parts of images from magazines (previously selected by us from nature). They probably didn’t notice it was about nature and that instructions were slightly different from what was asked of them. The facilitators only noticed because the kindergarten in the classroom explained why they were cutting the magazines in a specific way. In the classroom of the 4 years old we had to explain the activity again and illustrate it visually to overcome the memory from previous experience with activity and highlight the emphasis on nature.
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