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Research project of March 1st 1995 |
The Research Project of March 1st 1995, was elaborated by a research committee of teachers at what was then called the School Cooperation Tvind. For the past 25 years these teachers had been experimenting with schools and the education of people of all ages. Now the time had come for new advances within the school work. During the year 1994 plans for a grandiose project within the frames of the School Cooperation Tvind were discussed and developed. The objective was to examine, through a pedagogical research project, if and how the educational and human benefit of the students could be increased through the development and introduction of a new educational method aiming at making totally individualized education/studies possible in conjunction with classical classroom teaching, as well as aiming at developing an educational method embracing all aspects of human learning. The Research Project of March 1st 1995, sent an application to the Foundation for a grant of eight million Dkr to partly cover the project. The other half of the expenses was to be covered by the schools participating in the actual implementation of the project. The Foundation granted the eight million Dkr for the implementation of the research project in 1995. The Research Project of March 1st 1995, however, never received funds from the Foundation, even though they were granted. The reason was that the applicants did not wish the granted funds to be paid out. When the board of the Foundation received the original application, they approached their consultant, associate professor of law, Aage Michelsen. He was not of the opinion that a green light could be given to the research project, and wrote:
At first the board of the Foundation therefore rejected the application. The Research Project of March 1st 1995 then altered the project and divided it clearly into what could be described as research, and therefore be covered by the objectives of the Foundation, and what had to be considered educational expenses, and thus had to be covered by the participating schools themselves. A new application was sent, and this proposal was accepted by Aage Michelsen immediately. The School Cooperation simultaneously continued investigating the possibilities of financing the purchase of the computers for the project elsewhere, and thereby found a financing company interested in leasing all the equipment to the schools. After this The Research Project of March 1st 1995 withdrew its application to the Foundation. The project was anyway carried out by the schools on their own, and since the result has been very significant it is worthwhile describing it here - granted or not. Today every single student at the schools of the former School Cooperation has a computer as his or her disposal for the education. The computers are connected to each other and to the digital library of the school through a network, which also gives access to the internet. This they also had in 1996 when the 'Definition of Modern Method' was introduced. Today the method and the systems have been upgraded and further developed, but the foundation was laid before the internet was a known phenomenon, and today it is probably the most comprehensive pedagogically well developed educational system within primary education using computers - and at the same time an educational system which has a great foundation of experiences to build further on. The idea of the research project was to change the fundamental method of thinking at the schools within what was at that time called the School Cooperation Tvind. It was - and is - a series of schools, which on the one hand have each their own profile, and on the other hand have a number of characteristic features in common. Each of the schools had its own information material and even a quick reading would convince every reader, knowledgeable or not, that each of the schools had created its own and original profile, while the brochures at the same time told about the School Cooperation's shared elements. The School Cooperation Tvind was in itself an extensive project, well worth both examination and research. Just think of the immeasurable values the existence of a cooperation of independent schools of different kinds and with different age groups represented in the whole Danish school system. But was the School Cooperation Tvind already at that time such a controversial issue that no one dared to research into the results these schools were spreading all around? The research project takes its starting point in all the areas of the school: all those regarding education, upbringing and formation. It was a five year research project which, through the use of modern digital educational equipment, had the intention of testing a research hypothesis about defining a modern educational method. Through an large scale experiment within the framework of the School Cooperation Tvind it was to be examined if and how the educational and human profit of the students could be amplified as stated in the hypotheses of the research project. The idea was to develop a method suited to our time, where individual solutions for the one-off student are required. With this research project the individual student's desire to research was to be stimulated by virtue of both the modern form of the method as well as its corresponding wealth of content. The individual students were to be equipped with all the possibilities of educating themselves as people able to take responsibility for themselves as active partners in society. It was not new for the School Cooperation Tvind to have scientific reflections about the methods in this manner. From the application for the research project we will contribute with a few extracts: "On this background the research project sets up the hypothesis that the definition of a method with 1/4 of the available time for grandiose experiences, 1/4 of the time for the teacher's lectures and classroom education in its broadest sense, and 2/4 of the time for collection and processing of information using digital educational equipment for the forwarding of words and pictures as the basic instruments, will:
The 'Definition of Modern Method' was presented for a large group of school teachers within the School Cooperation Tvind as a research project in 1995. It is one of many examples of hypotheses, ideas and suggestions which have become reality through collective processes. During the summer of 1995 many of the teachers met in their holidays and during six weeks produced the foundation for this method, which in the coming years would prove to be ground breaking for the teaching at their schools. Through the process of writing the tasks, which were placed in the digital library of the school, many exciting pedagogical discussions concerning many of these teacher's views on educational methods arose. The traditional desk-bound teacher was overruled, and a new method gained breeding ground, whereafter the student became more central and became the planner of his or her own education, with a far greater responsibility for the execution of the tasks, and whereafter the teacher no longer was an obstacle blocking the imagination and endeavors of the student, but instead a knowledgeable guide in the student's own production. It has since been shown that the 'Definition of Modern Method' has come to stay. During the spring of 2001, students and teachers have carried out a unique action, where more than 1,000 students and teachers have written educational tasks with prefaces, introductions and instructions to each of them, and have then produced a series of CD-roms for use at each of the schools. All the tasks lie on the server, the digital library of the school, which is the student's school bag filled with tasks and books, and from where the student downloads the tasks he has chosen to work with. After finishing the task the student sends it to the teacher who corrects the tasks, after which the student has gathered yet a point. Each week a status is made to check how the student has worked with the tasks planned by the student and the teacher at the start of the week. The user interface has been made much more user-friendly along the way, following the rapid development within the computer technology. The old computers have been replaced with newer ones, and students and teachers have become much more knowledgeable in the utilization of the new generation of DmM. The research project has been carried out and it has confirmed the DmM method's significance for students and teachers. The Definition of Modern Method is still a unique instructional system, based on the utilization of modern technology, and still six years after its origin it places itself as one of the leading pedagogical research projects in Denmark. Drop in and visit one of the schools working with its starting point in Tvind's pedagogy and see for yourself. There is always an open house for those interested! |
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