By reflecting on different approaches to school improvement and quality of leaning in a variety of educational settings, students will (1) understand their own cross-cultural contexts and its pedagogical challenges of practicing an education for social justice within and beyond global neo-liberalism and (2) be able to create shared values and ethics within the relations between family, schools, and local community in different context.

Content:
The course focuses on designing, implementing and evaluating the actions and strategies of “lifelong learning city” and acquiring understanding in how to develop inter-departmental and interdisciplinary cooperation. During the course, the various aspects of education, training and learning will be studied through the linking of human creativity, knowledge and innovation beyond bridging the learning in and out of the school environment.

The first and second sections of the course introduce the major concepts underlying the school improvement and learning community. The third and fourth sections of this course focus on student activities which will be to build case studies based on the web-based research and on-site visits. Students will work individually and in groups to build web-based and on-site case studies that show their societal and cultural perspectives on school improvement and learning community. The workshop periods will be used to work within the class to guide this activity. The instructor will help the students structure their activities and build and reflect these web-based case studies and on-site visits. The case studies will then be presented for the entire class to learn from the last section of the lesson.

Modes of Study: lecture and seminar, short essay

Short essay: max. 5 pages, font 12 points, including references based on the subthemes of the course. The student group chooses the topic freely.

Enrolment in NettiOpsu not later than on Sunday, 20th of September, 2015.

Study Material/Literature: Selected articles and book chapters on school improvement and learning community studies. Those will be given to the students in the beginning of the course.

Max. 20 students