Learning plazas mainly require cooperation and support
Classical education is often still the norm at primary schools, but some schools are considering organizing education differently or are already doing so. Partly due to the introduction of appropriate education four and a half years ago, the need to be able to differentiate more in the provision of of the lesson material - and get more hands on the group.
Picture: Type tank
That emerges from one investigation that the AOb held among its members at the end of last year. Of the 5600 primary education employees who participated, just under five hundred (9 percent) indicate that they already organize education differently with learning plazas, units or domains. Another thirteen percent indicate that there are plans, but do not yet have a concrete implementation in mind. In secondary education, more than 3200 members took part in the survey. Twenty percent indicate that they work with some form of learning square concepts, six percent will start next school year and another 27 percent say that there are plans.
The differences between primary and secondary education are striking. In primary education, the team of teachers is usually involved in plans to organize education differently, in secondary education the initiative more often comes from above. This may also explain why teachers in primary education would recommend concepts significantly more often than their colleagues in secondary education.
You will read extensively about the benefits and pitfalls of cross-class educational concepts in this story from the January issue of the Onderwijsblad.
Workload
Indispensable ingredients for a successful introduction of cross-group forms of education are support, structure and team-oriented cooperation. 'Only if the collaboration goes well does it relieve the workload and frees up time for individual attention', reports a respondent in the survey. 'It is a process in which we constantly check whether we meet all learning objectives. And it will probably stay that way,' said another teacher. And a third says: 'Ask yourself if it suits your students. Quite a lot is expected of their independence and responsibility.'
It is nice if you can have more hands on the group with teaching assistants and other support staff, says one respondent. And yet: 'You can organize education differently, but I still want to insist on smaller groups to guarantee the quality of education.'
