Promoting teacher competence to develop a learning atmosphere in school classes that are heterogeneous especially in terms of language, culture and achievement following the principles and practice of Gestalt-pedagogy

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  1. Goals
  2. Background
  3. Progress
  4. Supporting Institutes
  5. Trainings and Teams
  6. Evaluation Reports
  7. Contacts

    further contents Pädagogisches Konzept | Entstehung |

    2. Background:

    2.1. The present conditions of school and instruction

    School and instruction have been formed through many changes in the conditions of growing up (viz. changes in the working society, changes in family structures, shifts in sexual roles, a stronger emphasis on the individual in his/her understanding of his/her life's role, the dissolution of traditional milieus, increased migration, dramatically changing economic conditions).

    All this has consequences for the role of the school and professional demands on teachers. Accordingly ever greater educational demands are placed on the school and major prerequisites for participation in class are no longer primarily provided by the family, but must instead be systematically taught in school and constantly reinforced.

    The schoolroom is characterized for the teacher by a growing number of individual learning difficulties and a collective refusal to learn or the withdrawal of individuals from instruction because of personal problems.

    Based on psychotherapeutic experience (psychoanalysis, therapy treatments, psychodrama, Gestalt therapy etc.) new ideas and treatments for obstruction to instruction and motivational problems have been developed. Thereby inhibitions and disorders are no longer considered behavioral disturbances of the individual and punished with blame and disciplinary measures, but instead they are seen as a phenomenon of a deeper lying disturbance of the complex of learning and teaching

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    2.2. About the pedagogical concept of our project

    The pedagogical basis is Gestalt pedagogy.

    Our goal is the increase of teaching abilities which can only be learned in a practical situation.

    Aspects of the continuing learning process in Gestalt pedagogy are:

    The acceptance of Gestalt-pedagogical continuing education for teachers--as well as its conceptual development, experiential testing and theoretical foundation--has progressed in the participating countries in various ways over the last 20 years.

    In Germany it started in the framework of the movement of humanistic psychology, which was imported through many individual impulses from the USA to Europe in the 1970s. It was an adaptation of Fritz Perls' Gestalt therapy in relation to pedagogical methods with a school pedagogically orientated teacher continuing education program.

    In Austria, and especially in Graz, such concepts fell on a most favorable ground, as there were connections in the area of Gestalt Theory to the research of Christian von Ehrenfels, who taught at the University of Graz at the beginning of the 20th century. It was possible here in a very fruitful way for educational theories developed on the basis of Gestalt theory to constructively merge with Gestalt pedagogical concepts based on the foundation of Perls' Gestalt therapy. It soon became possible to comprehensively put these Gestalt pedagogical concepts developed in Graz to the test in the founding of a school and in instruction (especially since 1983 in the "Modell Schule Graz").

    In Italy the development took its course severed to a large part from the development in the German speaking countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland as well as Luxemburg). Here the main theoretical impulses came from the Gestalt theory and its singular scientific developments, which are still today the determining basis for the varied concepts of pedagogical continuing education in Italy.

    In Slovakia and the Czech Republic the efforts toward a more humane education are closely tied to COMENIUS and the works of Zelina.

    To bring these varied developments together in a common European continuing educational project was therefore a most interesting and promising goal.

    In tying together these regional efforts to form a European continuous educational concept for teachers it also became possible to test the potential of this teacher training concept in dealing with the biographical and cultural differences in connection with:

    2.3. The origin of this project

    In 1997, under the initiative of Ute Kienzl and financed by "Kulturkontakt Austria" , the Teachers' Counseling Center in Graz organized a basic course in Gestalt pedagogy with participants from Slovakia, Croatia and Austria. This course, however, had to be discontinued as the concept for such an undertaking was not yet ripe. Growing out of this idea, it was decided to realize the concept in the framework of a Comenius 3.1 project, so that not only teachers from different countries could take part in a joint Gestalt pedagogical course, but also that the different applications of Gestalt pedagogy through transnational teams could be brought together. In seeking those interested in such a project, Ute Kienzl met and won for the idea, Ursula Buenger, a teacher from Germany, who studied in Italy, where she completed her studies in Theory of Gestalt Therapy and who now works in Sicily.

    For the scientific management it was possible to engage Joerg Buermann from the University of Mainz, an acknowledged authority in the field of Gestalt pedagogy. At a congress for Gestalt pedagogy in the fall of 1997 in Graz it was possible to initiate talks for the project. Then Ursula Buenger made the motion to have a preparatory meeting, although she later withdrew from the project.

    In the Fall of 1998 the preparatory meeting took place in Graz with Ute Kienzl, Joerg Buermann and Uscha Forster from the SIL (now IfB) Haus Saarburg, in which the basic structures and the theoretical applications were decided. Ute Kienzl took over the co-ordination of the project.

    In the search for further project partners the earlier contacts to Ivica Lencova from the University of Banka Bystrica were reactivated. Through her the new contact to Hana Androsova from the University of Budejovice was made. Now the project covered five countries and it could be presented for funding.