The Future of Education

The article is a study based on the e-classes project (2017-1-RO01-KA202-037344), which is funded by the European Commission (under the Erasmus+ programme) for the years 2017-2019; the project is being implemented within an international partnership including a wide range of educational institutions (teacher training centres, schools, non-governmental educational organisations and IT centres) from Bulgaria, Italy, Spain and Romania. The project’s main objectives are centred on strengthening VET teachers’ professional profile and on improving VET students’ low achievement and stimulating their motivation to study science subjects. The article focuses on science teaching and learning and its challenges and suggests an innovative method, the flipped classroom. The paper highlights the project’s most important outputs based on the flipped classroom method: the lessons and their short video lessons illustrating basic scientific concepts from science school subjects. It gives examples on how transversal topics such as career orientation, motivation, inclusion, absenteeism (dropout) and CLIL can be effectively used by teachers for the benefit of students to stimulate their motivation. The testimonials collected from teachers and students participating in the implementation give some insights into the teaching / learning experience.

Keywords: flipped classroom, science, motivation, VET students and teachers;

References:
[1] Information Resources Management Association, Flipped instruction breakthroughs in research and practice, Hershey PA, USA IGI Global, 2017
[2] Hamdan, Noora and McKnight, Patrick, McKnight, Katherine, Arfstrom, Kari M.  A review of flipped learning, Retrieved from http://www.flippedlearning.org/cms/lib07/VA01923112/Centricity/Domain/41/WhitePaper_FlippedLearning.pdf