Collaborative tools to connect School and Landscape
With the help of a questionnaire, pupils were invited to discover their social environment by interviewing the people working at their own school. They were assigned different roles and formed groups to interact with teachers and school personnel. In the end, an interactive guessing game was created and exhibited in the school’s main hall.
Pupils connect with their teachers and school personnel on a personal level and get to know their community. They develop self-confidence, verbal abilities (asking questions and talking about oneself) and a notion for different life designs. Teachers get to know the students as well. Ultimately, all members of school (teachers, pupils, personnel) play the guessing game and get to know each other better.
The study area was the school itself, with a focus on the human dimension.
Learn how to start a conversation. Learn about interviewing techniques, patterns of questions and answers. Developing a notion for different life designs and a constructive mindset. Further, the teachers get to know the pupils and learn about their own colleagues.
Questionnaire (The interview contained questions such as: What do you like to do in your free time? What are you good at? What are your strengths? What are you proud of? What gives you strength?)
In the initial session, the pupils were asked if they knew who their teachers were, where they were from and what they liked. The pupils were able to collect 2-3 pieces of information in the plenary. Based on this, they were challenged to find out more about their social surrounding inside school. When asked, the majority of the pupils indicated to have medium or no motivation for this task.
During the interview phase, the teacher provided guidance and encouragement if needed. After having completed the minimum of three interviews, the majority of the groups requested a prolongation of the dynamic in order to interview many more people. The pupils expressed having fun at interviewing.
Laminated interviewee profiles (protocols plus pictures) were handed in and created. All results (interview answers) were shared in the plenary. There, pupils were able to guess and associate teachers or staff members to their provided answers. They were also able to map the names and roles of the interviewees in a mind map. Several teachers approached the teacher after the exercise expressing having enjoyed the personal interaction with the pupils. The interactive exposition was approached and used by teachers, pupils and parents.
