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Open Schooling Navigator

About Open SchoolingHow to start Open Schooling

Open Schooling needs

Open Schooling can require slightly different skills and resources than more traditional teaching approaches, though it need not be more complicated.

You might want to consider the following as specifically relevant to successful open schooling projects:

Community support

  • Backing of the school leadership
  • Parental consent
  • Access to community networks

Tangible resources (depending on project)

  • Funding
  • Equipment or tools
  • Materials
  • Space

If you don’t have these to begin with, don't worry. Just make sure you carve out time to get partners on board, and free some budget to get your hands on some of the resources, while you go. The resources used in the learning scenarios you can find in this Navigator were inexpensive and easy to come by.

The skills and mindsets that Open Schooling requires (and builds)


Specific/priority skills

  • Communication and relationship building
  • Collaboration/participatory processes (for co-design)
  • Leadership
  • Technical skills (depending on project)

Specific/priority attitudes & mindsets

  • "Can do" attitude
  • Willingness to try new things
  • Open to a challenge
  • Flexible
  • Determined & persistent


How to get started

Get inspired by the Learning Scenarios you can find in this Navigator.

Download the toolkit. Take a look at the case studies in part 2, they are best practice examples of Open Schooling in practice. Then move on to part 3 that offers support in planning your own Open Schooling activity.

What is Open Schooling?

The Open Schooling approach stimulates collaboration between schools and local communities to make science education more applicable and appealing to young learners. By practicing real life experiments, students, teachers and communities address local challenges and promote active global citizenship attitude.

More about Open Schooling

Why Open Schooling?

In Open Schooling young learners develop skills and competencies necessary for digital transformation and the global challenges we face in the 21st century. It provides teachers with new and innovative methods to improve student learning and schools can play a vital role for the local community.

More about benefits of Open Schooling

Testimonials Open Schooling

Testimonial student's perspective
Testimonial

Student's perspective

Within project SALL (Schools as Living Labs) students worked with professionals they hardly knew. Elin Geerling, student at Caland Lyceum in Amsterdam, talks about what is it like for a 13-year-old to work with adults.

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Testimonial institution's perspective
Testimonial

Institution's perspective

Le Dôme, a French cultural centre dedicated to research and participatory innovation, switched from the traditional approach to the living lab approach. Lab manager François Millet talks about what this means for their activities.

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Testimonial teacher's perspective
Testimonial

Teacher's perspective

In the SALL project (Schools as Living Labs), students from the ORT Danciger school in Kiryat Shmona (Israel) develop solutions to assist beekeepers and the general public with challenges related to bees. They learned an important lesson by being beekeepers themselves for a day. Their teacher Magi Mualem talks about the benefits of this approach to learning.

Read more

Open Schooling Navigator

This Open Schooling Navigator is your guide in the world of Open Schooling. It is part of a mix of actions, tools and resources open for you to join, use or attend and to support start Open Schooling.

Learn more about how this Open Schooling Navigator can support you or check out the toolkit, open schooling hubs and online course following the links below.

More about the Navigator

Other support materials & activities

Toolkit

We provide information packs for teachers and school leaders, with information on open schooling, the benefits of such a practice and how you can begin exploring open schooling practices within your school/ community. At the moment the toolkit is available in English only.

Download toolkit

Open Schooling Hubs

Mid 2022 national Open Schooling Hubs have started in 10 countries. Hubs act as educational incubator encouraging schools to transform into open schooling environments and spaces of community wellbeing. The Open Schooling Hubs are the main contact point for Open Schooling in their country, and act as supporters and facilitators offering training and regular meet-ups for teachers and other educators.

More about Open Schooling Hubs

MOOC

We offer a Massive Open Online Course (in English) to help you choose and build your own open schooling learning scenarios. The MOOC will connect teachers and educators with various levels of experience in Open Schooling. The course will run for a period of 4 weeks during the 1st semester of 2023 and will remain available afterwards.

More about the MOOC