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Open Schooling Navigator

About Open SchoolingWhy Open Schooling?

Open Schooling benefits

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.

Open Schooling can benefit students, teachers, schools and the local community.

Students

  • develop essential skills such as communication, teamwork, and critical thinking
  • learn to be active responsible citizens
  • will be better prepared for real-life situations when leaving school
  • learn more about societal challenges such as climate change and sustainability and how they can make a difference!
...my students love to learn about real situations and to provide their solutions

– Maria Eleftheriou, Teacher

Teachers

  • are offered professional development in teaching and learning
  • work collaboratively with other colleagues and other professionals across different subject areas
  • will connect to parents and local community more easily
  • will develop innovative ways to deliver curriculum

Schools

  • connect with stakeholder organisations, policymakers and their community
  • gain a larger network
  • make the school a focal point in the community
  • improve the (science) learning and personal development of pupils

Communities

  • Get help in solving local problems
  • are involved in student learning and development
  • build closer connections with the next generation
  • benefit from knowledge and skills development offered in school

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

How to start Open Schooling

Open Schooling can require slightly different skills and resources than more traditional teaching approaches, though it need not be more complicated. Like all successful teaching it requires a measure of creativity and ambition alongside curiosity and planning.

More about Open Schooling needs

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.

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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