Innovative initiatives: The Pedagogy of Celestin Freinet
The Teacher Education Program of the Athens University of Economics and Business completed, on Friday 1/3/2019 a cycle of six meetings related to the pedagogy of Celestin Freinet on 23 November 2018, 7 December 2018, 14 December 2018, 15 February 2019, 22 February 2019 and on 1 March 2019, as part of the innovative action "New Pedagogical Streams".
The students of the Program were trained on the application of Freinet Pedagogy to the teaching practice, through workshops and works that had as their central axes the daily news, class councils, the school newspaper, the school co-operative etc. To achieve this, there has been a collaboration with the pedagogical team "Skasiarcheio”, under the scientific responsibility of Dr. Vasilliki Brinia and with the trainers Mr. Babis Baltas, Ms Pavlina Nikolopoulou, Ms Evi Gatou, Ms Maria Zaharopoulou, Ms Katerina Paouri, Ms Katerina Alexiadi, Ms Stella Badikian, Ms Anastasia Goliomiti, Ms Thania Agelli and Mr Christos Katsaros.
The first three sessions of the winter semester generally concerned Freinet Pedagogy, which was linked to the winter semester students’ project, including creative analysis of Freinet’s book "The Child's Investigatory Experience and Education" and discussions on collaborative learning, both by Freinet and by Miltos Kountouras, Greek educator. The students, through these projects and the first experiential workshops of the winter semester, were trained through the experiential method, they applied the Freinet techniques in simulation conditions and had the opportunity to discuss the implementation of these techniques at schools as well. They held virtual Class Boards and applied the "What's new?" technique to see the benefits of these techniques themselves.
Then, at the next three meetings that took place in the spring semester and after the students had already gained teaching experience from the public schools, as well as fundamentals from the project of the winter semester, they were asked to study in depth the concept of the school cooperative, an idea that was applied for the first time in the academic year 2018-2019. The students in teams worked on a project for the Practicum in Teaching II course and, in the framework of the "Special Didactic Methodology" course, they organized a teaching of specific teaching hours for the courses of their specialty, applying the techniques of the school cooperative.
Upon completion of this innovative Initiative, students have received the appropriate stimuli in order to be able to apply the Freinet techniques on their teaching practice. We would like to thank the “Skasiarcheio” team for the excellent collaboration and we are going to continue this collaboration next year for our mutual vision: The introduction of Celestin Freinet’s pedagogy in the Greek schools.
76 Patission Str.
