The Hellenic Adult Education Association is happy to announce its second webinar with Ted Fleming, titled “Recognition in Transformative Learning: Where the personal and political meet”. The webinar will be held on Wednesday, 3rd May, from 18.00-20.00 Greek time.
Ted Fleming, Emeritus Professor of Adult Education at Maynooth University, Ireland, and adjunct Associate Professor of Adult Education at Teachers College Columbia, will present his ideas and will have the opportunity to discuss with the participants about the following issues:
The importance and meaning of recognition;
Why study Honneth and his critical theory;
What Honneth says about recognition – connecting the individual and social, a lifelong pursuit of recognition;
The importance and implications for adult education and Transformative Learning.
In collaboration with the participants, questions will be addressed as a trigger for discussion on the issues at hand. Ted Fleming will present his perspective and discussion will follow.
Alexis Kokkos, Emeritus Professor of Adult Education at the Hellenic Open University, will be the facilitator.
We will host the event in a zoom platform and a parallel translation will be available for all participants. Only participants who have registered for the event will be able to take part. Please fill in the following form: https://forms.gle/TPYXej5qe89Zq5V59.
On Thursday, February 23, the screening of the documentary “On the Angels’ Site”, that has been created as part of the Erasmus+ “Bridging Digital” was held at the Trianon cinema. But how was this documentary created and what will be its use?
The history of creation
The project ‘Digital Art Academy – cultural education for digital skills’ aims to support the growth and intertwining of digital and creative competences for both adult educators and artistic professionals. It will bring together adult educators with creative practitioners who, in cooperation with multimedia experts, will use digital technologies to create new art forms.
This documentary was the result of the collaboration of two organizations, the Hellenic Adult Education Association, and the Angels of Joy. As part of the “Bridging Digital” project, we jointly created a series of workshops in order for us to explore the appropriate creative tools and methods for transforming the theatrical act into audiovisual material.
The first audiovisual material was created. It is about “The song of my life”, a theatrical act designed by the Angels of Joy, having as its basic material the autobiographical stories of elderly people living in nursing homes. The Angels of Joy, in collaboration with the caregivers and animators, collected the material and created a single narrative from it, which also formed the theatrical text.
Upon its completion, a pilot screening was carried out in the nursing home from which the primary material was collected. The screening process, as well as the reactions of the elderly, were recorded and made up the material of the documentary “At the Angels’ Worksite”, with a total duration of 33 minutes.
In the cinema
Before the screening of the documentary began, we talked with the attendees about the process followed to create the documentary and all the stages we described earlier. The screening and discussion followed. The participants, in most of them adult educators, expressed their impressions as well as their thoughts, both for the implementation of the method and for the use of the documentary itself in the educational process. The presence of representatives of the Angels of Joy was once again important, as they shared how they experienced the whole process. Equally important was the contribution of the director and main educator of the process as well as the rest of the creative and organizational team.
The description of the process of creating the material as well as the implementation of the other countries participating in the project can be found here by clicking on “Online publication”.
More information about the Bridging Digital project can be found on the project’s website as well as on its Facebook page.
The Hellenic Adult Education Association is happy to announce its first webinar for this year, titled “The association of transformative learning theory with the perspective of Freire”. The webinar will be held on Wednesday, 11th January, from 18.00-20.00 Greek time.
Ted Fleming, Emeritus Professor of Adult Education at Maynooth University, Ireland, and adjunct Associate Professor of Adult Education at Teachers College Columbia, will present his ideas and will have the opportunity to discuss with the participants about the following issues: a. What are the aspects of Freire’s and Mezirow’s perspectives that are common, similar, or different?
b. Which of these aspects are relevant to contemporary social and educational contexts?
c. What are the strong points or weak points of each?
d. Which are the main sources that adult educators should read?
Alexis Kokkos, Emeritus Professor of Adult Education at the Hellenic Open University, will be the facilitator. We will host the event in a zoom platform and a parallel translation will be available for all participants.
Only participants who have subscribed to the event will be able to take part.
Covid-19 demonstrates the vulnerabilities of living in close proximity to others. This also high-lightened the importance of working together to deal with the crisis, as well as the importance of reflecting and learning in relation to changes to our lives. This assumption begs the question, which city would enhance the lives of all its citizens, including new arrivals. This question is at the center of attempts to bring adult and citizenship education to address community and social problems through a pedagogy of the city, in this case the City of Larissa. UNESCO provides the framework, resources, and support for the Learning City project. It is planned as an exercise in democracy and citizenship which is the version of lifelong learning proposed by the Municipality of Larissa the local lead agency for this venture.
The webinar will introduce the participants to the concept of Learning Cities, the goals, the cultural and educational obstacles to the development of a Greek Learning City and the example of Larissa-Learning City.
Speakers and facilitators
Alexis Kokkos is Emeritus Professor of Adult Education in the Hellenic Open University. He has actively participated in the establishment of the institution of Popular Education in Greece, as well as in the foundation of the Hellenic Open University. He was the scientific responsible of the national program of Training the Educators of Professional Training. He is Chairperson of the Hellenic Adult Education Association and editor-in-chief of the international journal ADULT EDUCATION Critical Issues. His books and articles on Adult Education and Training, as well as on Transformative Learning, have been published in Jossey-Bass, Palgrave Macmillan, Brill/Sense, Routledge, Nova Science Publishers, Journal of Transformative Education, RELA, Convergence, LifeLong Learning in Europe, International Journal of Education and Ageing, Andragogical Studies, International Journal of Vocational and Technical Education. He is member of the Leadership Circle and co-responsible of the Research Circle of the International Transformative Learning Association (ITLA) and was co-convener of the European Network of ESREA Transformative Processes in Learning and Education (2013-2021). He has been advisor on issues related to adult education of the Greek Prime Minister (2009-2012) and the General Secretary of Lifelong Learning (2019-). He has been awarded for his Exemplary Service and Leadership within the international transformative learning community.
Dimitris Deligiannis is Vice-Mayor of Municipality of Larissa and Professor/Consultant at the Hellenic Open University. His bachelor studies were on Literature and Law. His MA studies were on Social Planning in Organization and Management in Education. He obtained his PhD at the Hellenic Open University on the field of adult education. For over a decade, he worked as a teacher at secondary education and has published numerous articles in books and science magazines. In 1998 became Education Director of the Center for the Treatment of Addicts – EXODOS and since 2000 organized the Adult Alternative School, the first adult education structure for ex-users in Greece. Coordinator of the first Vocational Training Programs for former users and responsible for organizing a training structure for juveniles in the Kassavete Prison. In September 2019, he was elected as the Chairman of the City Council of Larissa. During the period 2014 – 2019, he was Deputy Mayor for Social Policy and Chairman of the Committee for the “Larissa – Learning City” for which the City of Larissa was awarded the Lifelong Learning Institute (UIL) at UNESCO 2017.
George A. Koulaouzides, studied mathematics and adult education. He teaches theory and practice of adult education at the Hellenic Open University (Assistant Professor) and the Democritus University of Thrace (Visiting Scholar). He has designed the well-known accredited training program for the instructors of the National Centre for Public Administration in Greece and has a vast experience in training of trainers. He is considered as the person who guided the internationalization of the Greek adult education community. His research interests are learning, transformative learning, educational biography and critical reflection. He has written one book on adult education, translated four books on adult education and qualitative research methods, edited journals and several textbooks. His published work counts more than 100 papers in Greek and international journals, edited volumes and conference proceedings. For 15 years he was working as Secretary General (i.e. CAO) for many Municipalities in Northern Greece. He worked extensively in supporting the Municipality of Thermi in becoming a member of the UNESCO Global Learning Cities Network, and he also supported as an external advisor the on-going application of the Municipality of Corinth. In 2019 he was the first Greek who was inducted in the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame as a distinguished adult education practitioner. He is a member of the executive board of the European Association for the Education of Adults (2019-2021), and a member of the Board of Directors of the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame (2020 – 2023).
DIGITAL aims to strengthen competence and mobilize educators, working with low-qualified or less-experienced adults, to use digital learning strategies and tools in order to promote their professional and personal development.
The result of this project was the creation of a Good Practice Compendium, a digital edition that encourages knowledge sharing and learning among Adult Education organizations by identifying and sharing innovative approaches to the application of digital teaching and learning. In addition, a DIGITAL toolboxwas introduced, an interactive version including the 23 best digital learning tools, which were tested by the program partners and which also includes methods and instructions for application and use of these tools. Finally, the DIGITAL Online-Coursewas created, a short online seminar offered to educators in order to enhance their digital skills and use digital learning tools with confidence.
The meeting in Athens
On the agenda of Monday’s program was the meeting of the project’s partners in our offices in Athens, where the results of the program were discussed and followed by its evaluation. Tuesday was dedicated to the guided tour of our collaborators at the Museum and the Archaeological Site of the Acropolis.
Partner’s meeting at H.A.E.A’s office
Guided tour of the Archaeological site of Acropolis
An open event came next at the President Hotel, during which presentations of the program and the partners took place, followed by a workshop on the practical application of the program tools. We received feedback from participants about the developed tools, which is particularly important for both improving the tools themselves as well as ourselves.
So another program is coming to an end. A circle closes, yet many new will open!
On Monday, July 19, 2021, the first three-hour, online-training meeting of the DIGITAL Technologies to Improve Adult Learning program on “Digital Tools for Improving Adult Learning” took place.
Aim of the program
The goal of the DIGITAL Technologies to Improve Adult Learning project is to enable and motivate teachers working with low-qualified and less-experienced adults to use digital learning strategies and tools to make learning more engaging and relevant to learners, as well as to boost their professionalism and personal development.
Seminar’s framework
This seminar is the third and final stage of the program and aims to enhance the digital skills of learners and encourage them to use digital learning tools with more confidence.
Seminar’s content
The instructors, Geli Manousou and Tonia Hartofylaka, presented the educational materials of the program: DIGITAL Good Practices Guide, DIGITAL Toolbox, DIGITAL Online Learning Course and invited the 21 participating adult educators to experiment with these resources until the next meeting, which will take place on September the 6th. During this second meeting the trainees will have the opportunity to present their work and exchange suggestions and ideas for future applications in their daily educational practice.
Evaluation of first meeting
This first online meeting took place in a very friendly and pleasant atmosphere. As a whole, the trainees expressed their interest in the digital tools they encountered, but also in all the innovative practices that were discussed. Below you will find some of the thoughts of the trainees created on Jamboard:
You can visit program’s website for further information
During the last decade inward migration put the European educational systems to the test. The large influx of migrants from different educational, economic and cultural contexts made emergency response mechanisms imperative resulting in a range of language and cultural awareness courses to promote integration. Migrants, in most situations, became a special target group of adult education with specifically tailored solutions. This gave rise to a differentiation between ‘adult education for migrants’ and ‘traditional adult education’.
What DIVERSITY project looks at?
The DIVERSITY project supports the normalisation of education and training to migrants by targeting training to manager and adult education programme planners to amend next their programme planning and delivery internal processes to more effectively facilitate migrants into a mainstream adult education lifelong learning track.
The DIVERSITY project considers managers and adult education programme planners among adult education providers as key to reaching this overarching objective. The 30-month DIVERSITY project aims to develop training resources to enable adult education for migrants to shift from the contingency approach to a more diversity-informed mainstream adult education lifelong learning approach. Such an approach would not consider migrants and refugees as special contingency/emergency cohort of adult learning participants but as a regular target group of an increasingly more diverse adult education audience.
The DIVERSITY project partners develop training guidelines designed to address the specific requirements for this organizational shift by providing a modular curriculum to assist providers to a) assess their current practices impacting on migrant participation, and b) to develop appropriate practices to realize mainstream adult education engagement of migrant learners.
DIVERSITY Key phases
A European gap analysis, coordinated by the National University of Ireland Maynooth is available, based on four national desk researches, online surveys, interviews and focus groups conducted by project partners.
A modularized training curriculum, comprising 8 key modules, highlights key points on how learning with migrants may become more diversity-informed, allowing for a more effective integration of them into the local communities.
A Pilot Delivery & Validation: Final Diversity Training across 4 partner countries will thoroughly test, evaluate and refine the curriculum reaching 100 managers and planners across Europe. HAEA is the leader partner in this phase and extensive feedback on behalf of the engaged stakeholders will provide sufficient evidence on this training qualities.
A policy recommendations paper will consolidate findings, insights and experiences from all three previous outputs in order to inform evidence-based policy formulation, provide policy recommendations and identify actionable measures for stakeholders.
The Diversity project partnership is coordinated by Niedersächischer Bund für freie Erwachsenenbildung e.V. (DE) and HAEA (GR) along with 5 more partners from Belgium, Italy, Denmark and Ireland join forces to this end.
For more information about the DIVERSITY project you may visit our site.
Alexis’ Kokkos book on the use of art in education for facilitating the transformation of stereotypical perceptions has recently been published by Brill|Sense. The book is addressed to teachers, adult educators and museum educators and brings together the author’s many years of work on the topic.
The First Part focuses on exploring various theoretical perspectives (by Aristotle, Dewey, Freire, Gramsci, Greene, Critical Pedagogy, the Harvard School of Education, the Frankfurt School, and the Museum Education) and identifying the ways in which they are related. The Second Part presents in detail the principles and stages of the “Transformative Learning through Aesthetic Experience” method that the author has developed, with reference to several practical examples.
The book also presents the special ways in which fine arts, literature, cinema and music can be exploited in the context of the method.
The Hellenic Adult Education Association is happy to announce its second webinar with Ted Fleming, titled "Recognition in Transformative Learning: Where the personal and political...
