Finding strategies to prevent conflict and reduce Early School Leaving

Today, a lot of students decide to drop out of school and European Early School Leaving rates are still high. For this reason, it is more than important to work on factors that can help preventing and managing Early School Leaving and conflicts. 

The new edition of the course “Preventing conflicts and tackling Early School Leaving​” aimed at teaching how to identify the causes of this phenomenon and the best approaches and strategies to prevent, tackle and reduce it as well as the keys to conflict management. It took place in Palermo from 12/06/2022 to 18/06/2022. The participants came from different parts of Europe, with Charlotte, Eva, Marina, Raúl and Queila coming from the IES Islas Canarias in the Canaries, Spain; Ildikó coming from Fehérlófia Waldorf School, Hungary; and Beatriz coming from the IES Ausiàs March in Spain. 

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​On the first day, participants explored the topic of Early School Leaving from different national perspectives, since it is a widespread problem across Europe. They tried to define what Early School Leaving means and identify the main risk factors, which can be social, familiar, individual and related to the school environment. This allowed the participants to draw and share with the others a realistic picture of their school experience with Early School Leaving, starting from the underlying causes, and finishing with the potential consequences.

​Then, we focused on conflict management. We tried to have a change perspective. With the support of an inspirational TED Talk and a lot of activities, the group who initially associated the idea of conflict to something essentially negative, realized afterwards how conflicts can become great opportunities to learn about ourselves and the others, improve relationships, and express ourselves and our needs better. Moreover, we analyzed different conflict management styles and discussed their concrete application in different situations.

We also tried to understand how we can engage students more and make them be more active and participative during lessons thanks to some innovative teaching methods. For this reason, we looked at some ICT tools and, through some practical activities, participants learned how they can use them with their subjects.

Then, the group focused on how to battle negativity in the classroom, through group reflection and practical activities. They tried to define and characterize the main “negative” student types and developed practical tips and suggestions on how to deal with them in the most effective ways. The participants also tried to transform their mindset from fixed to growth and learned how to foster a mindset of growth in their students. Moreover, they looked at how to deal with bad beliefs and improve students’ self-esteem.
Through visual tasks and group reflection, we analyzed the phenomenon of bullying and we focused on the characteristics of a bullying behaviour, the different types of bullying and the roles which are played in a bullying situation. 

Finally, we focused on cooperative learning and different cooperative methods that can be used at school in order to make everybody collaborate and be responsible of something. The group also practiced some non-formal activities to reflect the importance of membership and collaboration.
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The key word of this week training course was “transformation”: we learned how to change perspective on conflicts, how to transform the strong and sometimes negative energy of some students into something positive and productive, how to change our mindset from fixed to growth, how to transform a group of people into a team.

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All the teachers gave their contribution to make the most of the course by sharing ideas and experiences.

ELA is looking forward to welcoming you again!

Discover more about this course in: https://www.erasmustrainingcourses.com/early-school-leaving.htm