Abstract
The reAct project described in this paper is an innovative learning approach developed and used to re-motivate the disengaged from education and learning to connect to lifelong learning practices. These youngsters constitute a considerable social problem in Europe and the aim of the project is to find ways to recover the intrinsic motivation to learn and thereby improve the opportunities for participation. Key in this innovative strategy is self-organized learning, the learner in control of the learning process. The paper starts with an introduction on the challenge these dropouts pose to the society at large and the learning strategy developed to cope with this matter. The usage of media in the methodology is crucial and links to the concept of a user-configurable Personal Learning Environment (PLE). The main research issues are: can reAct change the attitude, what are the benefits and drawbacks of this self-organized learning approach and do the ICT tools support these processes. This paper covers the first half of the project and reflects on the first rather positive experiences.
Highlights
The percentage of young people that do not complete compulsory education constitutes a considerable social problem in Europe
The percentage of young people that do not complete compulsory education is especially high in the South where in Portugal 35,4%, Spain 31%, Italy 19,7%, and Greece 14,8% of the students drop out of school
Countries like Holland 11,4% and Austria 10,1% are faced with young people leaving school without a certificate [2]
Summary
Research shows that more flexible education and training systems with a variety of recognized learning pathways and combined with individual and school-level support offer more educational opportunities and better chances of diminishing the risk of early school leave [3], [4], [5]. It is difficult though in traditional classroom and training settings to include the basic metacognitive and critical skills that would allow these learners to function autonomously in the current society and the labor market. We will highlight some of the exemplary uses of social media and describe their benefits and drawbacks
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