THE LEGAL BACKGROUND AND ACCEPTANCE OF LEARNING COMMUNITIES BASED ON INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON

Abstract

"Current trends indicate that more schooling will take place online, including project-based learning (PBL). This shift opens new possibilities for interactions and collaborations among students, allowing for glocalization of learning and connectivism across international classrooms. The last two years have shown that many well-established techniques/tools for facilitating PBL in physical classrooms are not simply transferable to the online space. Thus, techniques/tools for online facilitation need to be explored, adapted, and newly developed, whilst considering existing pedagogical principles. We conducted three case studies lasting approximately 3 months each, in which primary school students (Grade 5-7) from Namibia, Malaysia, and Finland collaborated in online sessions. Throughout these studies we focused extensively on the facilitation process, exploring different techniques/tools with a trial-and-error approach. We were guided by our own experiences in facilitating and teaching within physical classrooms, and continuously reflected on the adaptation to online settings, whilst consulting theoretically-proposed and empirically-supported suggestions from various fields. For each case study, we video recorded the planning of the sessions, the sessions themselves, and the reflection afterwards. In addition to analyzing these videos, we also drew upon focus group interviews that were conducted with students at the end of the studies. Based on this data, we present facilitation techniques/tools, including the structuring of sessions (e.g., the importance of icebreakers, variety in activities, and navigation of digital tools), as well as aspects relevant to the climate (e.g., student-student interactions, "After 2011 a new alternative educational form appeared on the palette of Hungarian public education: learning communities that provide alternative education for schoolchildren who take part in alternative or mainstream education as private pupils. The learning communities are not schools in the traditional way, but we can simplify it as home-schooling in a more organized way. The conditions of learning communities and regulations in connection with the fulfilment of compulsory education vary in different countries and there is a difference in private pupils’ legal relationship in regard to how permissive or restrictive the status of being a private pupil is. The learning community as an alternative way of education has appeared in more European countries and even beyond Europe, this research discusses three European countries – Austria, Hungary and Romania – the way they regulate the fulfilment of compulsory education and their regulations in how they permit being a private pupil, as well as the attitude of educational governance towards this new form of alternative education."