“School Labs”

Opportunities for Education for Democracy

School timetables are full and pre-planned – how can we fit EfD content into the schedule? with school labs!

This article contains an explanation of…

what kind of project a school lab is,
how it is set up (based on an example) and
which conditions are needed for it.

School Lab – what is it?

School labs are short projects that enable practical involvement and “hands-on”-methods to a certain specialized topic. The duration can be from one day to several days up to a school lab project week. It depends on for how long the students are allowed to be absent from their regular classes. School labs offer great opportunities for students to be out of the usual routines and experience something new. The core of the lab format is to enable space to experience things. Pupils and students can find out things on their own rather than being told how things are.

How to set up a school lab? One example

First of all, there must be a topic and idea and a partner who is interested in carrying it out as a participatory approach, so that the school lab development can be fitted to the group and their needs (age, language, knowledge and size of the group). In this example of Education for Democracy, a school lab offer had been looked for with the frame of one day duration for 14–17-year-old students. The competences of deliberation and democratic resilience are in the focus of this project.

A rough outline of the school lab and its range of topic will be discussed by a team of educators and the didactic methods will be fit to the age range. Then there will be pre-tests of it as a first step. The material of the school lab will be tested and further ideas will be added. So how can that look like in terms of content?

The example of a school lab that already been tested will serve now to give a more detailed impression of how to set up such a project:

The program “Founding a new society” is a a combination of simulation games and theatre pedagogy, participants go through plenary and small group phases in which they apply democratic skills. In the plenary session, each participant positions themselves by their name and a characteristic movement. In circle games, participants learn about the similarities and differences within the group. In the first small group phase, participants agree on a decision-making principle (majority/consensus). They define the three most important values in their new society.

The selection of resource cards creates a specific socio-economic situation. Each group develops a tableau that represents society with its values and possibilities. After presenting these societies in a plenary session, action cards are drawn to confront each society with a specific challenging situation, such as pandemic, threats from a neighbouring state or an unlimited, sustainable energy source, etc. Using their resources and discussing their values, the participants in their small groups then create another tableau that expresses the social conflict.

In the plenary session, an international conference based on solidarity, specific social situations are presented, and alternative solutions and courses of action are developed using elements of forum theatre. After the active part, the participants reflect on the process. Their experiences are classified according to the aspects of ease and resistance in terms of the democratic skills of solidarity-based participation, judgement, deliberation and democratic resilience.

Next to this content and considering its related topics, organisational aspects must be taken into account as well. No project can take place without some people feeling responsible for it, creating the right conditions and right atmosphere for it to take place. This will be looked at in the following passage.

The favourable conditions

Which conditions make it more difficult and which are needed to set up a school lab?

Studies in the DEMOCRAT project have shown that there are certain impeding and welcoming factors when it comes to realizing school labs practically. Some of them will be listed here to provide an overview of what should be considered when starting a school lab project:

Strict school schedule: strict slots of time with obligatory content makes it hard to add new content to the usual curriculum.
Lack of time of teachers/educators: professionals are very occupied already and stressed by all the tasks they have, so it is hard to convince them to even do additional things like a new project. Even though they think of EfD as something important, not everyone can manage to find a slot.
Dependency on head of school: Only if head of school is convinced or can be convinced, the project can happen and can get free slots of time. The issue of an “allowance” can make it much harder and longer to plan it. There is always this dependency of others.
Break of term: new term, new students or new group constellation can make it complicated
Cooperation: if too many partners are involved it can become complicated and create a planning-overhead due to much communication needed.
Responsibility on one person: if there is only one person to organize everything there is no backup and that person has a high amount of effort. It does make sense to work in tandems.

Welcoming factors, which make it easier to implement

Motivated persons in charge: If persons are committed voluntarily to implement projects it is much more successful.
Motivated participants: If kids or students chose to be part of the project, they put more effort in it (if it is possible, there should always be a choice between different projects)
Existing contacts: If there is good relation between network partners/organisations and colleagues, it is very useful for easier communication and to get projects done
Peer projects: there is more sustainability in a project if the knowledge can be shared in between different generations and be given from students to other students
Co–Creation: third places: to get connected in the surrounding of local partners of the region is useful. Students can meet other persons than their teachers/educators and see new places. This makes it a different experience and is important to widen the horizon and to see others ‘Lebenswelt’.
Participation: if students are asked to bring in their own topics they are eager to join and work more enthusiastically.