Our school teacher?s presentation in a Panhellenic Conference

?Peer observation and peer evaluation in the introduction of a cognitive and methodological innovation in the B? Class Modern Greek Language subject in a Model High School? is the title of the presentation made by the Greek Language and Literature teacher Kalypso N. Lazou-Balta in the 4th Panhellenic Conference  entitled ?Education in the 21st century: Education & Culture?, organised on 10-12 May 2019 in Athens College by the aforementioned college in collaboration with the Museum of School Life and Education and the Hellenic Educational Society.

The presentation analyses the content of an one-session teaching of Modern Greek in B? Class, which the teacher offered to the school teachers for peer observation and mentions the comments of the other teachers, who evaluated the educational innovation (methodological and cognitive), which emerge from the statistical processing of the peer observation form handed out to them.

The peer observation activity was organised within the framework of the dissemination of Ms. Lazou-Balta?s training in Finland and Estonia, in April 2018, during her participation in an Erasmus+ KA1 project.

The teaching scenario was based on an autobiographical note, of the chapter on Kinds of Biography (pp.91-103 of the Modern Greek Language school book). The teaching aimed at the completion of the autobiographical note by the B1 Class students of Evangeliki Model High School of Smyrna, with the use of individual consultancy tools. Role-play and collaboration were applied with the involvement of the peer observing teachers in the student teams. The teachers played the role of the ?important others? in their students? lives. An experiential workshop was created, in which every Consulting Student used the ?Questionnaire of Personal Beliefs for the Exploration of Professional Perspectives? that was completed by three ?Important Others?, i.e. three persons that highly influence his development and the formation of his personality. These three persons are a friend, a teacher of his choice and a parent, played by a classmate. The Consulting Student then evaluated the validity of the answers he received and incorporated the ones he accepted as real in his autobiographical note, which he composed according to the European autobiographical note template (Europass).

The in-school peer observation form was designed by the Pedagogy Sector of the Department of Philosophy, Pedagogy and Psychology of the School of Philosophy of the NKUA and was implemented in the peer evaluation realised by the Model and Experimental Schools in 2014. The no.7 question was added by the school mathematicians Sotirios D. Chasapis and Alkiviadis G. Tzelepis, when they were observed themselves. These colleagues made use of the same form in the Algebra Laboratory that has been running in the school for the eighth school year now, as well as in the peer observation they organised for the dissemination of the training where they participated during the Erasmus+ KA1 project entitled ?The European innovation as a training subject of the Greek education staff?, in which the school teachers participated during the school year 2017-2018.