The urgency for thinking about thinking in education – Gozo course

The collaboration between the Mikiel Anton Vassalli College in Gozo and the Belgian Academy Eekhout, has now resulted in offering two intensive residential training programmes on an annual basis for teachers and educational leaders in Gozo.

This partnership began 3 years ago when Eekhout Academy started to offer an intensive week course in improving the overall educational quality of schools with a focus on ‘Educating for the Future.’“As from this year, we started to offer another intensive week training programme also in Gozo, this time about the necessary thinking processes for learning specifically Meta Learning and Thinking Skills,” informed Victor Galea, the College Principal of Mikiel Anton Vassalli College.

Course director Peter Van de Moortel said that “the basic line of the course is ‘The Quality of Our Future Depends on the Quality of Our Thinking’. This is a quote from the Maltese physician, psychologist, philosopher, author, inventor and consultant Edward de Bono.”“The course focused on the necessary thinking processes for learning. We provided different frameworks for thinking such as the Bloom’s taxonomy, structured thinking of De Bono, critical thinking, growth mindset, philosophy, meta-learning and other major thinking frames,” he added.

Dr Adriana Yordanova, Mr Yuri Charyguine, Mr Godfrey Mifsud and Ms Irina Fedcenko Carbonaro, all teachers from the Mikiel Anton Vassalli College Malta School of Music, were the four local educators sponsored by the College who joined the other 20 participants coming from Germany, Latvia, Italy, Belgium and France.The course methodology was based on social constructive learning and consists of teaching moments, interactive discussions, co-creative sessions, reflections to own context and focused on implementation in the work field of the participants.

These residential training initiatives under the Erasmusplus EU Programme are the result of the strong established partnership between the Mikiel Anton Vassalli College and the Belgian partners. Mikiel Anton Vassalli College is the Network of Specialised Schools in Malta and Gozo for the Visual and Performing Arts Education.

Photos: From Left to Right – Course Director Peter Van de Moortel, MAV College Principal Victor Galea, Godfrey Mifsud, Yuri Charyguine, Adriana Yordanova and Irina Fedcenko Cabonara; 2: Group Photo during a School Visit at St Thomas More College Zejtun Primary; 3: deep discussions during one of the workshops and 4: exercises in the Higher-order Thinking classroom