Authors: Theodoros Katerinakis, Maria Evangelelli
Title: We Do Need More Education… for Social and Solidarity Economy: School Cooperatives in Lesson Plan and Focus Group Evaluation
Abstract
The current paper investigates the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) in the secondary education field, as a contributing factor of financial literacy and entrepreneurial life skill approach. Children are engaged and accompanied in educational paths as protagonists of change in their territory and in their learning processes. In this context, the study aspires to capture the principles and values that jointly govern SSE and Education.
SSE is approached through the School Cooperatives as a modern institution of the social life of the school that promotes democratic and moral values, since SSE and Education highlight enhanced learning in an experiential way. The School Cooperative is a modern institution of school social life that was first introduced into educational legislation of Greece in 1985, without being realized.
This paper includes two types of research methodology, one to organize the lesson plan and another evaluating the lesson from experts of practice aka educators in the secondary level. The first methodology concerns the construction and implementation of lesson plans for the 1st High School class in the Political Education course that includes “economic governance”. The main concern being the integration of School Cooperatives in Education, through the planning and implementation processes of cooperative learning, in relation to the applicable Analytical Programs. Their recommendations are given for a systematic teaching of social values as a mode of “conducting transactions”. There is a detailed presentation of the lesson plan with the corresponding learning theories and its successive stages. To carry out the second methodology, the qualitative approach of action research with the focus group method was chosen. It explains the stages of organizing the research, the focus group synthesis, the implementation of the questioning protocol and the evaluation of the process. According to the research results, the teaching plans at the practical level were considered applicable and well-planned, but at the ideological level regarding SSE, their application was not approved, resulting in a research interest in investigating perceptions of the SSE field.
In an era when financial literacy is a decisive goal in the life skills for Europe, the school environment plays an important role in the development of the learner. Acting as a pivotal socializing agent, the school imparts knowledge and tools useful for life and cultivates their transactional personality. With the specific purpose of teaching standards of behavior and inspiring values, principles and ideals, the introduction to SEE should be included at this stage of life. The pedagogical aspect of the school cooperative is multifaceted as it helps trainees to become familiar with the concepts of SEE at a practical level (democracy, equality, team building, decision making on homo economicus), it facilitates taking initiatives and activating trainees to take on tasks and actions, while linking knowledge to experience through interdisciplinarity in teaching. The School Cooperative conventionally educates the pupils in the principles of mutual aid, cooperation and social responsibility, the development of independent thinking and democratic consciousness. School Cooperatives could cultivate governance traits that connect the collective forms of economic activity, in which SEE is grounded.
