Brussels, 12 April 2018

ECSWE Council meeting, Cracow, January 2018
We are pleased to share a brief report of our Council meeting Cracow, featuring an international conference.

Our last Coun­cil meet­ing took place in Cra­cow Fri­day 26th – Sun­day 28th Jan­u­ary 2018 at the Ped­a­gog­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ty Cracow.

The meet­ing fea­tured an Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Alter­na­tive Ped­a­gogy on Fri­day after­noon with speech­es by Dr. Kinga Orzeł-Dereń, Ped­a­gog­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ty Cra­cow, on the struc­ture of the Pol­ish edu­ca­tion sys­tem, Georg Jür­gens, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, ECSWE, on the role of the EU in Edu­ca­tion and ECSWE advo­ca­cy and Adam Winiar­czyk, Związek Szkół i Przed­szkoli Wal­dorf­s­kich w Polsce, on his­to­ry and future of the Pol­ish Wal­dorf move­ment. The speech­es were fol­lowed by a pan­el dis­cus­sion on per­spec­tives for the devel­op­ment of alter­na­tive edu­ca­tion in Poland.

In our inter­nal work, we put a strong empha­sis on peer learn­ing based on a new method. Eight case stud­ies of nation­al chal­lenges on themes such as teacher train­ing, pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment, nation­al lev­el advo­ca­cy, school lead­er­ship and qual­i­ty assur­ance, were pre­sent­ed in small groups. After­wards, the pre­sen­ters received tai­lored feed­back from their Euro­pean col­leagues on how to tack­le their spe­cif­ic nation­al challenges.

Oth­er themes cov­ered: a review of the pre­vi­ous meet­ing in Dor­nach, an update on the WOW-Day 2017 and 2018, a report from the ACTS project, news from the assess­ment work­ing group with Learn­ing for Well-being, a report on the sit­u­a­tion of the Dutch Wal­dorf move­ment, and fur­ther updates on our advocacy.

Besides the work­ing ses­sions, tours of the Jew­ish Quar­ter in Krakow and a tour of the Wielicz­ka Salt Mine were orga­nized on Fri­day evening and Sat­ur­day after­noon. A joint net­work­ing din­ner on Sat­ur­day evening allowed for infor­mal exchanges between ECSWE rep­re­sen­ta­tives and their Pol­ish colleagues.

A question? Please don’t hesitate to contact us!

Georg Jürgens

Georg Jürgens