Page 32 - The story of the Art of Learning

3.2 The Art of Learning content
The Art of Learning content means the actual sessions performed in AoL. This content is pre-made, and the same content is used in all schools and in all classrooms in the project. The pre-made content makes us able to show exactly what the students have been doing for the full length of the programme, independent of teacher, artist, school and country. Also, the pre-made content makes it possible to replicate the research project in other classrooms and contexts. This being said, even though the content is set and is supposed to be delivered in the same way across all Art of Learning schools, it is still up to the artist and the teacher to collaboratively find the best practical solutions and adjust the sessions to their specific local conditions.
The Art of Learning content
development process
In the development of the AoL sessions, experience from the previous pilots has been used as a starting point, together with a vast array of theoretical principles from both the arts field, pedagogy and national curriculums, from neuropsychology, specifically the research field around Executive Functioning. The different development stages have made monitoring, quality assurance and reflections from the implementation of the AoL sessions a vital part of the development from stage 2 onwards, and have been key in informing the development of new themes.
Each theme was developed in partnership by several members of the team, before one of the developers was appointed to bring the idea into a fullborn concept. This concept was then discussed in a development forum, before the concept was written out in detail. After this, the detailed concept was revised by the development forum, and in some cases also in the reference group. Feedback from the development forum and the reference group led to additional revisions of the theme, before the theme was finalised.
The themes have been developed in four steps; Theme 1–6 (Spring/summer 2021) Theme 7–12 (Autumn 2021),Theme 13–18 (Spring 2022) and Theme 19–24 (Autumn 2023).
The content of Art of Learning has been set in a joint design framework. This framework follows the 4 level structure, with an overall introduction (level 1), one document for each theme (level 2) where the thematic overview is the first sheet followed by the belonging national curriculum, and where each session (level 3) has their own sheet, a one-pager which easily can be brought with you into the classroom, in which all the activities (level 4) have their own designated space where the room setup, resources and preparations needed, activity goals and guidance on how the activity should be facilitated.
Each theme has been contextualised to both Hungarian and Norwegian school contexts, translated into both English, Hungarian and Norwegian and linked directly to respectively Hungarian and Norwegian curriculum, before they have been set in the same design framework and put to use in schools.
An example of how an Art of Learning theme looks like can be seen in the image to the right. The complete Art of Learning content is available to download from the Art of Learning Handbook, which can be found on this platform: https://artoflearning.t-tudok.hu/
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