Working with others: facets of an educational experience

Abstract

This article discusses some important aspects of a three-year educational project (1997-2000) that took place in an Athenian primary school where a high percentage (60%) of pupils did not have Greek as their mother tongue. The principal objective of the project was to create, through a variety of approaches, conditions that would allow the children (and their specialist teachers) to recognise and accept the existence of different identities so that they could work together with the ‘others’ in all kinds of activities. The article begins by describing the theoretical framework of the experience and particular characteristics of the Greek educational system so that the reader can place the results of this experience in the relevant cultural context. This is followed by a description of the innovative educational experiment that was undertaken from the viewpoint of the work that was performed with a group of ‘animators’. Finally, the article deals with some of the qualitative aspects of this work and concludes by reviewing some hypotheses about the effectiveness of efforts of this kind.