Development of transversal competencies in the middle school using ICT

Abstract

Leadership is nowadays taught to preschool learners so why dont we train learners at lower levels to integrate the skills they learn in order to answer one question or to solve one problem? The thesis problematic is: Does the collaborative group work of the tutors in preparing their lesson plans for one theme as one entity help middle school students to build their knowledge by processing the theme ideas in an integrative manner rather than a summative way in order to develop the teachers and the students transversal competencies? An experimental study is suggested towards serving the idea of the thesis thus embedding interdisciplinary curriculum design of one theme – the longitudes – for grade 7 students in a new context following Bruners cognitive theory aided by the third generation of the activity theory by Angstrom aiming at the implementation of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to target the same transversal objectives and competences in an inductive manner. The focus is on the output of the team work of a pilot group chosen from Tripoli Evangelical School for Girls and Boys (TES). The experiment was done during one week to 97 of Grade 7 students at TES where students were divided in two groups and the theme was presented in two ways: one following the traditional way of teaching and the other the outcome of the pilot group work. Students took the same formative evaluation and the results were remarkably good showing the progress of 57% of students whose social studies school average was below 65%. The conclusion deducted from this study can be summarized as: there is always a new approach in the dynamic process of learning to address learners towards the transfer of required knowledge and more thus widening the use of different skills in an integrative way in a new real life situation.