As part of the "A Chance to Teachers to Unwrap the Packages of the Gifted" IPA project funded by the European Union and the Turkey Republic, we made our second study visit to Switzerland between 3-6 May 2022, upon the invitation of Leysin American School.
We would like to thank the Ott Family (Doris and Steven Ott) for opening the doors of the Leysin American School to our project team and to the entire LAS family, including Marc Ott, school administrators, teachers, students and all staff. We would like to thank the Director of Research Dr Paul Magnuson, who put great effort into the planning and realization of the visit and shared with us his innovative ideas in education and the practicesof LAS in detail.
Within the scope of this visit, we observed the LAS EDGE program, an example of the application of agile philosophy in education, which supports the self-regulated learning of students at LAS and brings a different understanding to project-based studies. We had the opportunity to observe and get detailed information about the professional development of teachers at the Leysin American School Educational Research Center (LASER).
We have gained awareness that professional development will not be achieved through “one-time” and “out-of-school” training, but through “ongoing” and “in-class practices” with the change of the teachers’ mindset. We think that this is an important achievement in terms of shedding light on the teacher training we will plan for teachers working with gifted students.
We would also like to thank Christian Orlic from Copperfield International School and Tim Jeffries fromMalvern College for taking the time to share their different school practices with us.
Assistant Professor Gülendam Akgül