FEED-BACK FROM THE
LEARNING PROCESS:
CONCLUSIONS AND
RECCOMENDATIONS
Our experience in delivering this course
generally confirmed the validity of preliminary considerations and hypotheses which
stood at the basis of the content-related and methodological choices we made.
In the same time, the signals we collected from the teacher-student and
student-student interactions related to the learning process offered us a large
amount of empirical information which hopefully would help us in laying the
directions for the improvement of our teaching approach. Below we shall
summarize some of the main conclusions which we regard as highly relevant from
this perspective:
1. Shifting the focus from lecturing to
discussion and group reflection made even clearer the differences of perception between students from
Basically, students from Hungary, while
acknowledging the necessity and importance of regional development in the
border areas, nevertheless expressed their concern that by the implementation
of integrated development policies the more developed and prosperous
sub-regions might loose economically in favor of the less developed territorial
sub-units and that
Romanian citizens looking for employment opportunities across the border might
enter in competition with Hungarian citizens. By
contrast, students from
Romania insisted on the comparability of Austria-Hungary and Hungary-Romania
border regions, arguing that in the process of European Union moving eastward,
the border areas which are located in the geographical proximity of EU Member
States should naturally benefit from their location. Romanian students emphasized exclusively the
potential positive impact of the envisaged cross border regional development
schemes, particularly in view of the possibility to attract European Union
funds through promoting regional cross-border partnership.
Although we do not have clear-cut evidence as
yet, there are reasons to believe that in medium-term such “malign” differences
of perception are likely to be reduced. In discussing certain important issues (such as
the increasing social polarisation; the intensification of migration
in the border areas; the new demographic situation emerging under the
influence of current economic changes and of the migratory
phenomena; the transformation of legal and illegal segments of employment)
students from Romania and students from Hungary already expressed basically
similar views, and their opinions grew closer to each other as the result of
debates. To speed up
this process, it would be necessary to intensify student-exchanges and provide
more opportunities for students in the two countries to act together and
exchange views (interactive web–page, discussion forums, joint research
projects etc.)
2. One
important obstacle in this respect is the still prevailing strong value oriented component in students’
outlook which we could observe during the implementation of our course. To
refer here to just one relevant example, while discussing about cross-border regions in East-Central
Europe, students appealed to two terms rather often used in the everyday
language and also in the media: “East” and “West”. As it became quickly
clear, they were attaching certain value-centred elements to the significance
of these concepts: according to their interpretation, “West” overwhelmingly
means “well developed’, “positive”, with lots of perspectives and the direction
towards everyone moves, while, by contrast, “ East” became a symbol of
backwardness, of not being able or not willing to keep in pace with the
changes.
This preference of many students – particularly of those coming from non-intellectual family background - for illegitimate generalisations and for adopting simplified perspectives on social reality in accordance with the predominant value judgements and stereotypes existing in the population views at local community level, acts as a serious impediment on the way of their familiarising with serious scientific methodology. In order to overcome this as much as possible, there would be a need for further immersing students in intensive empirical and comparative research, analysis and interpretation, so as to enable them to make a clear distinction between everyday-life conceptions and sociological discourse.
3. Our classroom activities also drawn
attention to the fact that many students tend to conceive the idea of
regionalization more as a political and
ideological rhetoric rather than as a concept with practical significance. This way of thinking has its roots –
according to the assessment we made – not just in the novelty of the “regional
theme” for the pubic conscience, the lack o specific knowledge and the
predominance of stereotypes, but also in the inadequate use of the idea of
regional development by politicians and by the media. That is why, we consider
important that in the future we lay an even stronger emphasize on “practical
learning”, with all significant elements which this concept entails.
In this context, the presentation and classroom
discussion of case studies and the elaboration by students of small practically
oriented projects proved to be very effective methods which we shall continue.
In selecting cases for study and problems to be answered through discussions
student projects, it is necessary to take into consideration the necessity to
equip students with the necessary tools to think both analytically and
synthetically, and to develop all other policy oriented research skills. To
enhance the efficiency of the learning process, our course portfolio web page
should also become more interactive, to act as a discussion forum between
teachers, students, and colleagues from other universities interested in
methodological innovation. The outcome of teacher self-reflection, discussions
and impressions during the teaching period should be written down on the spot,
even in less elaborated form, in order to enhance learning from our own and
each other’s experience and from mutual comments.
4. We came to the definite conclusion that in
the future the preservation of classical division line and status-based
separation between the roles traditionally assigned to students and teachers would
be extremely counterproductive and this outdated practice should be abandoned.
Our very strong general impression was that students (even not-so-performing
students) generally welcomed the opportunity of “alternative learning”,
including the alternative forms of assessment, where measuring students active
involvement, social research and social practice oriented skills had an
important role.
To sum up, for all the reasons outlined above,
to the members of our teaching team and to our students alike, the experience
of successfully forging a fully-fledged partnership - although it was not a
completely new attempt in this regard - nevertheless it represented a
breakthrough and a sort of revelation.