European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

228 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETYA learning community, or a school intending to become a learningcommunity, will make the effort to draft and develop a pedagogicalproject (the Anglo-Saxons would say a mission statement) and a schoolplan together with the local community. Too often the drafting of thepedagogical project is done by the pedagogical team composed of thehead of school, the management team (if any) and the teaching staff.In the drafting of this pedagogical project and of the school plan it isimportant to involve all the other members of the educational schoolcommunity and of the local community.If one intends to create a learning community one has to involve upfrom the beginning the representatives of the local community. It ismuch easier to ask for active participation of the local community if it isinvolved in the drafting of the pedagogical project and the school planup from the very beginning. This doesn’t mean that the local communityimposes itself totally on the project or plan.Certain schools could ask the local community to reflect on the existingpedagogical project and school plan and to come up with suggestions formodifications or complements. This will increase the motivation and thewillingness of the local community of the local community to involve itselfin the implementation of such a learning community. The drafting of apedagogical project and school plan can be strengthened by the fact that acontract of co-operation is signed between the different partners of thelearning community. The school commits itself to co-operate concretelywith the local community; the local community commits itself to supportcertain educational activities also in a concrete way.Several schools could thus within the same local community drafttheir pedagogical project and their school plan together. In other casesthey could just compare them and harmonize them up to a certainextent or see how they can help one another while fully respecting thespecific characteristics of each school. This doesn’t mean that oneschool would lose some of its specific characteristics; on the contrary,several specificities joined together could strengthen the impact of theactivities of the local learning communities.It is difficult to imagine that different schools in the same localcommunity, wishing all to create a learning community, would nothave discussed together their pedagogical project and their schoolplan. This implies a healthy co-operation between different schoolswithin a same learning community. A healthy and constructive cooperationwill be reflected in help between those schools at differentlevels: exchange of teachers, help to train teaching or administrativestaff, use of pedagogical materials and equipment, use of NICT (NewInformation and Communication Technologies).