Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

KAREL VAN NIEUWENHUYSE:

It is important that teachers and youth workers encourage learners to reflect at the end of the project. Because in every learning process, whether it is installing a new laptop or thinking about religious diversity in the past, it is important to take a step back and think about what you've been doing, how you've been doing it, and why you've been doing it.

So in the RETOPEA process, we should really encourage learners to think about, for instance, what was our initial thought about religious diversity? How did we engage with the new information from the clippings? Were we open for it? Yes or no? To what extent did we change our own ideas? And so learners should really reflect on the process they went through because it is only via reflection at the end that they will be able to build on this experience for future endeavours.

Educators can promote learning via very different ways, but I will explore one of them. In Flanders, Belgium, there's a television cook who comes to the rescue with people at their homes when they fail to cook a particular dish. And in the television program, he helps them through the cooking process. And at the end, he asks the participants, what are the three most important things that you learnt today?

And in my opinion, teachers might adopt the same strategy. They might ask learners to individually come to three points learned. But it is equally possible to determine three points in small groups or during a whole class debate.

Youth leaders and educators should draw the attention of young people to their possible civic engagements. And what do I mean with that? Well, I mean that if we look at the clippings that we offer young people, they are all about common people giving shape to the world they live in. And this is a very important idea to reflect upon, together with young people, together with learners. What can we do to build our society we live in?