Novigado invited different stakeholders to respond to the two questions: How should active learning look like in a school? What would you recommend to teachers? Here, Catherine Becchetti-Bizot, the mediator for national education and higher education in France, shares her perspective on how active learning should look like in schools.

The number one rule for implementing active learning in a school is ‘no rules’ since active pedagogy adapts to fit the student’s circumstances. The teachers should be ‘effective listeners’, listening to the students’ needs and be ready to deal with anything unpredictable in class. Flexibility and adaptability are, also, of high importance. However, that does not mean that teachers do not need to prepare their classes beforehand. On the contrary, active learning does need thorough preparation covering a wide field of possibilities.

In the form of a narrative Bechetti-Bizot illustrates four different scenarios and ways that active learning could be designed by secondary schools. These are: the teacher, the students, the family, space and time.

The teacher organizes the activities and guides the students through feedback. He/she leads them to conclusions by elaborating on their arguments with a supportive and encouraging attitude. Students on their side, are called to use their critical skills in order to build and come up with solutions for each stage of the project themselves. Discover more about these two scenarios as well as the role that family and space and time have on active learning in the full article here.

As a conclusion, Catherine Bechetti-Bizot, gives her own recommendations to teachers who set up active learning in their classrooms. Among other things, she mentions that “A good teacher is one who manages to find a role for all the students, even for the one who is having the most difficulty.”