The idea of a common Erasmus project was born when Ewa Smuk Stratenwerth, Ingrid Ank and Johan Lövgren met in Kolkata, India in the very beginning of 2024. The three of us were invited by professor Asoke Bhattacharya as speakers for the conference “Education, Communication and Lifelong learning: thoughts and ideas of Grundtvig, Tagore and Freire” . As a part of our stay in West-Bengal we shared a three-day visit to Shantiniketan, the centre of Tagore’s educational projects. As we walked under the Banyan trees we developed the framework for a project that connect the education of folk high school teachers in our different countries.

Ewa Smuk Stratenwerth, headmaster of The Ecological folk high school in Grzybow, Poland took upon herself the task of writing an Erasmus+ application. The project we designed will have four main steps a) an initial meeting in October 2024 for the project coordinating team b) a seminar in May 2025 to design a teacjhers' manual, c) a teachers’ training course and finally c) a study trip to Danish and Norwegian folk high schools in the fall of 2025. 

A manual for contemporary folk high school pedagogy

The foirst step, an initial project coordinator meeting was held in Szczecin in October 2024. The meeting was held in connection with the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the folk high school in Szyce, Poland (1924-2024). As each of us were invited to contribute to the celebratory conference “The folk high schools as citizenship education”, we prolonged our stay in Szczecin for two days to plan the details of our project.

We are now preparing for the second step of the project – a four-day seminar at the Ecological folk high school in Grzybow. The seminar will gather practitioners and academics to exchange of ideas and experiences of Grundtvigian pedagogy in the 21st century. We have invited academics and practitioners from Poland, Ukraine and the Nordic region to spend a week working together in presentations, discussions and group assignments. Our aim is to develop practical and theoretical perspectives on how to work towards a sustainable future through folk high school pedagogy. The concrete product from the Grzybow seminar is a manual presenting contemporary folk high school pedagogy in both theory and practice. The practical part will include examples of methodological approaches, concrete activities together with stories and songs. 

In the third stage of the project the newly produced manual will function as the base for a pilot course with Polish-Ukrainian group of folk high school practitioners in the fall of 2025. 

Folk high school pedagogy in practice

We work towards a course design that will empower the course participants through reflective group assignments and dialogical teaching. The projects aim at strengthening the participants ability to design, implement and evaluate pedagogical development projects in their everyday practice. The course will focus on the connection between the current climate crisis and the pedagogical identity of folk high school. Seminars will cover topics such as: 

•  sustainable development in pedagogical practice 

•  the historical development of folk high school pedagogy 

•  the critical debates that have shaped the folk high school movement

•  contemporary social science perspectives on folk high school pedagogy.

•  social science methods with focus on research on sustainability as pedagogical practice.

•  The connection between education for sustainable development, democracy and human rights.

The learning activities include lectures, dialogical teaching, group work, problem and project-based learning as well as preparatory self-study. After the week at Grzybow each participant will deliver a paper where they reflects on their own practice and connect it to the course. These papers will be presented and discussed at an online seminar. 

Study trip to Denmark and Norway

As a fourth step we are planning a study trip for Polish and Ukrainian teachers and leaders to visit folk high schools in Denmark and Norway in the fall of 2025. The group will travel together in a minibus from Poland through Denmark to Norway. Along the way the participants will be accommodated in folk high schools. The different schools are choosen to represent the different ways in which folk high pedagogy can be practiced in the 21st century.

The project ”Grundtvigian pedagogy - facing the challenges of the Anthropocene” is a good example of what Erasmus funding can produce. Based on a relatively modest budget, we have designed a project that we think will have a considerable effect on those directly participating in the planned activities. At the same time the project will produce a teacher’s training manual that can be used in teachers’ training as well as by practitioners in the field.