Teachers and schoolchildren constitute a target group that MedIns is particularly interested in. There are collaborations with the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus as well as schools in Rethymno for the planning, organization and execution of various educational activities. The main objective of these activities is to make the cutting-edge knowledge produced by the project immediately available for application in secondary education.
Part of these activities is the designing of educational material in collaboration with teachers and educators. The educational procedure will move from the concrete to the abstract, from the present to the past, and from students' current perceptions and conceptualisations of key concepts of MedIns to those same concepts and dynamics as they emerge in the project. A subsequent comparative approach between past and present is expected to be the most fruitful part of the educational experience as it will allow for the students to situate their own perceptions and conceptualizations into a continuum rather than in an isolated point in time. In other words, it will effectively contribute to the development of the students' historical thinking.
The implementation of the educational material includes the following activities: the production of educational materials; workshops for educators, who will implement the project’s educational material; in-class sessions organized by the project in collaboration with local educational authorities; and, public events during the project’s exhibitions (see below).
Despo Pasia (Ministry of Education and Culture, Cyprus and one of the project’s associate members), designed and implemented an educational program entitled ‘At Hadjigeorgakis’ or at Maroudia’s? Tracing the Presence of Women at a Mansion – Museum’. The program was implemented both as part of in-service training of pre-school and primary education teachers as well as an educational program for children aged 11-12. Antonis Hadjikyriacou was the historical consultant for this program. This activity entailed: workshops with teachers, in collaboration with the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute (14 February, 21 March, 10 October and 12 December 2015); experimental implementation of the program with students of the 2nd Elementary School of Kaimakli (27 November and 11 December 2015); exhibition of the artwork resulted from the implementation of the program on the International Museum Day/European Night of Museums at the Ethnological Museum/Hadjiyorgakis Mansion, 15-22 May 2016.
Educational material and activities were designed and produced with the participation of Despo Pasia, Constantinos Stavrinou and Kyprianos D. Louis, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus.
A training workshop for secondary school teachers was organised on 11 December 2015 at Linopetra High School in Limassol, Cyprus.
The educational material, activities and lesson plan were implemented on 18 and 19 May 2016, at the Lefkara Middle School and Ayia Varvara Middle School respectively.
Educators interested in using the education material produced can download it here.