The European
Federation of Conflict Management and Treatment in Education and Care (EFeCT) held
Badkid, its 7th International Meeting in Budapest. I had the opportunity to
participate at the event and initiate an open space discussion on the topic „What
can be done to change perceptions and systems to prove most ’badkids’ are
actually ’goodkids’? The lively discussion raised a few good ideas.
The
participants of the event were mainly professionals dealing with children
bearing a SEN-laben (Special Education Need). In the discussion group we have
agreed that there is a very interesting situation now. Even a few years back
only a very low percentage of children were considered SEN, but today there is
a critical mass, at least over 20% of children simply do not fit in traditional
schools.
There is a
lot of scientific evidence that children of today and school of the last
century are simply not compatible, but policy makers do not seem to notice it.
One of the ideas raised was that we have to make scientific evidence a strong
case, but not only on itself, but also financially as this is the language
policy makers usually understand. We have agreed that is also important to
change teacher training, but we did not agree whether a different type of
training is destined to change teaching or good innovative methods will slowly
get into training after they made a change on small scale. There was an
agreement on the importance of positive feedback – both professional and public
– to those who do good.
We have
discussed how committed professionals and parents raise the awareness of the
general public. We seem to meet a typical behaviour every day: parents tend to
accept schools that are a waste of time or straightforward unsuitable for their
children remembering their own school years that were also boring and useless,
but the children must bear it as they have survived themselves. We were trying
to find some key idea on how we can make parents notice that this is not
necessary, but school years can actually be useful and fun. The participants
came to the conclusion that use of a simple language is key as well as playing
on feelings instead of logics. Good experiences can be spread using grapevines,
local and wider, and it will hopefully result on substantial upscaling of
methods that work. In times when most people are consumers in the traditional
meaning of the word, one suggestion was to build a strong brand of modern
school and 'simply' sell it to parents.
The
organiser of the event, the European Federation of Conflict Management and
Treatment in Education and Care (EFeCT), founded in November 2007, is vested in
Ghent, Belgium. EFeCT is a network of organizations and individuals who
believe in strength based programs for working with young people; they have a
particular interest in the Life Space Crisis
Intervention model and the work of Reclaiming Youth International.
EFeCT currently has members from 8 European countries: the Netherlands,
Germany, Scotland, Norway, Portugal, Belgium, Romania and Hungary. The
main goal of EFeCT is to gather and discuss critically the information and
scientific studies about methodologies in conflict management. The
population they wish to delineate consists of children and youths who display
disruptive behaviour. Together they aim to promote strength based
approaches and to further the interventions with troubled and troubling youths
that empower them and allow them to become satisfied and productive citizens. Every
year the EFeCT group gathers in a different country to address the most
relevant issues in the field.
EFeCT and
EPA is considering possible joint projects in the future.
