How to re-engage young people in secure custodial settings in education when so many of them have a poor appreciation of the formal educational system? Can we learn to be better learners?
The RENYO project has sought to answer these questions through an innovative methodology: Authentic Inquiry. Authentic Inquiry is an intervention designed to build personally relevant knowledge which is useful in education. The personally relevant topic is identified by the learner, enabling greater opportunity for connection with the learning process. This is done by taking the learners’ interest through their own narratives and stories and navigating this towards the production of an ‘artefact’ such as a piece of art, poster or other product that has some external educational value. With RENYO, young people in secure custodial settings will be supported by a mentor to re-engage with the learning of something which is ‘authentic’ to them while acquiring new knowledge through this methodology.
In order to learn more on the methodology, the partners of RENYO and trainers from the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy met in Palermo on the 25th – 26th of June 2019 to participate in a 2-day training for trainers on Authentic Inquiry. Participants worked on the potential and challenges of the methodology in secure settings, the use of the online platform that will support the project and on how to generate positive outcomes. A 2-day meeting for the partners of RENYO followed on 27th – 28th where they discussed what has been done so far and planned the upcoming activities.
What’s next?
Once the programme of the training will be ready we will organize and implement a training course for education staff in secure settings in each partner country by the end of the year. Educators will conduct their own Authentic Inquiry and learn how to apply it with young people in secure custodial settings.