For the past couple of years, Gdańsk scientists and the University Kindergarten have been cooperating with the Positive Initiatives Foundation, which works for the development of modern education and care and cooperates with local governments, universities and other public institutions.
In 2016, the Foundation signed an agreement on cooperation with the Faculty of Economics of the University of Gdańsk as part of the operation of the Academic Secondary School in Puck, which resulted, among other things, in entrepreneurship classes that are still being implemented today. The Academic Secondary School is one of the best secondary schools in the Pomeranian Voivodship according to a ranking by the Perspektywy magazine.
Acting for the network development of public kindergartens in Gdańsk, in 2017 the Foundation, together with the City of Gdańsk and the University of Gdańsk, started the partnership project Positive Kindergartens Pomerania, as part of which nearly 850 new places in institutions were created.
- 'As part of this project, together with a team of UG employees led by Professor Maria Mendel, an original educational method was developed and implemented in our institutions,' - says dr Piotr Szeląg, Vice Chairman of the Foundation's Board. - 'It has resulted in an innovative approach to the way we build relationships with children, parents and teachers, and to the arrangement or understanding of the role of space, both internal and external, in education and care,' - he adds.
Examples of this include relaxation spaces for children or the establishment of educational gardens. The cooperation is also based on the fact that in positive kindergartens or schools UG students, especially from the faculty of pedagogy and psychology, take part in student internships.
The University Kindergarten at UG is a non-public educational institution dedicated primarily to the children of employees, doctoral students and students of UG, but also open to children of parents from outside the university. It started its activities in 2019 and is designed for 28 children in two preschool divisions. It is located within the Oliwa campus and has two teaching rooms, a room for physical activity and art classes, as well as a playground and a pitch.
As the management of the kindergarten emphasises, it is an integral part of the academic environment. It is a place where children are researchers - active in the educational space created by educators, parents, academic teachers, students and listeners of the University of the Third Age, representatives of the local community and other entities operating in the area around the Kindergarten.
In educational and didactic work, elements of the pedagogical concept of Reggio Emilia are applied. The teacher's task is above all to accompany the child in the process of independent reaching for knowledge and searching for new solutions. The child is strong, competent, creative, full of potential and wonder, and has infinite ways of expressing himself. The teacher's work with the child is based on trust and bonding, as well as on the children's contact with nature.
According to prof. dr hab. Maria Mendel from WNS UG, cooperation with the Foundation Positive Initiatives has enabled her to get to know the school experiment, run uniquely by the City of Gdańsk and the Foundation. - 'In my book dedicated to different ontologies of the being that is school ("Pedagogy of a commonplace. City and school"), I called this construction a hybrid, and to describe its activity I invited Piotr Szeląg, who at that time was the director of this - public - A. Aram Rybicki Primary School in Gdańsk,' she explains. - 'This hybrid is a solution that goes beyond the convention of a public school, but - as I was convinced by the research analysis of this phenomenon - not to follow the principles of neoliberal urbanism, but with concern for the public good to test new possibilities for better education and better conditions for its realization,' - she convinces.
As the professor stresses, the project aimed at establishing four new kindergartens in Gdańsk, but such that they would pave the way for the next ones as model kindergartens of Gdańsk - very well-conceived and organized following the standards of kindergarten education in a city of sustainable development, sensitive to all its inhabitants and users, and sensitive to relations with nature.
The University of Gdańsk entered the project as a partner, to contribute to the training of teachers and principals and to develop together with them, and then to monitor and improve the implementation of the educational concept of a 'positive kindergarten'. Dr Katarzyna Kmita-Zaniewska from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities became the project manager at the UG, who gave the kindergartens the character of 'outdoor' establishments, strong in education, which is based on constant, proper contact with the social and natural environment (outdoor education) and in it she sees the ground for the full sense of education in the city - also with it and through it - for its and ours sustainable development.
The Kindergartens of Positive Initiatives function with great success, and the model worked out jointly by the City of Gdańsk, the Foundation of Positive Initiatives and the University of Gdańsk serves, according to its assumptions, in many further actions aimed at optimal preschool education in the city.