1. TRAINING OF TRAINERS FOR COOPERATIVE LEARNING IN SYSTEMIC SCHOOL REFORM
Facilitator:  Pasi Sahlberg
Language:  English
Description: This workshop will explore effective approaches and techniques for preparing trainers who coach teachers to use cooperative learning in their schools. Based on examples from select large-scale school improvement programs this workshop will try to establish some structures and principles for the increased transfer of training and help teachers go beyond the surface in understanding how cooperative learning can enrich their work. The workshop invites active participation and sharing of experiences.

Bio: Pasi Sahlberg has a long international career in training trainers and teachers who are interested in increasing cooperation in their work. He has worked in Finland with the University of Helsinki and Ministry of Education and most recently at the World Bank in Washington, DC. He has a Ph.D. in education and his professional interests are cooperative learning, educational change and global education development issues.

3. ENHANCING CREATIVITY IN COOPERATIVE CONTEXTS
Facilitators: Lynda Baloche and Yael Sharan
Language:   English (with some Italian)
Description: Participants in this workshop will explore techniques and social conditions that encourage creative thinking in cooperative contexts. The research-based techniques are applicable to a wide variety of subject areas and age groups and encourage sharing and appreciation for different world views and thinking styles. To carry out the exploration of the synergy between creativity and cooperation participants will engage the stages of Group Investigation and consider applications to their own work. Please come prepared for lively and creative collegial exchange of ideas.

Bio: Lynda Baloche has been an educator for over 30 years--of children, university students, and teachers. She is currently a university professor and Co-President of IASCE. Dr. Baloche is a frequent presenter at national and international conferences, the author of numerous articles in scholarly journals, and author of the text The Cooperative Classroom: Empowering Learning. She enjoys working closely with teachers and administrators who are committed to building collaborative communities in classrooms and throughout schools.

Bio: Yael Sharan has over twenty five years of experience developing and writing about cooperative learning in general and Group Investigation in particular. She has authored and co-authored chapters and books on cooperative learning, among them Expanding Cooperative Learning through Group Investigation, published by Teachers College Press and Edizione Erikson (Gli Alunni Fanno Ricerca). She has conducted workshops for educators in many countries and is expert at adapting cooperative learning for teachers, administrators and teacher educators of different cultures.

4. HOW IS COOPERATIVE LEARNING AFFECTED BY CULTURAL DIFFERENCES
IN TEACHING AND LEARNING?
Facilitator: Yael Sharan
Language: English
Description: Cooperative learning (CL) is gaining popularity as the methodology most suited to the increasing diversity of today's student population, yet many misunderstandings of the principles and practices of CL prevail. This calls for careful consideration of the essential elements of CL and of the ways we present them in different countries and contexts. In this workshop participants will (1) explore the elements they value as essential for qualitative understanding of cooperative learning; (2) design ways of presenting these elements to ensure systematic, effective, and sustainable application of CL in classrooms and in teacher education programs in different countries and in intercultural settings.

Bio: Yael Sharan has over twenty five years of experience developing and writing about cooperative learning in general and Group Investigation in particular. She has authored and co-authored chapters and books on cooperative learning, among them Expanding Cooperative Learning through Group Investigation, published by Teachers College Press and Edizione Erikson (Gli Alunni Fanno Ricerca). She has conducted workshops for educators in many countries and is expert at adapting cooperative learning for teachers, administrators and teacher educators of different cultures.

5. DIFFERENTIATED LEARNING THROUGH CELEBRATORY LEARNING - FOR ALL YOUR STUDENTS!
Facilitators: Kathryn F. Markovchick, Ph.D., Debbie Gilmer, M.Ed., Dr. Pamela Flood, Emily Liebling, BA
Language: English
Description: This workshop will provide participants with an opportunity to rethink and reexamine the fundamentals of teaching and learning for enhanced outcomes for their students. Together we will explore the principles of Differentiated Learning through Celebratory Learning, which combines multiple intelligences, positive interdependence, behavior management, individual accountability, equal participation, play, humor, connections to previous learning, and theme- and need-based learning in a brain compatible environment.  Together we will experience the power of Celebratory Learning.  Participants will leave with many classroom strategies to integrate lessons in all subjects.

Bio:
Kathryn F. Markovchick, Ph.D., is an educational consultant to teachers, teams, schools, school committees, districts and businesses. Facilitating the change process with care, thought and purpose is her primary mission. She is a seminar/workshop leader who balances hands-on experience and theory. Her areas of expertise include celebratory learning, differentiated instruction, cooperative learning, multiple intelligences theory, brain-based education, inclusion, and the change process, strategies for teaching all students, social skills, team development, and parent/professional relationships. Kathryn has facilitated active learning communities locally, nationally and globally.

Debbie Gilmer, M.Ed., Director of the Center for Self Determination, Health & Policy at the Maine Support Network, has been engaged in systems change in Maine for more than twenty five years working in partnership with schools, state and community agencies, providers, families and youth. She has provided technical assistance and professional development in the areas of inclusive education, positive supports and youth leadership and leadership development across Maine and the United States. She has directed numerous state and federally funded research and demonstration grants and currently co-directs the Healthy & Ready to Work National Resource Center and the Maine State GEAR UP project.

Dr. Pamela Flood has been an educator, principal and professor of educational leadership. She worked for the National Center for Student Aspirations at the University of Maine and taught at Florida State University. She has consulted with school administrative teams throughout Maine and the nation. As a middle school teacher she used experiential learning extensively in her classroom and used the natural resources of Maine to engage students in their learning. She has conducted research and overseen model demonstration projects including federally and state funded research projects. She served as co-facilitators of the Governor's Task Force to Engage Maine's Youth, staffed its policy work group and currently serves as a co-director of the Maine State GEAR UP project where she is responsible for overseeing the regional technical assistance coordinators and professional development.

Emily Liebling, BA. is the statewide Project Coordinator for GEAR UP Maine, USA, a program which supports students who are economically disadvantaged in preparing for, accessing, and succeeding in postsecondary education. In this capacity, she is pleased to be a recent addition to the team at the Maine Support Network. She has experience working with students from diverse cultural backgrounds in art education in Queens, New York, USA and is a firm believer in cooperative and celebratory learning.

6.  MAKING A DIFFERENCE FOR ALL STUDENTS: ASSESSING SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT THROUGH A SOCIAL JUSTICE LENS
Facilitator:  Linda E. Lee
Language:  English
Description: This interactive workshop will challenge participants to think about what school improvement really means, who should be involved in the school improvement journey, and how we can “measure” our success. The workshop will model actual strategies that have been successfully adapted to different cultural contexts. These strategies are ones participants can use in their own schools and communities to create conversations focused on fundamental issues related to school improvement. The workshop will be participatory in nature, encouraging inquiry, dialogue, reflection, and celebration.

Bio: Linda E. Lee is a partner in Proactive Information Services Inc., a Canadian social research and evaluation company. Linda has worked in evaluation, research and program development since the late 1970s. She has conducted trainings on program evaluation, research methods, data utilization, student assessment, organizational change, and education for social justice. She has worked extensively in the area of school improvement, including workshops in Canada, Lithuania, Argentina, Macedonia, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria. Linda is passionate about using evidence (data) to inform practice, empowering students, and engaging school communities in improving educational equity and access, all with the intention of creating a more socially just world.

7.  BEYOND CELEBRATING DIVERSITY: INTERCULTURAL EDUCATION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
Facilitator: Paul Gorski
Language: English - Italian (bilingual workshop)
Description: Too often, cooperative learning in an intercultural setting requires oppressed peoples to teach privileged peoples about their cultures, to help privileged peoples celebrate diversity while ignoring racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, and other social, political, and economic injustices. We can only maximize the effectiveness of cooperative learning for all people involved when we begin with an acknowledgement of these imbalances in access to power and privilege. This presentation will engage participants in a discussion about the shifts of consciousness and practice necessary to transcend intercultural education as celebrating diversity and move toward intercultural education as human rights and social justice activism.

Bio: Paul C. Gorski is founder of EdChange.org and assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education at Hamline University. He's an active consultant, leading workshops for educators on equity and social justice throughout the US and Latin America. He's published three books and more than 25 essays on multicultural education, education equity, and social justice. He's on the boards of directors of the National Association for Multicultural Education and the International Association for Intercultural Education and the editorial boards of Multicultural Education, Multicultural Perspectives, The Journal of Praxis in Multicultural Education, and several other publications.

8. COMPLEX INSTRUCTION AND INTERCULTURAL EDUCATION
Facilitator:  Francesca Gobbo
Language: Italian - English
Description:  This workshop will present the CL strategy Complex Instruction (CI) and emphasize its intercultural dimension.  CI aims to attain equity by changing teachers’ and peers’ expectations of low status pupils, and looks at and works with students’ different cultural, linguistic and cognitive abilities as resources for learning. This is achieved when every student participates equally in group work, and can contribute in his/her specific way to the understanding of difficult concepts and to the solution of open ended problems. After a concise presentation, workshop participants will work on Complex Instruction units, discuss the experience and its applicability in different school settings.

Bio: Francesca Gobbo is Professor of Intercultural Education at the University of Turin (Italy), where she also teaches Anthropology of Education. She was the Associate Editor of Intercultural Education from 2005 through 2006 and continues to serve on the editorial board. She is the link person for the European Education Research Association and was one of the founding members of “Ethnography”. She is in the editorial boards of the European Educational Research Journal, Ethnography and Education, and International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning. She studies and teaches contemporary educational issues from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective that combines educational theory with methodological and theoretical approaches from the fields of cultural anthropology and anthropology of education. She coordinates research of Italian schools attended by immigrant pupils, while she has carries out ethnographic research among the country’s “internal minorities."

9. COOPERATIVE LEARNING AND SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING: HOW TO TELL A STORY IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE- BRIDGING COMMUNICATION AND COOPERATION WHILE LEARNING A SPANISH MIDDLE AGE “ENXEMPLO”

Facilitator:  Sabrina Ortega
Language: Italian - Spanish - English (if required)
Description: Although Cooperative Learning has steadily grown in popularity in second-language classrooms, few resources are available that cover the topic in depth. This workshop aims at demonstrating that with CL a literature lesson can become an intercultural learning experience in which students, working in pairs or small groups, learn and compare cultural habits belonging to different countries, improving their communicative competence in a FL. Participants will simulate a learning-in-cooperation situation and share feelings and questions. The workshop is addressed to Second Language Teachers of both elementary and secondary schools. The activities have to be adapted to the students' age, but the principles, methods and the planning process are valid for all school degrees.

Bio: Sabrina Ortega was introduced to Cooperative Learning and Community Learning thanks to the workshops of Prof. Mario Comoglio and Prof. Pier Giuseppe Ellerani organized by the CESEDI in Turin. She has been a teacher of Spanish as Second Language in secondary schools since 1991 and works in teachers' training for CESEDI and for S.I.S. of the University of Turin, where she teaches Cooperative Learning Techniques for Educational Special Needs and Spanish Language Didactics (language, culture, second language for specific purposes, assessment and mistakes analysis). She also is a publisher consultant for school books in the Spanish language.

10.  LEARNING TO UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CIVILIZATIONS: FROM CLASH TO INTEGRATION - ROMANS AND GERMANS BETWEEN THE III AND VI CENTURIES AD.
Facilitator:  Gianni Di Pietro
Language:   Italian - English
Description:  The workshop illustrates how Cooperative Learning, Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and active Advanced Study can combine to help build relationships based on mutual respect and create new quality thinking. The use of a complex historical approach fosters the ability to understand differences between people, the dynamics of their contacts, and how the blend of two different cultures can create a richer civilization. The workshop is addressed to History teachers of both elementary and secondary schools. The activities, based on a typical topic in the curriculum of the first two years of Italian High Schools, can be adapted to the students' age, but the principles, methods and the planning process are valid for all school levels. The teachers who attend the workshop may visit the I.I.S. “Buniva” in Pinerolo (Turin), to observe a class at work in this way on the same topic.

Bio: Gianni Di Pietro teaches Italian and History at the I.I.S. 'M. Buniva' in Pinerolo (Turin). He is the author of studies in the History of History Teaching (Per una storia dell'insegnamento della storia in Italia, Turin 1983; Da strumento ideologico a disciplina formativa. I programmi di storia nell'Italia contemporanea, Milan 1991), books of exercises on History curricula for Italian High Schools, essays on subjects regarding the teaching of Italian and History in ways that can generate active students' involvement. He has been introduced to Coperative Learning and Community Learning thanks to the workshops of Prof. Mario Comoglio and Prof. Pier Giuseppe Ellerani organized by the CESEDI in Turin, and the Academies of Proff. Norm and Kathy Green held under the patronage of the Turin-based 'Fondazione per la Scuola' of the 'Compagnia di San Paolo'. In 2006 he was accepted as a member of the International Society for History Didactics.

11. COOPERATIVE LEARNING AND PROBLEM BASED LEARNING (PBL) IN SCIENCE EDUCATION
Facilitator:  Marco Falasca
Language:   Italian – English
Description:  Problem based learning (PBL) is a method based on the principle of posing problems as the starting point for the acquisition of new knowledge. It emphasizes conceptual understanding rather than the memorization of facts. PBL requires that students work in small cooperative groups to acquire new understandings that will eventually enable them to find the solution to a problem. In this workshop participants will (1) explore the essential elements of a PBL process; (2 experience a PBL method applied to a real problem in science education. The problem based learning method has been successful in the teaching of chemistry in the first two years of a technical-industrial institute (secondary school). With some adaptations, it can be used efficiently for teaching science both in elementary and in secondary schools

Bio: Marco Falasca, a member of the Italian Chemical Society, teaches chemistry at the ITIS Majorana of Grugliasco. He directs the ministerial project “Parole della scienza” for northern Italy. Marco also mentors and trains teachers in cooperative learning and science education for CESEDI in the province of Torino.  He is the coordinator of the project “La scuola, il territorio e la rete nell’educazione scientifica” in Grugliasco and coordinates the group of cooperative Portal of Chemistry and Scientific Education.

Bio: Maria Grazia Bergamo has been teaching at primary school for 28 years and has been involved in Cooperative Learning since 2000. She is a supervisor, tutor and teachers’ trainer of Cooperative Learning methods. She conducts workshops for educators on the topic of relationships between teachers and parents and has contributed to the foundation of a network of 12 schools where teachers apply Cooperative Learning.

IL COOPERATIVE LEARNING: UNA BUONA PRATICA PER RENDERE EFFETTIVA LA COLLABORAZIONE TRA INSEGNANTI E GENITORI
Facilitatore:  Maria Grazia Bergamo
Lingue: Italian – English
Descrizione: E’ sempre stato fondamentale saper valutare e prendere in considerazione i diversi approcci di insegnamento e i diversi stili educativi per aiutare i bambini e consentire loro di beneficiare di un sistema educativo equilibrato senza contraddizioni.

I principali obiettivi di questo workshop sono:
- Condividere differenti idee e aspettative dei genitori
- Suggerire come iniziare un dialogo sociale tra  differenti culture e differenti background
- Trovare possibilità per formalizzare questo dialogo con un  protocollo condiviso.

Gli insegnanti devono imparare ad adattassi a più frequenti e complicati contatti con i genitori che hanno diversi punti di vista sulla scuola e diverse aspettative. Essi sentono il bisogno di nuove strategie, possono trovare una risposta nel Cooperative Learning.

Bio: Maria Grazia Bergamo insegna nella scuola elementare da 28 anni. Dal 2000 si occupa di Apprendimento Cooperativo ,dopo aver frequentato i corsi di formazione CESEDI è diventata facilitatore/supervisore e formatore del metodo. Ha tenuto workshop riguardanti la relazione tra insegnanti e genitori. Ha contribuito alla costituzione di una rete zonale composta da 12 istituti i cui insegnati applicano l’apprendimento cooperativo.

13.  COOPERATIVE LEARNING AND SOCIAL SKILLS EDUCATION WITH SPECIAL NEEDS STUDENTS: DISABILITY AND DIVERSITY AS A RESOURCE FOR THE CLASS
Facilitator: Claudio Berretta
Language:  Italian - English
Description:  In a class with five deaf students, including one with psychiatric problems and two with behavioural problems; another with serious disruptive conduct supported by peers with asocial behaviour, teachers managed with a reasonable level of success for all students by using C.L. strategies. These strategies enabled higher achievement for excellent students and improved the behaviour of problematic students. The workshop will pose the question: can we consider such an experience as a useful and transferable way to promote intercultural integration?

Bio: Claudia Berretta is a special education teacher. She is also a tutor and teacher trainer of special education methods for UTS NES (Unità Territoriale di Servizi Necessità Educative Speciali) at the Ministry of Education, as well as of cooperative learning methods for CESEDI in the province of Turin. Among her many other activities Claudio mentors teacher candidates and volunteers of the national civil service. In her work she combines Communication and Information Technology. She is responsible for the project “Parole che si Muovono” for the inclusion of deaf students and for teaching learning disabilities in S. M. S. Pianezza.

Bio: Fabrizia Monfrino is a psychologist and a teacher. She consults to the Ministry of Education on a special educational needs and health project and is a facilitator of cooperative learning for CESEDI in the province of Turin.

15.  WHAT DO THEY WANT TO KNOW? HOW WILL THEY FIND OUT? GROUP INVESTIGATION IN THE INTERCULTURAL CLASSROOM
Facilitator:  Yael Sharan
Language: English - Italian
Description: The goals of the workshop are to create a mini “inquiring community” to explore the essential features of Group Investigation and its application in the intercultural classroom. In a simulated Group Investigation project participants will ask questions about the workshop topic, seek answers to their questions, and interpret information in light of their knowledge, ideas, experiences, and abilities. In this workshop teachers will learn how to guide students through the stages of Group Investigation and, in the process, integrate other cooperative learning methods and structures.

Bio: Yael Sharan has over twenty five years of experience developing and writing about cooperative learning in general and Group Investigation in particular. She has authored and co-authored chapters and books on cooperative learning, among them Expanding Cooperative Learning through Group Investigation, published by Teachers College Press and Edizione Erikson (Gli Alunni Fanno Ricerca). She has conducted workshops for educators in many countries and is expert at adapting cooperative learning for teachers, administrators and teacher educators of different cultures.

16. COOPERATIVE LEARNING AND RELIGIOUS PLURALISM
Facilitator:  Tanenbaum Center
Language:  English
Description: This interactive workshop will help educators and administrators identify practical ways to confront issues of religious pluralism. The workshop will focus on the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding’s K-12 educator training program, which is based on the successful practices imbedded in our Building Blocks for Democracy: The Seven Principles for Inclusive Education. Participants will also learn to implement innovative, multicultural, multi-religious, academically integrated curricula that help students honor each other’s cultures and perspectives, thereby promoting respect and inclusion in the classroom and beyond.

Bio: The Tanenbaum Center in New York City develops practical programs that aim to prevent the growing problem of verbal and physical conflict perpetrated in the name of religion. It is a non-sectarian organization that addresses unresolved tensions by helping to change behaviors in religiously-diverse workplaces, schools and in areas of armed conflict.