DAP plays a critical role in the education of the next generation. Not only is it used to measure the readiness of individual children to enter preschool or elementary school, but DAP is widely employed by educational institutions to assess schools’ overall effectiveness in teaching and learning.
By comparing pedagogy by class, subject and gender, DAP provides teaching staff with specific suggestions on how to adjust their methodology in order to enhance the educational environment. DAP’s education solutions encourage the development of real learning, resulting in students who truly understand and are competent in their studies rather than those who just “know” information. In the long term, this really makes a difference in the real world.
DAP examines the interplay of relationships between school management, teachers and students, and identifies whether individual classes offer a supportive or counter-productive environment. Six key factors are measured; school environment, teachers, teaching, subjects, school management and the process of evaluation of teaching, and school management tools. DAP can precisely pinpoint, for example, that Grade 4 boys have a potentially declining relationship with their history teacher but a productive learning connection with their English teacher. Or that Grade 6 boys and girls are struggling in science, but thriving in all other subjects.
DAP also determines if there are behavioral risks across the school on a class by class basis. DAP studies can detect bullying in the classroom, showing whether the bullying would result in potentially aggressive behavior, whether the relationships between genders are disturbed and if the teachers and senior staff have control of the situation. NOTE: Individual students are never identified in any DAP test. The simple, 15-minute computerized test only records the students’ class, gender and year of birth.
Berufliches OberSchule Fach OberSchule Cham, Bavaria, Germany
Barbara Dietzko, vice-director, Michael Smola, teacher, project co-ordinator
DAP was contacted by Michael Smola, a teacher from the school in Cham as a result of a recommendation from a Czech school, which was in the same project as the FOS / BOS Cham and was showing the results of their self-evaluation work on a project meeting.
DAP was ready to prepare a pilot project within a month and the diagnostics took place in 4 classes in Cham.
The results were so astounding, that the school representatives decided to run the diagnostics for the whole school. The diagnostic was configured and prepared within another month and the results were then discussed in presence of the school administration representative of the Schulamt Straubing. The results were compared to the results of a questionnaire, that has been run in the school for the past 10 years every year.
The results of the color association methodology confirmed the results of the questionnaires and the school team expressed great interest in using the diagnostics, as the efforts needed to prepare, organize, realize and evaluate the questionnaire were many times more complicated, then using the user friendly portal at www.brightlighton.net.
Michael Smola: „I am very happy to have taken the opportunity to work with the color associations, as the information from the result confirmed the findings of our questionnaire research, but with only fractional effort while organizing the survey, not to mention the automated statistical preparation of the results, which, in the questionnaire version, took us weeks to finish.“
Experts from school enviroment Testimonials:
Mgr. René Hůlek– school psychologist; specialist in school climate and climate of individual classrooms (focuses on active prevention and risk events); counselor of psychological counseling and diagnosis for adults and youths (for example: school maturity evaluation, secondary school selection); has used the CAmethod for over 9 years.
“I have been working with the CAmethod for about 10 years. I originally used its diagnostically supportive and interventional characteristics when dealing with children with behavioral disorders. Gradually I started to work actively with classroom groups and found the CAmethod to be a very effectively tool for identification and direct naming of the group dynamic and also for determining the appropriate intervention procedure in problematic groups.I perceive CAmethod as a functional tool brings to the diagnostic timeline development.”
Mgr. Silvia Houšťavová - psychologist, methodologist; specialist for prevention of risk behavior of children and youths in the Pedagogical-psychological Counseling Center in Olomouc region; has used the CAmethod for over 6 years.
“My professional life has been linked to the CAmethod since 2006. As a specialist on work with classroom groups, I very intensively use one of the specific product of this unique method, which is called “Classroom in crisis”. It allows me to offer our clients feedback on the internal dynamics in their classroom groups and allow them to observe events, which they are more or less aware of. This gives them the opportunity to initiate the necessary changes.