Abstract:

School systems in Europe mainly use teaching strategies based on traditional lectures without giving space to teachers to be creative and innovate. Circus pedagogy is a teaching approach promoting creative classroom as it is based mainly in Physical education and movement sciences. Unfortunately teachers tend to use traditional methods having stereotypes which is hard to break. In Cirschool project, funded by European Commission in the framework of Life Long learning programme, Comenius multilateral action, a teacher training took place with overall aim to bring closer teachers, from all school levels, to physical education and Circus pedagogy.

Specific aims of the training was:
1. To adopt new strategies and methodologies in daily teaching
2. To learn a new approach based in creativity
3. To gain the know - how in practical and not only in theoretical level
4. To learn through concrete experiences based on Circus pedagogy
5. To find out how easy or difficult for teacher is to change their stereotypes

The training procedure was based on active participation of the teachers as all of them had a role to test and try all activities. More specific the training composed of various phases:
Phase 1: Moment of hospitality, warm-up
Phase 2 : Testing / discovering materials
Phase 3: Individual testing
Phase 4: Creating a performance / large group
Phase 5: Warm down Self-evaluation

Having the above in mind an evaluation strategy was design for teacher training in order to assess the training outcomes. In this paper we will present the results from the training in Greece where 23 teachers participated in the evaluation procedure. Evaluation took place in two phases. The pre phase, before the beginning of the training and the post phase, after the end of the training. The purpose of using this methodology was in order to see if the participants improved their skills and competence and if they changed their attitudes about the use of Circus pedagogy in daily teaching. At this point we have to mention that the participant’s teachers had not any previous experience or competences relative in Circus pedagogy. The evaluation tool was structure questionnaire with close and open questions where the participants answers anonymous and freely express their personal opinions. The results from the evaluation shows that the majority of the sample got familiar with Circus pedagogy and in a significant level changed their opinions against the stereotypes.

Keywords:

Circus pedagogy, teacher training, evaluation, learning outcomes.