ACTIVITY REPORT
Content:
- General information
- Context, objectives and target groups
II.1. Background and motivation for the seminar
II.2. Aim and objectives
II.3. Target groups
- Equipment and materials
- Program, content and methods
- Evaluation and feed-back of the participants
V.1 Evaluation questionnaires
V.2 Feed-back round
- Results of the seminar
- Outputs of the project used before and during the seminar
- Role of the partner institutions
- Dissemination and multiplication
I. GENERAL INFORMATION
Seminar: From seed to fruit: doing and teaching and Oral History Research Project
Period: 1 – 6 July 2005
Place: Sibiu, Monastery “Sâmbăta de Sus” and Făgăraş, Romania
Partners in Romania: The Democratic Forum of the Germans in Romania, City Hall of Sibiu, Astra Universal Ethnology Museum Sibiu, The Cultural Foundation “Negru Voda” Fagaras
Participating countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovenia.
Total number of participants: 29 (see contact list)
II. CONTEXT, OBJECTIVES AND TARGET GROUPS
Background and motivation for the seminar
Oral History plays a very important role in recovering the past 50 years in SE Europe. Over 40 years of communism and the changes in the past 15 years need to be recorded and remembered in order to bring justice both to the people who fell victims to the systems and ideologies that marked these times, as well as to the historical truth itself that has to be brought into light. Only by facing the reality, by bringing it into the open and consciously facing it, could we allow the healing and understanding to take place. By hiding, suppressing and denying, we can only postpone a very important learning process that would enable our generations and the next ones to develop a new mentality, to build a new society based on new values and principles. In order to implement a new system on a macro level as well as on the individual level, the society has to be prepared to understand and assimilate that system. In order to make this possible, in order to move on to a next stage in the development of a society, which implies a new level of conciseness and understanding, the remaining lessons have to be learnt.
In Romania, after the Revolution in 1989, Oral History has become an important tool for removing the darkness of the communist period. During the first years, the pursuits in undertaking Oral History researches were non-formal and they were based on the personal interest of the people who were linked to the past historical events. These first initiatives led to the next step in the development of Oral History as different NGOs were established in order to officially represent particular segments of people who took part in historical events, for example, the victims of the revolution in 1989, the former prisoners of the communist prisons and working camps, etc. and also to record history according to their experiences. Step by step, Oral History has been institutionalized and adopted by formal institutions as museums, History Institutes, Memorials, Foundations, have become a valuable method of rewriting history, accepted by professionals and existing as an independent discipline. At present, some of the main institutions which have Oral History as their primary field of work and already collected experience in field research are the Institute of Oral History within the “Babeş-Bolyai” University from Cluj-Napoca, the International Center for Studies on Communism, Bucharest with its additional linked institutions, the Civic Academy from Bucharest and the Memorial of the Communism and Resistance victims form Sighetul Marmaţiei. The next category of institutions are the Foundations, like „Aspera” from Braşov, „The Third Europe” from Timişoara, “Negru Voda” Cultural Foundation from Făgăraş, and the last category but not the least, the History Museums that recently introduced the Oral History research in their program and activity strategy. As a special case, one of the public institutions, National Radio Station from Bucharest has an Oral History research department and actively disseminates the results by broadcastings and through publications.
The process of introducing Oral History in the educational system has taken place in both formal and non-formal systems of education.
For primary and secondary school, Oral History is implemented as an optional course and it is the decision of the school if the course is introduced in the school curricula. There are very few cases when Oral History is taught in school as a separate course from the History subject. On the other hand, there are teachers who use Oral History as a method in class and have undertaken Oral History projects, either on their own or within an organized set up. However, these initiatives are more “informal” and they are not part of a coherent educational strategy of the Ministry of Education. The informational, financial and logistical support is basically received on the basis of partnerships with Education Institutions or Foundations from Western Europe or USA.
As for the Higher level of education, the implementation of Oral History as an independent discipline is a slow and gradual process. At present there is only one Oral History Master Study at the “Babeş-Bolyai” University from Cluj-Napoca. On the other hand, Oral History can be encountered as anoptional course either within HistoryUniversities or Universities with other profiles, for example within the University of Political Sciences from Bucharest.
At the level of non-formal education, there are initiatives of organizing training seminars for doing Oral History or/and teaching Oral History in order to support practitioners and teachers with methodology, as lacking methods is still one of the shortcomings of the formal system of education. In this respect, ONGs, Foundations or AdultEducationCenters provide seminars for the mentioned target groups. One of the initiatives was also conducted by the Ministry of Culture through one of its departments, in collaboration with partner institutions in order to train museum staff in doing Oral History.
Due to the exciting challenges in Romania and other countries from SE Europe, who encounter similar transition processes,there countries are confronted with the implementing of the Oral History and changing the traditional educational paradigm to a new one, and since one of this challenges is thelack of didactical support in teaching Oral History or using Oral History as a method in the class, the main “mission” of the seminar is to combine the experience gathered by the practitioners while doing Oral History with the learning/teaching participative methodsand experience provided by the History Project. In this way, the learning process embraces both practice as support for theory and theory as a basis for practice anddelivers the learning contentin new methodological garments which can offer a wider picture of using Oral History as a method in the class as well as out of class in field research.
Aim and objectives
- Providing the basis for doing Oral History
- Enable teaching of Oral History as a result of theoretical and practical experience
- Develop key abilities and skills for a wider range of professional fields of work by using Oral History as a multidisciplinary method
- Experience exchange and knowledge transfer between participants. Create a network for dissemination and information circuit among practitioners
- Create the ground for dialog and understanding regarding the intercultural dimension in multicultural communities
- Create the awareness that being part of EU is a gradual process in which culture, education and an active citizenship play an important role.
Target groups of the seminar:
Participants from SE European countries: teachers from Primary and Secondary schools, museum staff, researchers
Organizers and trainers:
Prof. Drs Iulia Pop
Collaborator at the Oral History Institute, „Babes-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca
Researcher Drs Cosmin Budeancă,
The Oral History Institute, „Babes-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca
Vanya Ivanova, IIZDVV Bulgaria
Ioana Florescu, project activity coordinator for Romania
III. Equipment and materials
The Equipment and materials used during the seminar:
Flip charts and pin boards for team working, brainstorming and working with the whole group, beamer for multimedia presentations, laptops for centralising information, photo-camera and video-camera for the final multimedia products of the seminar. For some of the methods, coloured cards were used.
Participants received folders with the following items:
- Program of the seminar
- Roads Map of Sibiu
- Map with the main historical locations in the Old City of Sibiu (in English)
- The brochure “The Romanian armed anticommunist resistance between 1945 – 1962)
- Notebook
- Sibiu guide with cultural events, entertainment and leisure
IV. PROGRAM[1], CONTENT, METHODS
The methods were chosen in order to provide a complex learning process, indoors and outdoors, using the existing experience of all participants as well as creating a set up for acquiring new experiences. The whole seminar was structured on the basic pillars of an efficient methodology: TO SAY + TO SEE + TO DO
The methods used during the seminar
-learning by doing
-learning by discovering (rally)
-brainstorming
-energizing methods
-text analysis and comparison
-reading
-group work, team work, pair work, individual work
-visual methods
-role play
-interviewing
-practical experience (life stories) given by trainers as well as participants
-presentations, multi media presentations
-feed-back (given by participants and trainers)
-questionnaire (for the presentation of participants and evaluation of the seminar)
-Discussions and debates
-creating a process of theoretical understanding starting from practice
-visits and meetings
-didactical materials as support for the theoretical process of learning
1st of July
Activities and methods:
Due to the fact that most of the participants were not present from the very beginning, some of the activities planned for the 1st of July were postponed for the second day.
Presentation of the organisers and trainers
-presentation of trainers and moderators
-general presentation of the project
-the overall objectives of the seminar
-program of the seminar
-presentation of the materials contained in the folder
Brief presentation of the participants: (Name, country/city, profession, expectations from the seminar)
Team building
Method: Madzinga - method of enforcing and expressing the power of the group as well as team building atmosphere and coordination among the members of the team
Input of the participants on “How do I feel now?” - Feed-back round
2nd of July
Activities and methods
Getting to know each other – presentation of participants
Method[2]: working in pairs. Each participant received an introducing questionnaire. After forming into pairs, each of the pairs had to interview the other using the questions contained in the introducing questionnaire and also fill in the answers. After the work was completed, participants presented themselves according to the notes made by the colleague. Meanwhile the moderator wrote each name on pieces of masking tape which were used as batches.
What did I bring with me and what will I take?
Method[3]: participants got 2 coloured cards. The smaller card represented the luggage participants brought to the seminar that contained the things and feelings they came with. The larger card represented the luggage they will take with them after the seminar that containedthings and feelings they wanted to take away. Participants had to fill in both cads and then present them in front of the group.
The first luggage reflects the knowledge and feelings of participants.
The second luggage reflects the expectations of the participants.
Becoming aware of the importance of team working
A poem[4] was distributed to the participants containing a riddle about the importance of the team work and the danger of shifting responsibilities which leads to deconstructive results.
What is History?
Method[5]: The method is based on the Socratic dialog. The trainer is moderating the group by asking questions. Each answer given by the group is a platform for a new question. While answering, the group is getting closer to the idea of History. In this respect, the group was led to the final answer, starting from My story to Her story to His story to History. The method is also based on a game of words.
What is Oral History?
Method[6]: The whole group is giving input on defining Oral History. It is a process of building together a common answer, with the results being unanimously acccepted. The trainer has a list of key words in a random order, some of them being the right words for defining Oral History, some of them being incorrect. All the participants are involved in choosing the right words in order to come up with a definition, exclude the incorrect ones or rephrase them in order to achieve the correct meaning.
What are the stages of an Oral History research project?
Method[7]: Participants were split in four teams by colours. All teams were assigned the same task: to identify the stages in a life of an Oral History project. After having the results of all teams presented, the trainer displayed a list of stages, put in a random order. All participants were asked to give input in reorganizing the sequence of the stages in the right order. The final result was compared with the work of each team.
Identifying the research theme:
Method: participants were split in teams by country. Each team had to identify 3 themes that could be researched in the country they represent. While choosing the themes, participants had to answer the following questions: Why was the research theme chosen? What is the importance of the research theme? What is the innovation the research would bring?
Developing the strategy for an Oral History research project
Short presentation and dialog (Iulia)
Didactical material were distributed.
Identifying and interpreting information sources. Contributions and limitations of an information source
Method[8]: Participants were split in 4 teams. Each team had to work with an information source. The information sources selected were: 1. photography, 2. pictures, 3. newspapers, 4. letters-adhesions. Without knowing anything about the source, participants had to discover, analyse and extract as much information as possible from the materials they received regarding the historical event the material was depicting – where, who, what and when. After each team presented the results in front of the group, which were more or less close to the reality, the trainer revealed the real version of the historical event. In this way, participants could experience the limitation or the contribution of such information sources.
Feed –back and dialogregarding the method.
Finding places and people. Rally through the old city of Sibiu
Method[9]: Participants were split in 4 teams. Each team received a map of the Old city of Sibiu and a list of locations and questions. They had to reach each of the locations using the map and find the answers to the questions that were asked for each location. Finding the answers to the questions implied a good attention and sense for detail as well as good communication skills in order to interact with people and find the information required.
Visit at the “Franz Binder” Museum of Universal Ethnology
Exhibition tour
Visit at the Astra Film Studio
Presentation of Projects and film presentation
3rd of July
Activities and methods:
Feed back about the rally
Dialog. Participants were asked to share their experience on “the field”: Did you like the method? Did you learn something? How did you organize yourself within the team (who was leading, how were responsibilities distributed)? Was it hard or easy to communicate with the people in order to find information? How did you communicate with the people (verbal language, body language, etc.)?
The eye witness
Method: teamwork
Participants were split in 4 teams. Each team had a separate topic to work on. Team 1: Identifying the eye witness. Team 2: Relationship with the eye witness, before during and after the interview. Team 3: Legal status (donation, written agreement, etc.). Team 4: Ethical principles of the relationship (for both interviewer and interviewee)
Didactical material wasdistributed.
Presentation of results and discussion with input and explanations from the trainers.
After the presentations of the team work, the trainers gave an input on each of the 4 topics.
Who is doing the interview:
Presentation and discussion of 2 situations:
- Interviewer and eye witness are of opposite genders
- Interviewer and eye witness are of the same gender
Explanations and experience: advantages and disadvantages for both situations given by the trainers and participants
Practical Example: the story of Ciolocoi Maria about the relationship she had with a German soldier in Russia and the baby girl she gave birth there which was a strategy many young girls would choose in order to be sent back to Romania.