The CORPOS is an organizational school structure that functions as an open schooling team or routine that convenes regularly to promote an open schooling culture and practices in school. The CORPOS is composed of stakeholders both internal (school staff) and external to the school organization, an Open Schooling Team. In the COSMOS project, the focus has been specifically on employing the open schooling approach in the context of science education, with the possibility that the open schooling process will extend beyond science to include other disciplines or subject matters.
Before elaborating on the formation of the CORPOS and its central attributes and responsibilities, it is crucial to stress the rationale or the importance of the CORPOS in the context of the present project and for embedding and promoting open schooling in any school context. In the literature on the failure of school reform (and improvement), various factors have been identified as those that inhibit successful school change. The CORPOS addresses three main factors: (1) that of a disconnect between new policies (even if these are evidence-based) and the understanding of school teams (especially teachers) that the new reform or policy is beneficial and connected to their own practice; (2) the disregard for specific context (needs and values), that is, regarding schools as homogenous entities and thus the reform as universally applicable; (3) an understanding that a diversity of voices in schools need to be heard so that the change or reform can be discussed by relevant stakeholders, especially teachers and students. The CORPOS addresses these three factors by creating a structure (and complementary routines) for school teams and promoters of the change process (external stakeholders) to discuss the change process so that open schooling is contextualized and adapted to the specific culture and needs of the specific school. Second, it provides a shared environment for diverse stakeholders – also those that are not formally part of the school organization - to share ideas, views, values and opinions regarding what open schooling means and how it impacts each one of them. When the CORPOS is truly diverse it functions as a holding environment or open schooling professional learning community, in which different voices are heard and a holistic and more integrated understanding of open schooling can emerge in a given context. Finally, the CORPOS functions as a motivation-enhancing mechanism by making inner school connections between different stakeholders (particularly teachers from different disciplines), thereby allowing the formation of a systemic and organic view that contributes to the school as a whole.
