Continuous Development Plan – Professional Teacher training
Topics
During my pedagogical studies following are the topics that I, together with my classmates, studied and practiced. It is an interesting and very knowledgeable journey for me as a teacher. The following topics helped me to start analyzing and practicing topics from start to an end. If anyone looks at these topics it will be very easy to understand what a teacher must do to teach in the classroom.
- Teaching Planning
- Teaching Implementation
- Assessment and Feedback
- Values and Ethics
- Laws and Amendments
- Research, development, and Innovation RDI
- International and Multicultural Competence
- Competence in Working Life and Networks
- Student Welfare Services
- Teacher Training Practice
Teaching Planning
Teaching Planning session was all about preparing number of things such a s material, slides and any other thing needed to be prepared before hand for teaching. There is a lot to know and prepare and this session helped me to understand the things I needed to do. Please look at the post itself to get some basic ideas here.
Teaching Implementation
In this era the focus is on virtual environments and this is what we focused on as well. there were number of topics that were given to the groups to answer. the questions were for Part 1:
- What traditional teaching methods work with Virtual Environments? What don’t? What features are better in Virtual Environment (compared to frontal teaching — and why are they better)?
- How can present Virtual Environments be made versatile and activating?
- Safety in Virtual environments. (Safety, equality, network bullying, others, laws…) Consider both from the viewpoint of the student and the teacher.
Part 2
- How does the vocational teacher tutor and guide groups (teams)? How does the vocational teacher tutor and guide individuals?
- What are group (or team) dynamics and what collaborative methods or practices can be used in teaching?
- How can the vocational classroom teaching methods promote individual learning process and personalized learning paths?
As the focus was on virtual environments this did not mean that the physical environment was ignored. Most of the teaching still happens in the classroom and we are all aware of it. The teaching practice in the end helped a lot in that regard. My teaching practice was at first in the physical location. Then due to COVID-19 the whole world switched to the online environments. My experience during my studies really helped me to transition from physical to virtual environment without any issue. I was fully prepared for such transition and this is all thanks to the pedagogical studies and practice in the virtual environment. Please look at the post itself to get some basic ideas here and here.
Assessment and Feedback
After teaching come assessment and feedback. This is something that i am very familiar with as I have done studies in Facilitation. Giving and receiving feedback is something that gets the spirits up for both students and teachers. During this session I learned a lot about assessment and feedback. Please look at the post itself to get some basic ideas here.
here are the questions that we practiced and answered during this session
- What are the goals and intended outcomes of assessment and feedback in vocational education?
- What is the difference of assessing competence and assessing the learning process?
- What are the most common assessment methods, how do they work and differ from each other?
These questions helped us to understand assessment and feedback from different point of views and as a teacher now I am equipped in doing assessment and feedback more than ever.
Participation is a key here and I have done that during my teaching practice as well. I made sure that students participate and give each other feedback. I used some facilitation methods to do so and a s a result it made it easy to assess my students based on their feedback to each other, class participation and individual and group work both written and oral.
Values and Ethics
What indicates the competence in values and ethics in vocational teacher’s actions?
How are the values and ethics present in the following:
- Planning
- Assessment and feedback
- Teaching and guiding methods
- Special needs education
- Legal issues
- Intercultural and international issues
In this session above are some of the main topics that we discussed and practiced in a teaching practice session. I learned that ethics and values is something that needed to be aware of throughout the process as it is equally important in the start, middle and at the end. I have recently enrolled in to the ethics course and this course has also given me lots of information regarding ethics and values. As a teacher this topic is very important as it can make or brake careers.
Please look at the post itself to get some basic ideas here
Laws and Amendments
As a teacher now I am aware of laws and amendments in education sector. Now I also know where to find them if needed and who to ask for help in case i cannot find something on my own. Basically every institute will have set of laws and they are easy to find. As a teacher it is very important to prepare teaching material that follows laws of the institute as well as the country in broader sense.
One question was about administration.
What are the principles of good administration and how are they evident in the everyday work of a teacher?
It turns out there are lot more principles than what I expected. If I have to sum up or identify some of the major principles than they will be somewhat like:
- Democracy
- Justice
- Legality
- Non-discrimination
- Clear duties and Responsibilities
- Student-centered
- Flexibility
- Adaptability
- Evaluation By the results
- Impartiality
- Cooperative
- Prudence
- Scientific
Please look at the post itself to get some basic ideas here
Research, development, and Innovation RDI
As a teacher sometimes, especially, in universities you have to do research. In schools teachers should also be aware of RDI anyways. So how can you manage your time in research and development as well as innovation? This session on RDI helped me to understand all these issues and more. Time management is something that is very common among teachers. No one seems to have time to do RDI if that is not the focus of the teacher’s job. A researcher will have time to do RDI but school teacher will have other priorities. So, now I am thinking which one is for me, research or teaching. It seems like I cannot do both.
Please look at the post itself to get some basic ideas here
International and Multicultural Competence
This session prepared me to understand first the differences between Internationalism and muticultrualism. Then there were few questions that we need to find out and teach in online practice teaching sessions
1. Design and deliver an interactive learning situation where you demonstrate your understanding of the most important multicultural competences.
2. What are some of the theories covering the areas multicultural communication, learning and interaction? What are their pros and cons in view of applying them to teaching?
3. What are the main features of the internationalisation strategies and practices in vocational education and vocational higher education and how would you take them into account in planning and implementing your teaching?
the benefit of this session came quickly. I had to teach a course called Diversity in Media and one of the toipcs was multicultrualism. So, it was easy to teach this topic in class and that helped me to engage my students more as I was not worried about content of the topic at hand.
Please look at the post itself to get some basic ideas here
Competence in Working Life and Networks
My PHD is all about working life and competencies. In this session I used my previous knowledge of working life and helped my group to understand it. During this session we also as a group looked at the following questions
- Outline some theoretical background for (social) networking.
- Social media in (business /work / education) networking? Pros and Cons. (FB, Insta, Twitter, Snatchat…) Give examples.
- What are the absolute musts in networking for a (vocational/professional) teacher? Give examples and reasons and benefits.
After the session as a teacher I am well prepared and aware of my students. I have more understanding of the importance of networking and in my teaching I will always stress on this important concept in classroom.
Please look at the post itself to get some basic ideas here
Student Welfare Services
This is a broad topic and we focused on special education during our practice session. This doesn’t mean that student welfare is only for special needs students. Anyone can benefit from it. Every university or school now have a department that deals with student welfare. As a teacher it is very important to know about this department and what are some of the things student welfare department do. I learned a lot during our practice session. But this is something that as a teacher i need to study more. A teacher must be very observant and aware of the students and only than a teacher can know if his students need special care or there is a need of student welfare person to be involved.
we also looked at some of the following questions in our session
1. What does the concept of inclusion mean in practice? What does the concept of accessibility mean in an educational context? What is a pedagogically accessible learning environment? Give examples
2. What do the student welfare services (in Finnish: opiskeluhuolto) mean in vocational schools and in higher education?
3. As a vocational/professional teacher, how can you support a student with special need
Please look at the post itself to get some basic ideas here
Teacher Training Practice
In this post I discussed about my teaching practice, assessment and feedback. Please read the post here if you have not yet read it.
My analysis as a teacher
Am I a teacher? I often ask myself this question and every time I go back in late 2012 during my final feedback session with my classmate. I was discussing about my final internship and training that I completed for my facilitation studies. My training happened in the high school. While discussing about my training and experience I was very happy and sharing a lot of experiences. My classmate was listening to me and here is what she said to me. “You are bound to be a teacher as I am listening to you I feel that you are right where you should be.”
Now, am I a school teacher or a university level teacher? I think it is not in me to teach in school. At least for now I am doing well in the university with adults of all ages above 18. To be specific I like to work in applied sciences universities. There student centered approach is what I like the most as compared to the universities. In universities the theory based study approach is in my experience dose not go well with the students these days. Students wants to have hands on learning with some practical training and experience. Even in my teaching practice in the university course students in their feedback wrote that they would like to do some practical work instead of just sitting and talking theories.
what have I learned and how I think I will carry on developing as a professional teacher – Reflection
I have two parallel fields of education. I am getting one degree after another in the filed of media education and media management as well as previously in digital media from universities. Parallel to that I have YouTube. This platform called YouTube has taught me to design, develop websites, and make videos. Up till now this second part of my learning journey has given me income. My degrees has yet to turn profit money wise of course. So, I have learned that and also recognized that I need to start utilizing my media studies and get some employment. I have realized this lately during my teaching practice. This is the first time I manage to teach a course related to my studies. This has really helped me and gain a confidence that I actually can teach subjects related to media education easily.
So, the future plan will be to start looking for more teaching jobs in my educational field. I know my parallel field will continue to add some extra income. If you are wondering that why this guy is talking about money than you should also know that I am not all about money. I really like to share my knowledge with students and at the same time learn from them. I live in a country where living expenses are high and I need certain amount of money to get visa. So, as long as I am staying here I will always be worried about income. I have degrees in media education, media management, digital media and facilitation. Now on top of that I am soon going to be allowed to teach in universities so i should think about my future career and mobility.
About mobility, i would have liked to stay in my university of Lapland but for some odd reason my faculty decided to ditch English program and now there are no more English course starting this academic year 2020-2021. I will have to spread my wings and look for opportunities elsewhere in the country or countries. So, for that I need to start networking. I have a very small network and this is something I need to improve. One of my pedagogical teachers mentioned about EAIE European Association for International Education association or Institute of International Education (IIE). These and the similar associations worldwide is a good start to build my network. Right now my network is mostly regional (Lapland). Finishing my PHD is my priority for now along with starting to networking.
I will start to explore more educational organizations that are similar to my interests as well. I am a facilitator and i do follow some international facilitation associations. SO, I do know that members of such associations help each other in times of need. My starting point is to start building connections and increase my network. One advantage that I can get straight away from networking is to get some teaching practice as exchange teacher. I can go for a teaching exchange within Europe all i need to do is to find a suitable program. I know many teachers do that and this process helps them to further move up and make new connections and networks.
I have been to many conferences but I never took full advantage of the conferences by not meeting with new people to network. I felt that I should do that after PHD but now I have realized that I should do that immediately. One form of networking is to write articles together. I have done that with in my regional small network and I have contributed in three articles. Now, I have a chance to go out and teach in another university as an exchange teacher and make connections at the same time.
Okay so I have said a lot about connections and network. As a student of pedagogical studies I have learned very valuable things. To start with I learned a whole step by step approach of planning and implementing teaching. I have gained valuable resources during this study and now I have a whole set of new tools at my disposal. Due to this structured step by step teaching approach I was able to develop my own course and teach it successfully with out any negative feedback from the students. Without my pedagogical studies I would have done a very sloppy job in teaching and i would have to learn by my mistakes a lot. 😀
I mange to succeed in my teaching practice first due to practice sessions and as well as keeping a open mind to suggestions and ideas from others and accepting them. The study has taught me to listen to other and accept ideas of others and build upon them.
I need to be careful about special needs students. I have realized there are many different ways a child can be special and as a teacher I will need to find out such students and their needs very quickly and as early as possible. If I can manage to do that than I can structure my teaching in a way that helps such special students. Now, today I know that if I do not know that I have a special needs student in my class who for example is very introvert I will take a lot more time to find out about him/her and I might be too late to do anything about it. This worries me sometimes because I want all my students to learn equally. One thing that let me sleep at night (:D) is that now at least I am aware that I can get a special needs student and I can prepare day 1 of my teaching in a way that can help me find out about such special students.