Laws and Amendments – Professional Teacher training

Overview

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: 

1. Democracy​
2. Justice​
3. Legality​
4. Non-discrimination​
5. Clear duties and Responsibilities​
6. Student-centered​
7. Flexibility, Adaptability​
8. Evaluation By the results​
9. Impartiality​
10. Cooperative​
11. Prudence​
12. Scientific

ln our teaching we started with defining some of the principles of laws and amendments in education. It was a nice conversation and then at the end we did a quiz. We wrote down examples statements and then asked the audience to guess which law or amendment this statement belongs to. As an example we showed them the following statement:

During the class, Teachers sometimes search on the website which has public confidence such as encyclopedia, Science Journal and News, if they face the problem which they are not able to solve themselves. They recognise their shortage of knowledge and try to offer the precise information about the subject.

Audience had to guess the Law. Which in this case is Scientific 

In my teaching practice I managed to keep them interested and smiling (i could feel that) while they were guessing the Laws. I also made sure that they remember what each law is by going back and forth at least twice after I finished explaining each law and Amendment. By showing them definitions more than once I was able to help my audience remember the laws and in the quiz they were able to guess the correct law. The quiz was also my favourite part as I was able to keep my audience attentive and learn by doing. 

TEAM OWL

Their topic was on the safety of an environment and it was very interesting to listen to. I get some useful links and tips that I can use as a teacher. The presentation was clear and the presenter clearly stated learning outcomes of the teaching. I do think that I was able to get the message as well as some useful links and tips on making a secure environment as a teacher for my students. 

Team Batsu

Their presentation covered Laws, Amendments, and Confidentiality Laws. The outcomes were clearly mentioned and at the end of the presentation I was able o understand how confidentiality works. There was a lot of information and I know it is very useful for me to know and now I am able to find information thanks to the useful resources that the presenter shared. One thing that I noticed was that the presenter read a lot from the slides. 

I did read during my presentation from the slides as well. The reason which I think is the same for Batsu presenter is that I was reading Laws and their definitions. I am not a lawyer and I had to read the laws to be able to talk about them. I now I have to be careful and not just read and do not explain. As I was aware that I had to read some text this time I made sure that I explain in my own words these laws as well.

Reflection

So am I satisfied with my teaching practice today? Yes, as I enjoyed presenting the topic and keeping my audience active. I made sure to stop after every few slides to ask if my audience have some questions. I went back and forth few times so that my audience can remember the laws. then I quizzed my audience. All of this is helping me to grow myself as a presenter. I try not to go fast and try to finish everything. I am now taking it slow during my teaching practice and I give my audience time to ask questions. Once I ask them “do you have a question” then I wait for their reply. I wait for their response. I know that if I do not give them time they will not be able to formulate a question and then ask it. therefore, I always take longer pauses now and I usually get a question. this way I am getting more interaction and time to breath and think. In this teaching practice I managed to deliver my presentation in a very slow and calm manner (at least this is what I think, teachers can listen to the recording and can tell me if I am not calm :D). In the future I will keep practicing to be calm in my teaching practice so that evevryone in my audience is able to listen to me and able to ask questions if needed. No need to rush things through.  

Feedback by Kimmo: All in all, too superficial. Please elaborate how (give concrete examples) how you took the law and amendments and ESPECIALLY the regulations of your institution / Faculty where you did your teaching practice into account. Write a blog post of 2000 words making sure you tie the reflection to your teaching practice. 05.05.2020 / Kuortti

Answer:

I cannot stress here enough again that when I went to ask for a teaching practice from my faculty no one gave me instructions on laws, amendments, values, ethics etc. from the faculty. All my teaching was based on my own understanding and with a little bit of guidance from supervising teacher also not to mention my previous experience of teaching a course while collecting my data. Therefore, faculty did not provide me any set of laws and regulations that I need to follow other than to complete the course on my own.

On the other hand, internet is great. It can provide answers to most of the questions we ask. In Finland there is a thing called Constitution of Finland. Good governance is mentioned in this constitution for the teachers. The constitution is based on the roots of equality, ethical principles and code of conduct and it guide all education providers across the country. Furthermore, important laws to remember are: Administrative Procedure Act Section, that teachers must treat pupils fairly and equally. No special treatment or discriminative treatment towards anyone! Also, teachers should limit their requirements of students’ knowledge only to the performance or skills that the curriculum requires. The Administrative Procedure Act can be found here.

Teacher serves as an official and is therefore accountable to have the necessary knowledge of his/her duties and responsibilities. It is also stated that a teacher should act in an exemplary manner, in accordance with good governance, and to not use improper language.

There are some etiquettes of a classroom and in my course, I considered some rules that needed to be followed both by the students and I. It is more like a hypothetical situation that if there is a late comer than what shall I do or if some one submits assignment late, or is absent from the class without notice or is absent but with notice, or whether he/she can rewrite submissions for better grades. In my opinion as a teacher I needed to set some guidelines or rules for these situations. Well, all these situations did come up in my course.

Then there are some laws that ii need to take care of as a teacher. Number one would be the privacy of students. For example, when I emailed the students, I emailed them using Moodle forum and only used the university email account of students. I also send them their feedback individually. I emailed them their grades individually. I wanted to photograph my teaching, but I did not as I had to ask permissions and so on. All in all, I wanted to keep the class as simple as possible for my teaching. I focused only on teaching. Two of my classes were video taped and I asked permission from the students and the video was only used to assess my teaching.

I heard from other researchers that some of the students in their classes are not paying attention and are rude towards their teachers. In my class nothing like that happened so I do not have a personal experience in dealing with such conditions. But here are few laws and regulations in dealing with such students. In case that a student is behaving badly and rude or interferes the teaching process a teacher can write a written warning. Now this warning can be sent to the student of course, but it can also go the faculty in charge and in some cases if the student is on exchange than to that student’s home university etc.

In my course I did not had essays or a lot of academic text. So, I did not worry about plagiarism. Anyhow, in case of plagiarism, there is a warning and in repeated case expulsion is the final procedure. I knew that what kind of assignments students are going to write so I did not mention anything about plagiarism. But in many other courses where students have to write a lot of academic text with references teachers use online tools such as Urkund to check plagiarism.

On the topic of submissions from students. Their submitted data is stored on Moodle account created by the university. So, I assume the student data is safely stored there. Some of the students sent their rewrites or other assignments by email to my university email account. I have not saved anything on my own computer so when my studies are finished, and I leave university this data will also be erased. I am keeping it if course original teacher wants to see it or students want to discuss anything in future. During the course I did not need any personal data, So I am not worried about breaking any laws there either. The interaction happened via university email service and on Moodle. Both are supposed to be secure.

By considering the constitution and my own experience as a teacher so far, I did my best to deliver the course content in the most affordable way possible and by observing laws and regulations. I think I did an excellent job in achieving my course objectives and taking care of the needs of the students. Yes, there were some students who were absent or did not finish their assignments but according to the rules they still can finish their course if and when they want to do so. Oh, our university gives academic freedom to the students. This means that by law students can take any course in the university even if it is from a different faculty. For example, a student from education can go and register a course in service design etc. Teachers because of this academic freedom sometime shave to deal with overlapping of student’s courses. Personally, I do not like this academic kind of freedom but by law I have to accommodate such situations. Even in my teaching practice course I had to let the student go early because of overlapping issue.

IN OSSI

Q 35: You teach, guide and assess obeying the laws, amendments and guidelines that regulate the work of a teacher

Feedback by Kimmo: Consider the chart on page 7 titled “Providers of Vocational Education and Training” https://publications.stateeuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/79951/opm41.pdf?sequence=1

Look at the two boxes titled “Main Tasks” and “Guiding Principles”. Please explain what the individual bullet points in those boxes mean in concrete terms for a teacher’s work. What does a teacher have to do concretely to fulfill the tasks and principles? Length: 2000 words min.
05.05.2020 / Kuortti

Answer:

I think that you have given me this task to be able to understand some of the regulations that teachers should follow. The only thing that is giving me trouble is that I am studying in a university and my training is to do research and I am becoming a teacher with a background of research. Vocational teaching is opposite to what I have been trained so far. It is only that I have done a diploma in facilitation I understand a bit about vocational education and what is it to be there working as a teacher. Thus, I will give start this task, but I am sure I will not be going into deeper details. So, go easy on me.

MAIN TASKS

• Anticipation and interpretation of the need for education and competence

As a teacher my main task is to anticipate and interpret the need for education and competence for not only for me as a teacher but for also to deliver this message to the students that I teach. If I look at this task as a researcher (who teaches as well) than I am definitely on the right track. I found out that there is a need of soft skills training in the schools and universities. I used my knowledge of facilitation and I combined it with the regular studies of the universities and came up with a educational design research consisted of workshop based designed pedagogical model. So, being a researcher helped me to find a knowledge that I can use to fill in some of the gaps in the education system.

I am in media education and there is a need for training students in understanding media. The media can be anything from radio, to print to TV to social media. I want students to learn and practice and I want them to learn anything and everything about media. In any case as a facilitator I will always incorporate reflection, feedback and experiential learning. So, the competencies of students increase while studying under my supervision.

• Answering the field specific need for competence and individual education in working life as a whole: Vocational upper secondary education and training Vocational further and continuing education and training Working life oriented education models – workplaces as learning environments (apprenticeship training, on-the-job learning, workplace training, jointly purchased training) Adult labour policy education

These days as a teacher / researcher I want my students as well as myself to learn soft skills. Soft skills such as communication, motivation, initiative, and leadership. I think I have done a good job in finding out my interest in a topic related to working life and then manage to deliver it to the students. Working life goes with lifelong learning and by learning soft skills earlier on in the student life can benefit students a lot. Thus, the filed that I have chosen is facilitating students about soft skills using reflection, feedback, and experiential learning.

This means that I have combined my both fields in a very nice way. I have media studies on on hand and facilitation studies on the other. By combining these two fields I have found my specific working life methodology.

• Service and development tasks for working life and SMEs

I am not sure exactly what this means. But I will try.

If this means that my task is to find best possible solutions for my students’ work life than I get it. As a teacher I know that I have to mentor my students and show them their path. The thing is there are career planning departments in the universities where students mostly go to for advice. Teachers in the universities are researchers and they do not prioritize students. This has been going on for so long that now students do not go to researcher teachers and ask advice on their career planning. As I am new teacher, I can start building network of potential employers in my filed of media education and then recommend my students to go to such employers for internships and potential jobs.

If SMEs means small and medium enterprises and freelancing than yes as a teacher, I can make a habit of discussing potential freelance work and opening small business kind of advices with my students. Freelancing is something I always recommend as a facilitator. Every person should have an extra skill to go back to in case of main job is not working. So, when you switch career there is something to fall back at.

• Individual education and competence services: Recognition of previously acquired skills, Individual study plans, Special needs education, Vocational top training.

As a teacher I need to recognize who I am and what have I achieved so far. I also need to know how to continuously improve myself all the time. Learning never stops. If I am good in understanding myself and my skills, I will be able to do the same for my students.

Then there are mentors and counselors who do such things for students anyways. For me to become mentor is a bit far away thing. And I am not trained to be a counselor. I can at this point focus on my own experiences and do my best to learn more.

• Quality assurance in education

Provide quality education to the students. Help them reach course objectives etc

This is exactly what I did and how I planned my course for teacher training. The course that I taught was totally different last year. Previously the course was focusing on just participation in media. However, it did not focus on the course objectives: social diversity, cultural diversity, multiculturalism, social cohesion, and super diversity. I focused on the objectives of the course during the course. I planned one day for each of the objectives so that students can learn about them easily. The assignments were also designed in a way that helped the students to learn the course objectives. The assessment of the course was also made in a way to see that students have learned all the objectives of the course.

• Educational cooperation

As a teacher not so much but as a researcher I see the need of international cooperation. I know teachers should also do some international cooperation and I will do that as well. Now that I have been trained and studied in the university environment, I am mostly comfortable in international cooperation as a researcher.

When I go back to Pakistan and hopefully work as a teacher I will surely be networking with my international connections.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

• Working life orientation: Close interaction with working life – up-to-date knowledge of competence requirements, Competence and assurance of it are key National and international frame of reference – activities guided by competence requirements within the region and the field

Does this mean that as a teacher I need to constantly observe job market for potential changes and to find employers for myself and for my students? Or does it mean that as a teacher my job is to teach courses that help my students get jobs or be able to work as freelancers? In any case my PhD studies are work life and lifelong learning oriented. I want my students to get advantage above others with their competencies in soft skills. I agree that as a teacher I need to actively interact with employers within my filed so that not only that I know what is going on in the job market but also I can send my students to the right places.

• Customer orientation: Demand capacity (working life, students), Clearing competence bottlenecks, Increasing correspondence with working life needs

I need to actively work on the courses that helps my students to get jobs when they graduate. The thing with job market is that it is very volatile as it changes all the time. As a teacher I need to know about it and in the same way make my courses that constantly teaches what is being required at that moment.

• Individuality: Recognition of individual educational needs, Full credit for previously acquired competence, Versatility of education choices, Flexible provision

This is something that I definitely need to address. I need to be very good in understanding my students on an individual basis. Every student is different and learns different set of skills. If I have a good network of employers and companies, I think I will be able to manage the needs of my students on individual basis. So, the teacher’s job is just not to teach but also help students to find a correct path. At least this I can do in the start of my career as well. I can do that by learning about my students, meeting with them and discussing about their future goals.

• Social cohesion: Commitment to preventing social exclusion, Competence needs of special needs groups

I do not know much about special needs group. I have not directly taught such group. But yes, I see the need of combining all types of students so that they all can learn from each other. During my teaching we talked about social cohesion but in the area of immigration. We talked about how different cultures can live in one country and what to do to not exclude them. The same principles can apply and are being applied when it comes to special needs group. I understand all this. Social cohesion is important, and I know I have to keep this in my mind wall the time. Not only during teaching but all the time.