Self-paced course for mentor teachers involved with student teacher training: reflections from the creators

Transkriptio

1 Self-paced course for mentor teachers involved with student teacher training: reflections from the creators Ari Myllyviita MSc (Chem.Ed.), BSc (Chem.), BEd (soc.pedag.) Lecturer, Chemistry and mathematics Teacher educator, Project Coordinator Viikki Teacher Training School of University of Helsinki

2 Thanks to Andries Du Plessis My Great Friend from South Africa. He worked with me from the beginning of this trip. Greating this outstanding mentoring course for all who want make the teacher education better and who want be better teacher educator.

3 Content of the presentation Shortly about Viikki Teacher Training School of University of Helsinki The Background of this course The Content Different phases what did make the difference Finnish approach Mixed after the analysis of the local context Rewriting the content Short look at the content Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta / Ari Myllyviita

4 OUR VISION: Viikki Teacher Training School offers a good, safe and highquality environment for learning and cooperation. Viikki Teacher Training School of University of Helsinki

5 History Founded in 1869 The first Finnish-speaking girls school in Finland, boys since 1969 Since 1974 part of the teacher training unit of the University of Helsinki/ Faculty of Education One of the 11 teacher training schools in Finland FTTS.fi The new school building in Viikki campus since 2003

6 Four main functions I Primary and Secondary Education: 1. Basic education a) Primary school (grades 1-6): 403 pupils b) Lower secondary school (grades 7-9): 282 pupils 2. Upper secondary school: 254 students II Teacher Training (part of teacher education): 1. Class teacher training (150 student teachers per year) 2. Subject teacher training (200 student teachers per year) III In-service Teacher Training IV Research (research based teaching and teacher education)

7 Background of the mentoring course Making a self-paced mentoring course freely available to aspiring mentor teachers is part of the University of Johannesburg s efforts to contribute to teacher training in South Africa. Numerous lessons were learned while collaborating with the University of Helsinki in developing this free stand-alone course for non-qualification purposes. It required content development by an academic team as well as technical skills to produce an offline version for delivery via USB-drives. Feedback from a sample of in-service teachers about this course provides insights into their experiences with and views about self-regulated computer-mediated learning. Their attitudes towards professional development that involves courses for non-qualification purposes are also explored as well as their attitudes and perceptions about mentoring student teachers during practicums. Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta / Ari Myllyviita

8 Start with the Finnish approach

9 Why this kind of approach? The first manuscript of the content was based on the Finnish version of training mentors for preservice (and in-service) teacher education Main concepts (in Finland) are Teacher Identity (Theory of Practice) Reflection process Mentoring situations Contextual factors (affecting student teachers and their mentors) Didactics (Pedagogical Content Knowledge) Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta / Ari Myllyviita

10 ONLINE MENTORING: FOCUS COULD BE: STICK: FOCUS ON Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta / Ari Myllyviita

11 MentoringStick how we can support interaction with it Shared problems Limits!! No internet No No virtual No shared data Mentoring is about interaction how to share and create knowledge and experiences about mentoring Assignments are based on local activities with colleagues and student teachers Same time - Same place (synchronous interaction, see next slide) Same place Different time (asynchronous interaction) Parts of MentoringStick course are these activities (unfortunately without pedagogical or other support) Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta / Ari Myllyviita

12 Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta / Ari Myllyviita

13 Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta / Ari Myllyviita

14 Second version Mixed after the analysis the local context

15 What is the focus of this course? Teachers, who has already some knowledge about teaching, but need some deeper (metatheoretical) understanding in: Teaching (things like GPK, PCK, ) Reflection Teacher Identity (practice and theory, how combine them, where these theories come from) Themes, what we (in Finland) don t have discussed during teacher education studies Mentoring (comparing coaching or tutoring) Eco-system theory Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta / Ari Myllyviita

16 How to create interactivity without interactive (web-)tools Interaction should happen where is the context (the place where the mentoring is happening) Assignments are for creating interaction Between mentor teacher and student teacher Between mentor teacher and peer colleagues Interaction between material (web) and future mentor is fictive because there is now real opponent or support Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta / Ari Myllyviita

17 Create Communities of Practice Favouring a constructivist approach learning activities were designed for group work and guided interactions with fellow in-service teachers. Based on collaborative professional development model that favours group activities associated with Communities of Practice (CoP) (Butler 2004, 436) To further facilitate assessment and group discussions among in-service teachers who follow this USB-mediated course all assessment tasks were converted to PDFformat. The intention is that these could be downloaded and printed, allowing for ease of use during group discussions. Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta / Ari Myllyviita

18 Third version Rewriting the content

19 Content of the mentoring course today Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta / Ari Myllyviita

20 Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta / Ari Myllyviita

21 Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta / Ari Myllyviita

22 Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta / Ari Myllyviita

23 Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta / Ari Myllyviita

24 We still have problems Length of the texts how much we consider teachers to read from the web-page (too scientific?) Embeded videos Youtube-videos we can t have in a stick (or we have to download them and embed in different way not a link but a source, not difficult, but will be different in offline and online version) Scalability do we have to consider mobile surfers Layout? Should be easily edited? South African approach vs. Finnish approach Outcome based or research based (teacher) education? Interactive elements local activities Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta / Ari Myllyviita

25 Computer-supported collaborative learning CSCL An instructional strategy grounded in social constructivism that is an area of active research is computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). This strategy gives students opportunities to practice 21st-century skills in communication, knowledge sharing, critical thinking and use of relevant technologies found in the workplace Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta / Ari Myllyviita

26 The future? Online course with support by Teacher Educators