On 27th August 2019 I started vocational teacher education programme at Oulu University of Applied sciences. There are 20 students coming from different background and different region around the world. However, during the face to face meeting only 15 students participated.
Before the first meeting I was having many questions in my mind, for example, what kind of background and the experience my student colleagues might have? How can I complete 60 ECTS? What might be the recommendation for teaching practice? How does the content of the programme look like? How I can enhance my teaching experience? And so on.
During the session I feel like I have gained the necessary information, I got answers to my all the questions that I had in my mind before the orientation. It was a nice experience. I was happy while returning home. I note down important information and links, also I got lazy to write down all the information assuming that something will be in my head. In fact when I get home and tried to go through all the information that I noted in my notebook, tried to recall all the events, I got lost, everything was so confusing, and everything mixed up. Maybe in the future I need to be a bit more organized, the knowledge of skills like shorthand writing and note taking might be useful.
However, the important lesson that I learned during the first two day session is the answer to following questions:
How to complete 60 ECTS
- First ways to complete 60 ECTS: By demonstrating teaching competencies and skills. The competencies can be demonstrated by teaching experience (lesson planning, implementation, and assessment skills), scientific publications, certificate of previously participated courses.
- Second ways to complete
60 ECTS
- Active participation in webinars + completing different tasks, example, lesson planning and implementation, writing reflection on each of the webinars, demonstrating team work, and so on. (40 ECTS)
- Teaching practices (10 ECTS)
- Basics of educational science (10 ECTS)
What is the difference between reflection and the learning dairy?
I became familiarization with the term reflection and the different ways to writing own reflection. I was considering reflection and the learning dairy to be the same but I came to know they are completely different. During the discussion one of my friend explained that reflection is all about personal assessment of own-self, what was the level of competence (before), what have been learned (during the session), and what can be carried out for the future in order to have a better experience of an event, in our case teaching and learning. On the other hand learning daily is the summary of an event or a course.
- Reflection: An assessment of own learning (past experience….present situation…..future plan).
- Learning dairy: A long story of an event, a course or a lesson.
At the moment, what is the level of my teaching competence?
I tried to find the answer to this question, I could not figure it out. I am in very early stage of my teaching career, I have very little experience of teaching. During my teaching I have realized that I need to work on time management skills, presentation and communication skills, and language skills (both English and Finnish). Maybe, I prefer to call myself a novice teacher.
What are my future plan to improve my teaching competencies?
I will be actively participating in all the webinars, team work, and writing blog posts (reflections). This is the plan at the moment, as the study progress I can have better understanding of my competencies and I may have to change my current plan.
In general the two days orientation at Oulu went fine, a completely new experience. It was a good opportunity to be introduced with future professional teacher. Furthermore, I was able to think about my own teaching competencies.
Finally, if a competencies cannot be demonstrated than one really needs to think whether he/she bears that competencies.
My Journey to Vocational Teacher Education 2019-20 