Session Information
Session 11B, Network 10 papers
Papers
Time:
2005-09-10
11:00-12:30
Room:
Arts G108
Chair:
Marit Honerod Hoveid
Contribution
The Finnish educational system is in the middle of changes both at the basic and university level. The new framework curricula for comprehensive and secondary schools were released at the beginning of 2004. Schools have been renewing their curricula, as the training schools where teaching practise takes place have done as well. Along the renewing of the academic studies the departments of teacher education have been rewriting their curricula, too. In Finland the departments of teacher education and the training schools are ruled by the faculties of education. This means that in order to obtain the best results in educating quality teachers, the two partners have to work side by side. The crucial part within the teacher education is the teaching practise which is supervised by university teachers (tutors) and classroom teachers (mentors). The educational tutoring and mentoring process should be based on a good dialogue where all three participants should be involved. A good dialogue involves mutual commitment and objectivity what could also be seen as one of the virtues in school education. During the practise we should improve consciousness and critical evaluation of teacher trainees' actions and through this, enhancing their professional and personal growth and development. We should teach teacher trainees to reflect on their own opinions and to describe their own understanding. I asked 11 students who had just finished one of the four practise sessions to write 1) what kind of educational view they have and had they discussed about this view with their tutors and mentors; 2) what kind of feedback they had got from their tutors and mentors after practise, and 3) did they have some new ideas to educators. Writing the essays was just a preliminary study and the given answers were subjective opinions of the trainees. This small sample already showed that tutors and mentors have different ways of giving feedback. In most of the cases the feedback was closer to a monologue than a dialogue. The results also indicate that only a little communication exists between tutors and mentors. In some cases they even had different objectives to teaching. To improve this process we should move more towards the idea of teamwork where all three partners, prospective teachers, tutors and mentors work side by side in an open atmosphere. To get the real picture how the group of the three works together, we should set a design where they all sit around the table and have a dialogue
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