PSP

1.  MY COMPETENCES AND VOCATIONAL TEACHERHOOD

Reflect on your competence based on the results of the preliminary task (questionnaire).
Use the descriptions of professional teacher's core competences.

• What are the starting points in my vocational teacherhood? -Reflect on your previous strengths and your previous competences.
•  How do I want to develop as a vocational teacher? What motivates me?

2.  FAMILIRIAZING MYSELF WITH THE STUDIES AND PLANNING AHEAD

Read the study plan of the School of Vocational Teacher Education and create yourself the learning outcomes and a study plan.

• What studies support and nurture the development of your core competences?
• How do you schedule your studies?
• Consider the possibilities teaching practise in your own field of work. In which vocational institute or polytechnic or other institute can I carry out my teacher practise? What core contents shall I concentrate on? Which target audience shall be my students? Or shall I go abroad for Teaching Practise?
• What former competences or learning shall I present to be accredited? –Familiarize yourself with the accreditation policies of the school.

3     MY FUTURE AS A VOCATIONAL TEACHER

Use at least three sentences to describe how you see yourself as a vocational teacher in the future.

I’ve been working in a vocational school for six years now. Not all my positions there have been related to teaching but all of them are related somehow to students. I’m very peaceful teacher and I give time to students. I consider myself as accessible teacher whose teaching style is closer to coaching than teaching. I’ll be present but I’ll let the students have their own space and I’ll let them to think and practise different things according to their interests. I like to give examples and present problems students have to find answers to. I also encourage students to discuss different matters.  

I like web based learning environments and I think they support very well even hair and beauty students whose number one goal normally is to achieve the ability to use their hands and fingers in the right way. But before hands work like they should they have to learn what they are going to be achieving and what helps them to achieve that. Hairdressers and beauty therapists also need theoretical knowledge and tools to enlarge their professional vision. I think on-line discussions will help hair and beauty students, especially adult students to get the big picture. I usually conduct my courses with mandatory on-line discussion. Usually our students have classroom teaching for 15 hours a week and independent studies for 10 hours a week. In my courses that 10 hours of independent studies include on-line discussions. In my school discussions are done in Moodle environment. And if some students do not want to participate they have an option to write about those discussed matters independently. Most of the students will choose the discussions but the reason for that can also be that the discussion part is easier and it takes less work than independent writing assignments. But I think those discussion will help the students to understand important matters in greater way than when individually done. I also include those discussions into learning material for tests if I’ve decided to do tests. I usually have two kind of topic to discuss. One type is to expand students knowledge and help them to think more widely like: “What does sustainable development mean in hair care and how can you promote sustainable development during customer service?” and the other type of topic is to combine with the different services being provided like “How to match hair cut and color? What are the principles of combining cuts and colors? Give some examples of well-matching cuts and colors and not so well-matching ones.” In adult education we don’t have much time to focus on that kind of things in classroom teaching. The hands on learning takes most of our time and I think teacher should plan the classes so that classroom teaching is the most effective and everything that can be done easily using distance learning methods are done that way.

In my school we use videos pretty often. We’ve filmed almost all of our basic treatments. Students can watch those videos at home or during class and learn from them. Video it a good way to show how certain things are done. For example we’ve filmed our basic body treatment and all its parts. Students are told to watch the video before the first classroom-teaching day about treatments for body. So students know what to expect. During class we divide the video into sections. First we watch the first session about how to make a place for customer and how to dress the blankets and then we do that same in classroom. Next we watch the second video clip about what products and equipment we need and how to adjust them and so on. Students can also review and rehearse our session in the evening or later on independently.

We could use videos more comprehensively in teaching. Videos can stand for much more than just demonstrate the right way to do things. Besides videos and on-line discussions we also use some other on-line tools for teaching. Our beauty department is actually the most advanced department in Omnia’s adult education centre when we talk about on-line learning. There are several reasons for that. Our beauty department have participated to many different on-line learning and teaching projects. The Finnish Board of Education financed a project called Kaunisverkko and Omnia took part for that. It was the big bang for on-line learning and teaching in Omnia. The end result from that project was two on-line modules for hairdressers. One was about haircutting and the other was about manicure. Classroom teaching was one part of the module but most of the learning was done in on-line environment. After that Kaunisverkko project was ended the result remained and we kept developing it. Now we have on-line material for every study module for hairdressers and beauty therapists. We’ve also had lots of innovative beauty teachers in Omnia. Many of us was and still is very interested in on-line learning and how it can be developed for hair and beauty department. Our management is also giving very strict message that we must relocate our teaching to on-line environments. Omnia invests a lot of resources in on-line environments. We’ll have another version of Moodle next year. We’ll also have Lync available next year. One of Omnia’s business unit’s main missions is to develop teachers’ know-how about the educational use of social media. We have laptops, iPads and iPods available for teaching and our management is very well-disposed for in-service training. I think we’ve very good premise to be in trendsetter role for on-line learning and teaching in vocational education in Finland.

In my current position English is not in a big role at the moment. I can somehow manage to teach in English but I have to prepare myself quite well in advance. I think my strengths are my peaceful and calm present that also is present when teaching in English. In Omnia we don’t have that much teaching done in English. We may have one group of practical nurses every once in a while whose teaching is conducted in English. We have also have quite many exchange students every year. In my current position I don’t deal with exchange students but they may end up to my classes occasionally.

Those exchange students don’t usually speak English as their native language but some of them do of course. Nowadays young people do speak English language quite well. Most of the exchange students speak quite good English and they are able to follow classes conducted in English. When teaching non-native students I think it’s important to use quite common vocabulary. Students can usually understand vocabulary of their own field and everyday life so if we use that kind of vocabulary they will be able to participate classes. The grammar should also be quite simple especially in vocational education where intended learning outcomes are very practical. Using simple grammar it is much more easier to get your message trough.