The Flying Teacher

                                                                                    pexels.com   1. As a   vocational/professional teacher, how can you  support   a student with special needs? A key word in Special Needs Education and presented during our session is accessibility . Accessibility is here understood as the process to achieve equality as a fundamental right and   can be seen both from a physical or a totally intangible perspective. The different approaches towards accessibility to be taken into account are: Pedagogical (the basic right to education) Attitude-related (being positive) Physical (access to facilities and spaces) Social cultural (related to inclusion and to different cultural perspectives) Psychological (meaning  the well-being of the student's mind ) Teachers must have the above very present when developing their activities but due to its closeness to the ultimate purpose of teaching, it is through  pedagogical accessibility  where a teacher can infl

I had the enormous opportunity to participate as an observer in a module on Applied Design Research provided by Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki. It was a nice surprise to find out that during the session there was another student performing his teaching practises for this module. So it was doubly rewarding for me to witness not only how a complete course is organised but to understand the role of a trainee from his own point of view.   The course was in Finnish and consisted of four contact sessions with the students. Two face-to-face meetings were also held at Haaga-Helia Pasila Campus among teachers for lesson preparation. The whole module was a perfect to understand the planning and implementation process as well as how to organise the assessment methods. It consisted of four contact sessions and Here is the module in a nutshell: SCOPE : 5 cr (135H) CONTENT: - What is applied research? - Research ethics  - Applied research as a part of organisational develop

  Time for laws and amendments related to higher education.The common ground for all the groups was this time trying to identify the laws, amendments and legal issues that affect vocational teachers. One key aspect during this session was how and where to find legal information, especially from Finnish sources. Having this part clear for all the students we went independently to more specific areas going from confidentiality law and principles of good administration to safety and copyright laws.  Pre-task for all the groups:  Where can you find the current laws and amendments concerning vocational/university education and working as a teacher? Are there any English versions available? The following websites are capital in terms of finding information on current laws and amendments affecting higher education: www.finlex.fi  (database of legislative and judicial information in Finland) www.oph.fi  (Finnish National Agency for Education) www.minedu.fi  (Finnish Ministry of Education) www.