From Mars to Earth

A group is  two or more individuals who are connected to one another by social relationships. 
Donelson R. Forsyth, Group Dynamics, Brooks/Cole, 1990

 Hackman (professor of Social and Organizational Psychology in University of Harvard) proposed 5 conditions that increase the chance that groups will be successful. These are:
1) Being a real team: so having shared task, clear boundaries and stability in group membership.
2) Compelling direction: which results from having a clear, challenging and consequential goal.
3) Enabling structure:which results from having tasks which have variety, a group size that is not too large, talented group members who have at least moderate social skills, and strong norms that specify appropriate behavior  
4) supportive context: an educational system that develops member skills and information and materials system that provides the needed informationi. 5) Experong coaching which occurs on the rare occasions when group members feels they need help with task on interpersonal issues. http://hackman.socialpsychology.org
In Mars our group dynamic worked pretty well: we were able to satisfy internal and external clients, develop capabilities to perfom in future and I found meaning and satisfaction in the group.I think we covered at least the first 4 conditions. We didn´t really need the 5th. Working with Mars group has been an honor and so it will be with Earth group. Team based learning has been until now really important for me:the method is useful for businesses, organizations, careers.I moved from team Mars to team Earth. It was surprising decision and little by little I am getting used to the idea: I will work with a new group so I will invest energy to give them the best that I can. Beside, they are also really capable people and I want to take this changing as an opportunity to get to know other ways how people work. Learning how to learn, work, interact and cooperate in a team is essential for success in this century. Team Earth thank you for having me!

VS 4 Special areas of vocational teacher hood.

My voice disappeared completely after the session 4: with it went also the first part of our studies in VOC1. I am relieved and tired. Christmas is coming and I am not going to rest anyway. I have to study harder especially now, round the corner there are Espoo´s days, educational studies and training.
Yesterday’s session went ok. 
Earth spoke about HOW SPECIAL NEEDS STUDENTS ARE BEST ACKNOWLEDGED IN TEACHING: Interesting theme. I could again make comparison with my country (where actually we were thinking to put even the foreigners in separate classes!!!!!): In Finland there is a law which says that students with disabilities have to get equal education with students without disabilities, but still the learning of those who don´t have disabilities must not go slower. It´s a sensitive issue and I would like to know more about it and share experiences with other.  I found very useful the discussion part than the presentation itself. We had with some of my class mates different experiences on this matter. During the discussions it came out pretty clear to me that teacher creates the environment of learning. The more the environment is in harmony the more the learning is stimulated. Group Earth brings up a simple example: what would you do if one of your students comes regularly late for the lesson and in that he/she were clearly tired. 
Well, first of all I think I would observe his behavior for a while and try to talk to him. Teachers are teachers, neither psychologist nor psychiatrist. 
Teachers identify the behavior of the students under different circumstances. The classroom teacher plays many roles in the classroom. An important role is the recognition of pupils with learning difficulties. The teachers must be able to appraise the situation and decide the course of action. One course of action may result in identifying a learning disabled child which may help the teacher in understanding this important role. 
Special need teacher plays an important role: while the teacher is focusing on the group needs the special teacher focuses on the individual needs. He or she is an important resource to the classroom teacher in helping him or her to build the properly balanced learning environment.
In Mars (us) and Jupiter groups we spoke about HOW TO DEVELOP COOPERATION BETWEEN SCHOOLS AND WORKING LIFE  and HOW ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS BEING DEVELOPED IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION: very similar themes but with some differences anyway.
Our presentation went quite smoothly with no technical problems at all. We decided to give first the general background (related to the laws in Europe and in Finland) then focus in two cases: Estonian case and Finnish case. Entrepreneurship is part of vocational education because students do part of their studies in a training program. I wish we could have the same in my country.
In the training programs not only students but also companies, teachers, schools managers and social institutions are involved.  All of them play a role. Our material was pretty general but then we added some extra stuff and all our presentations suddenly made sense. 
Jupiter´s presentation was interesting too. They opened their work with a test HOW GOOD ENTREPRENEUR YOU ARE.  The tutor didn´t like too much about the idea but I didn´t find anything wrong with it.
Ok. They gave the general answer, but I thought it was a nice way to catch people’s attention. 
The main point what came out in both presentations (in my point of view) was that students should develop their own learning projects in line with their ambitions, their talents and motivations. 
Theoretically and practically entrepreneurship is part of Vocational Studies because also they are regulated by the Finnish laws. We had this pretask: What is your field? What kind of courses would you be teaching? How would you teach entrepreneurship skills to your students in your subject? Give one example. I didn´t have achance to answer there, but I can do it here. I would combine my season job (guiding tourists) with languages. I would teach them entrepreneurship for instance using cultural immersion in completely different place for an entire semester or give role exercises how to start a company project in a group, improving the group work and go deeply in the process of that.


References:
- European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education Complete National Overview - Finland, 7 feb 2012 retrieved on http://www.european-agency.org/country-information/finland/national-overview/complete-national-overview
- Ammattilliset eritysopetus (net page) Vocational special needs education and training

Between Father´s day and Preparation of VS4

Father´s day started with a review of our presentation and a new slide from me. Out theme HOW TO DEVELOP THE COOPERATION BETWEEN SCHOOLS AND WORKING LIFE  is rich in observations, in pro and in cons. We will have only 40´to give justice to this theme. The material given us was very general so we decided to take 2 studies cases: Estonian and Finnish from different point of view.
We will start with a general view of Finnish politics in this issue then we will focus our attention to the case Estonia: this will be followed by a Finnish case with an interview video. On the top will speak also about the cons in the cooperation between schools and working. Hopefully people bring up also their experiences in this field.
Have been a crazy week for all of us: in add of this we have one member without internet connection for 2 weeks. We will see how we are going to manage the very last one presentation.

entrepreneurship education - work in progress for Espoo days

So far I have manage to read all the material that Satu sent us from Espoo. Our theme will be Entrepreneurial pedagogy: I focus my attention first on definitions. In that Wikipedia is really good source.
Entrepreneurship education seeks to provide students with the knowledge, skills and motivation to encourage entrepreneurial success in a variety of settings. "How to be a good Entrepreneur" (Wikipedia).

The material was plenty:  the main message that I have got from there is that e.e. means developing a (new) culture; means significant changes in how teachers teach, moving from communications of knowledge to facilitators of learning. 

I think in our 15´pitch we should focus on the following points: 
-  when teacher should teach in order to prepare the entrepeneures
- what are in practicalities the methods of teaching: how to teach to develop skills and capabilities when an entrepreneurs is made or born.
- how can teachers be motivated to use entrepreneurial methods in the classroom through continuing professional development? 

to be continue....