Virtual session 4- special areas of vocational education

Virtual session 4: special areas of vocational teacherhood.

This topic is close to my heart in many ways. Our topic is ‘how special needs students are best acknowledged in vocational education’. I gave the title of ‘Golden Rules’ to the following:

Everyone is equal in the eyes of law

There is no discrimination with respect to age or sex or origin, health and disability which is unique

All children are to be treated equally

We began our presentation by pointing out what is meant by disabilities, physical, emotional and mental and also learning difficulties.

Then we went on with mentioning how the special needs students are identified early on and given special care. Our topic was about special needs students in vocational education. And since it starts when the students are adults (age 18) they already get some special education to meet their requirements. Satu is acquainted with a special needs teacher at Omnia and managed to get an interview with her. We got a lot of information about the problems and solutions in the process. She stressed that although there are several techniques mentioned in the books, it comes down to establishing a connection with the student. And that has to be in a positive way. I also managed to get an interview with my friend who is hearing impaired by birth. What is interesting in her case is that she is no longer a special needs student but already in a summer job like normal people. She gets an interpreter whenever necessary but not always. So the beauty of Finnish education system is that the special needs students are recognized early in their life and given special education in various stages of their learning process and finally merged with the normal students. This works positively on the emotional tank of the students to be able to treated ‘Normally’. At the end of the presentation we had one question each in our respective breakouts from Satu’s friend at Omnia. All seem to like the idea but we could have had all the three if there was sufficient time. So we decided to post in our blogsJ

Discussion case 1: You are teaching a class. One of the students is showing up late on a regular basis, seems tired and absent. What do you do?

Discussion case 2: You have just started the school year with a new group of students. After a few weeks you start noticing that there are a few students who seem to have trouble staying on pace with the rest of the group, they don’t succeed in finishing the tasks you give them and seem to loose focus. What do you do?

Discussion case 3: One student in your class keeps on skipping classes and doesn’t participate. What do you do?

Next presentation was by Mars and they spoke about how to develop cooperation between schools and working life? In Finland, according to my understanding Entrepreneurship is tightly collaborated with vocational education. Students can gain real life working experiences while learning itself!. This is sadly not the case in my country. There are thousands of engineering colleges producing engineers every year but they all end up doing jobs they do not like. Some students also work in call-centers although they are bachelors in engineering. The job market is greatly flawed and hope to see some improvement in the future.

The following presentation was by Jupiter about how entrepreneurship is being developed in vocational schools?. Is this similar to the previous one? May be they are related closely. They opening question was ‘How good entrepreneur are you?’ I am not an entrepreneur at all in the first place leave alone ‘good’. I wanted to listen to everyone else.

I am glad that we completed the first phase of vocational pedagogy. I ask myself ‘what did I learn’? is it worth all the effort to stay awake late in the nights, persuading my husband to babysit? I would say now ‘YES’. I did gain something, met some fantastic people whom I can ask anything about Pedagogy and I will always get an answer back! I have become a learner to become an educator! now this is great!
References:

•http://www.oph.fi/download 131431_vocational_education_and_training_in_finland.pdf

•http://www.european-agency.org/country-information/finland/national-overview/complete-national-overview

•Kepanen, P. 2002. Master’s thesis: Haaste vai riesa? Viiden ammatillisen opettajan kokemuksia ja käsityksiä erityisopiskelijoista yleisessä ammattioppilaitoksessa.

•www.ammatillinenerityisopetus.fi