Learning Days in Oulu

Created: 28.1.2023, Edited: 29.1.2023, Last Edited: 17.3.2023

After half a year of interacting with others purely remotely, it was time for another visit to Oulu. It was nice to meet everyone once again and work together in person. The exchange students that have been with us from the beginning left and new ones came, giving a nice "fresh" feeling to the event.

DAY 1

We began with short introductions for our new colleagues (the exchange students) and for our invited guest, Dr. Davide Parmigiani. Then we started a session where two of my colleagues, whom I will refer to as T and Y demonstrated their international and multicultural competence. They pointed out that the greatest challenges globally can only be resolved by working together and that is why Finland wishes to be an active participant in the global community, sharing in the responsibilities and offering expertise in solving problems. As a country, Finland is known for taking a responsible approach in its policies and for good achievements in education. Finland is also an active participant in Nordic, European and worldwide networks, helping create shared knowledge and expertise.

Internationalization in higher education typically refers to mobility of students and academic staff. This results in knowledge transfer, cooperation and competition. [1]

New teachers should be able to face complex environments, manage various situations and experience different educational concepts. Teachers need to be prepared to teach in culturally diverse classrooms and the question is not weather to have foreign students in the classroom or not but to create the conditions that allow students to develop learning considering multiple points of view. [2]

Virtues and skills of a multiculturally competent teacher include:

• is socio-culturally conscious and recognizes that there are multiple ways of perceiving reality and that these ways are influenced by one's location in the social order
• has affirming views of students from diverse backgrounds, seeing resources for learning in all students rather than viewing differences as problems to overcome
• sees themselves as responsible and capable of bringing educational change that will make schools more responsive to all students
• understands how learners construct knowledge and is capable of promoting learners' knowledge construction
• knows about the lives of their students
• uses their knowledge about students' lives to design instruction that builds on what they already know while stretching them beyond the familiar

It was exciting that Y referenced a pre-task I had for this day, mentioning how she is interested to see the results and if there will be a culturally-related effect from the participants. T and Y wrapped up their lesson with an interactive padlet session on how do you see international and multicultural aspect in your work, workplace, country as a teacher or as a student? We all unanimously thought it was a good thing to have.

Then we had a short break, after which Dr. Parmigiani began his session on internationalization of teaching education, or as he liked to put it "teaching without walls". The session was really interesting and interactive. In the beginning we were split into groups and had to create a short video to promote studying in an international environment. Two of my team members happened to be my teammates (I and C) from the usual webinars (what are the odds? about 1/33, but because we were already sitting close to each other, the odds were actually higher). The last member was our new exchange student, M.

We all decided to take part in the video and quickly came up with an idea for it: we would each say some encouraging statement in our native language. We came up with the following script:

• M: Come study in an international environment! It's the best way to understand the world and learn about acceptance!
• I: Challenge yourself! Develop your skills and find common goals independently of your background!
• C: Create a sustainable international career, through international cooperation developing your creativity along the way.
• Radu: You'll be surprised of what a team of international students can achieve!

We used about 20 minutes for making the video, and quick editing by adding transitions and English subtitles and we were quite happy with the result (I think Dr. Parmigiani was as well). We then watched the videos made by the other teams. All of them were absolutely great!

Dr. Parmigiani, then continued with listing potential benefits of an international teaching experience. It was nice to hear a systematic overview, however, it somehow felt too... familiar, since I'm an international student / teacher myself and most of my colleagues are as well, so, I suspect they're of the same opinion. We do have a few colleagues who are Finnish, but our group feels very international as a whole and the activities we do here go beyond how things are done in Finland.

The most important take-away message was that teachers should do it to change their own context; to get out of their comfort zone and evolve as teachers, not just for the sake of visiting a different country. Here, by comfort I mean that doing the same things over and over again are not going to bring any improvement. We then had a lunch break followed by the afternoon sessions where we could demonstrate our competences.

Here I demonstrated my competence in research and development. I did this by giving a short lesson on how machine learning works where I analyzed the drawings from those who participated in my pre-task and explained how the k-nearest-neighbor classifier works (a preview of my upcoming course). I also explained how teaching plays a role in companies (Microsoft) and shared a story about how a former exchange student of mine eventually graduated her Master's studies and we wrote a paper together for a conference, where she was sponsored to participate by her new workplace (Amazon). I think my presentation went well and I felt it was well-received by everyone.

Another one of my colleagues, M, demonstrated his competence on Safety. He began by showing us a video where a group of students are running. One of the students had difficulties breathing and was left behind. Two students running together discuss that the reason is probably asthma. The instructor, however, doesn't do anything in this regard and the group continues their trip.

This was obviously a situation that wasn't handled well and we discussed what are the correct practices in such a situation, concluding that the most important thing is to ask the students before embarking on the trip (prevention is key).

M then talked about different aspects of pedagogical safety and we learned that there are three points of view: physical, psychological and social safety, but that pedagogical safety can also be treated as its own concept: examining things like didactic fine-tuning, the selection of optimal methods and the availability of special support. M then described safety management in early childhood and vocational education and pointed to 3 acts that are concerned with this:

• Early Childhood Education Act
• Act on young workers 998/1993 (Finlex) 540/2018 (Finlex)
• Occupational Safety and Health Act 738/2002 (Finlex)

I was familiar with most of these since I have a child at daycare and am accustomed to the policies there (like who can pick him up, for instance). In addition, I have personal experiences with safety drills at my work place (fire simulations and using the Secapp alerting platform). What I found most interesting was the section on how we, as teachers should respond to different safety needs of students, including harassment, sudden illness, fire, psychological issues and security threats, information security and data protection. The discussions were really useful and the general message seems to always be: prevention is key.

The next session was hosted by my teammate, I. She demonstrated her competence in guidance, assessment and values in teaching. She began with a quote from John Dewey: "There will be almost a revolution in school education when study and learning are treated not as acquisition of what others know but as development of capital to be invested in eager alertness in observing and judging the conditions under which one lives. Yet until this happens, we shall be ill-prepared to deal with a world whose outstanding trait is change".

I agree with the quote; however, I couldn't help to think that it somewhat suggests that a revolution wouldn't happen otherwise and I think that if we find more effective ways to pass on our expertise to the next generation (as in the I Know Kung Fu scene from The Matrix), they can use the knowledge to great effect and it would cause a revolution in and of itself.

We then watched the short film Alike:

It was a very touching moment and sparked discussions related to creativity. We started debating whether creativity can be included as a skill we teach alongside our main subject and I believe it can. Most of my YouTube tutorials try to be creative and Creative Coding courses have emerged recently as a new way to learn programming.

T, mentioned forced creativity and we had a short discussion if it can be effective. I believe in some situations yes. For example, not all of the research I've done over the years has been of specific interest to me. I did it to help my fellow colleagues / students on their topic of interest. In this case, you can say I forced myself to be creative and solve a problem I wasn't particularly interested in. I believe these situations occur quite frequently in practice.

I also presented us a problem. To connect 9 dots on a piece of paper (see Figure 1). We had to use as few lines as possible. I found the best solution, but, in hindsight, I remembered seeing that puzzle few years back, so, it was likely a memory I had rather than actual insight. My colleagues had many things to say about the problem and how out of the box thinking is important.

Figure 1: Nine dot puzzle

C also demonstrated his competence in welfare with a focus on teacher wellbeing. It was a nice presentation reminding us that teaching is hard! I normally have high motivation for teaching, but not always, and thus, I think the most valuable lesson from the discussions was a tip on how to figure out Why? Our tutor, Kimmo presented us with "the power zone" [3, 4]: a method where we reflect over the tasks we have to do at work by grouping them in 4 categories:

• Enthusiastic, but not very skillful (yet!)
• Enthusiastic and skillful!
• Skillful, but not enthusiastic
• Not skillful and not enthusiastic

The goal being to think of ways of minimizing the number of tasks in the last category. I used a simpler version of this in the past with only 2 categories (things I like to do vs. things I don't like) but from now I will give this new format a try.

DAY 2

We began the day with a comprehensive workshop on special needs education. It was an amazing learning experience orchestrated by our Educational Sciences tutor, Iiris. The event was highly interactive and we had the opportunity to evaluate the building from an accessibility point of view and identify potential issues. We also used different devices to experience life as students with disabilities (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Me experiencing tunnel vision

During this session, I recalled personal experiences with my students with disabilities. The most exceptional case being completely blind. It took some extra work from me (the teacher), however, in the end, she passed the course. It is important to motivate students in these situations and make them see potential future careers they can take. There are many success stories that demonstrate that everything is possible and our students can do it too!

I think the most important lesson was that as teachers, we are responsible to support students in their studies and help them achieve their dreams. We should be responsive and ask "what can I do to help you in learning". Sometimes small things like dimming the lights in the room or rearranging the seats can have profound effects. It is also important for us teachers to keep an eye open for anything wrong. We should try our best to prevent problems and mitigate bullying when it occurs.

In the afternoon we had another session with our Dr. Parmigiani. This time, the topic was E-inclusion, or as he called it "learning without walls". We began with an interactive session shaped as a debate between two groups. Our group had to find arguments for teaching a class of homogeneous pupils/students (similar skills competences). Our team came up with facts like:

• Easy for teachers.
• Cheap for schools...
• Students are not overwhelmed
• Can make more progress
• Positive competition
• Assessment
• Group work (more comfortable when homogeneous)

It was interesting to come up with arguments against our own beliefs, and I think this showed during the debate (I think we lost :-D)

Dr. Parmigiani then proceeded to share stories about what happened in Italy during the coronavirus pandemic (the first lockdown). Italy was the first in lockdown and it was interesting to see what the population was thinking at those times, especially in regards to education (the example tweets really helped).

We learned about inclusive education, that a school should be designed and understood as a set of spaces, programs and activities so that all pupils can participate and learn on par with their peers and realize their potential [5]

In [6] E-inclusion was defined as referring to the degree to which ICTs contribute to equalizing and promoting participation in society at all levels (eEurope Advisory Group, 2005). One year later, the European Commission (2006, p. 2) confirmed that e-inclusion "addresses how new technologies can be used to overcome barriers, compensate or restore individuals' functions and empower in particular older persons and people with disabilities to realize their full potential". Although e-inclusion refers to the intensive use of technologies to support learning processes, a pedagogical model is nonetheless needed for their effective use [7,8,9]. In [10] it was stated that students with disabilities can benefit from online learning activities, but several critical issues remain such as the low level of technological and pedagogical skills of teachers and support staff, difficulties related to student achievement and the lack of cooperation with students' families. An illustrative example of all contributing elements is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Map of e-inclusion (Source: Dr. Parmigiani's slides)

REFERENCES

1. Kehm, B.M., & Teichler, U. (2007). Research on internationalisation in higher education. Journal of Studies in International Education, 2 (3-4), 260-273.
2. Parmigiani, D. (2018). Intercultural teaching for international teachers. In M. Ranieri, L. Menichetti, M. Kaschny Borges (EdS), Teacher Education & Training and ICT between Europe and Latin America (p. 27-37). Roma: Aracne.
3. Mayerson, N (2015, June 25). "Characterizing" the Workplace: Using Character Strengths to Create Sustained Success. Kognition & Paedagogik, 96 (pp 14-27).
4. Niemiec, R. M. 2018. Character strengths interventions. A field guide to practitioners. Göttingen: Hogrefe.
5. Meyer, A., Rose, D. H., & Gordon, D. T. (2014). Universal design for learning: Theory and practice. CAST Professional Publishing.
6. Bianchi, A., Barrios, S., Cabrera, M., Cachia, R., Compañó, R., Malanowski, N., Punie, Y., Turlea, G., Zinnbauer, D., & Centeno, C. (2006). Revisiting eInclusion: From vision to action. Institute for Prospective Technological Studies
7. Abbott, C. (2007). E-inclusion: Learning difficulties and digital technologies. Futurelab
8. Florian, L. (2017). The heart of inclusive education is collaboration. Pedagogika, 126(2), 248–253. https://doi.org/10. 15823/p.2017.32
9. Ronchi, A. M. (2019). e-Democracy?: Toward a new model of (inter)active society. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
10. Rice, M. F., & Dykman, B. (2018). The emerging research base for online learning and students with disabilities. In R. Ferdig & K. Kennedy (Eds.), Handbook of research on K-12 online and blended learning (pp. 189–206). ETC Press