Vocational Teacher Training Beyond the Curricula

Vocational Teacher Training beyond the Curricula Studies Edited by: Orchidea Juhász Miskolci Egyetemi Kiadó 2020 This volume was supported by the project entitled Cooperative Training and Educational Innovation in Vocational Teacher Train- ing in Eastern Hungary (KOSZT) EFOP-3.5.2-17-2017-00001. The project was supported by the European Union, and was co-fi- nanced by the European Social Fund. Edited by: Orchidea Juhász Revised by: Robin L. Nagano, Csaba Fazekas Published by: Miskolci Egyetemi Kiadó ISBN 978-615-5626-61-6 Foreword The world around us is changing, new generations are bringing change, and the changes are bringing new challenges to professionals in public education, higher education, and specifically in teacher training. All of the studies published in this volume Vocational Teacher Training beyond the Curricula address these changes and challenges: our fast-paced world, digitalization, Generation Z, demotivation, aggression, stress, sexuality, the pandemic… The questions that our authors raise, of course, do not touch upon all the problems, yet with their broad and varied focuses they invite us to think together. Can a university be considered a school? Does a university lecturer do pedagogical work? Can higher education be made more personal? Is it important for the instructor to know his/her students? Why is it important to extend the methodological rep- ertoire in higher education as well? How can young people from Generation Z be effectively motivated and taught? To what extent and in what forms are aggression and stress present in schools? Why is it important to have a special approach to students with socio-cultural disadvantages? Does teacher training have a responsibility for raising the social awareness of future teachers and vocational teachers, in initiating meaningful thinking and discourse on social is- sues? Why is it essential to develop professional self-knowledge in teacher training? Why can sex education play a prominent role in training not only healthcare teachers but also teachers of economics or engineering? And what are Iron Man, Forrest Gump, and Doctor Strange doing in this volume? I truly hope I have managed to raise your interest enough that you decide to look for answers to the above-mentioned questions in this volume. Orchidea Juhász I had already completed the Foreword when my eyes ran through the names of the authors teaching in various faculties (Humanities, Healthcare, Engineering, and Economics) and one more thought occurred to me, which I would like to share with you, the reader. I have been working in teacher training for 20 years, and I have always considered it to be a very specific and specialized sector of our university, where theoretical and practical training is intertwined in a co- herent way (so much so that if this were not the case, we would not be able to provide our students with relevant knowledge). The training of vocational teachers adds yet another component to this combination of elements: it links university education to reality not only through its living relationship with — 3 — Vocational Teacher Training beyond the Curricula educational institutions, but also through its organic intertwining with other professional institutions. This necessarily shifts university education away from its theoretical, abstract nature, keeping it in dynamic motion, basically forc- ing it to constantly react to practice and the outside world, to change and to focus on competence development. As my colleague Anetta Ádám aptly put it: vocational teacher training practically plants higher education into a living fabric. Orchidea Juhász — 4 — Not on the Secondary-school Level… Questions of Didactics in Vocational Teacher Training Anetta Ádám Keywords: high education, expansion, didactics Are universities schools, and are lecturers teachers? This is an important question if we wish to do something about our transformed higher education and also about our own altered roles as educators. Although a university is not a school, there is no doubt that it has become somewhat school-like during the last two or three decades. The expansion of higher education has transformed the role and function of universities radically.1 If the function and the charac- teristics of a given institutional level changes, students also change within it, which is responsible for the change of the role and tasks of the lecturer. Higher education pedagogy or higher education didactics: these are strange and rare terms. As lecturers teaching in higher education, we all feel the need for this to some extent, yet when examining the relevant literature, apart from one or two fashionable, and at the same time new, directions (e-learning, distance learning), we rarely find any relevant information.2 In this study, we will deal with learning, the learning process, and also its support: education – in a higher education context. Why is this an important issue? If our students don’t know things, if they perform poorly, if they don’t study on a regular basis, can we hon- estly claim that we have taught them well? But we can look at the same question from another point of view as well: is there a set of methodological tools that we can use to deal more effectively with disadvantages that appear in higher education? In addition to systemic and structural changes, we believe that there is a need for changes in content, curriculum, and teaching methodology. The methodology which is currently being unsuccessfully applied is not suitable for the education of the new student population, and it is especially not suitable for helping underachievers. It is indisputable that we must take steps to tackle this 1 HRUBOS, Ildikó, A felsőoktatás dilemmái a tömegessé válás korszakában, Educatio füzetek 224, (Budapest: Oktatáskutató Intézet, 1999); BARAKONYI, Károly, Rendszerváltás a felsőoktatásban, (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2004). 2 SÁRDI, Csilla, A felsőoktatás-pedagógia kihívásai a 21. században, (Budapest: Eötvös József Könyvkiadó, 2012). — 5 — Vocational Teacher Training beyond the Curricula problem. University education before the expansion used to be able to fare well without any special methodological apparatus. Lecturers were primarily scien- tists who, in addition to their research work, shared the results of their science with their students. Since the Middle Ages, teaching in universities typically meant knowledge transfer. The students, who had good preliminary knowledge and adequate motivation, struggled to obtain knowledge if the lecturer did not explain the subject as appropriately as possible. The success of learning de- pended on the students. And because they were sensible and well-motivated, they did their best to learn and to pass the exam successfully. Well-motivated students learn for knowledge itself. And the learning process was regulated by the output; the exam. How do we relate to learning and teaching today? Our knowledge regarding the learning process is also changing, but so far higher education seems not have been forced to acknowledge this. We use ra- ther conservative ways of teaching, century-old methodological procedures,3 if we use didactic techniques at all. Our focus is learning, so it is worth looking a little bit at what kind of learning philosophy is conveyed by the traditional lecture-based methodology of higher education and what we think about learning today.4 At the beginning of institutional learning, when the first schools were established in ancient times, and later in the Middle Ages, it was basically assumed that learning was nothing but cramming, engraving information from a book or teacher into our brains. It was the teacher's job to present the knowledge to his/her student in an under- standable (audible) way. Teaching meant nothing but the transfer of knowledge. The most important methods used were presentation and explana- tion. Sensualism brought about a change; Comenius pointed out that our senses play an extremely important role in learning. They can help make the process of knowledge acquisition “multi-channeled”. With the advent of illustration, teaching became more effective and slightly more complicated didactically, but the basic roles remained unchanged. The teacher presents, the student takes it in, even if this reception is done through different channels, with several means of assistance. Perhaps we can recognize these learning theories in higher education today as well… The 20th century brought an enormous change in our concepts concerning learning. Research on human thinking also brought a number of new, 3 SÁRDI, A felsőoktatás-pedagógia kihívásai, op.cit. 4 NAHALKA, István, Hogyan alakul ki a tudás a gyerekekben? (Budapest: Nemzedékek Tudása Tan- könyvkiadó, 2003). — 6 — Questions of Didactics in Vocational Teacher Training revelatory discoveries on this topic. We gained new ideas about obtaining and acquiring knowledge. At the moment constructivism is generally accepted as an approach towards learning. According to this approach, learning is an active process, and knowledge is created as a result of internal construction pro- cesses, a kind of internal building. Certain cognitive structures are born with us, and during the learning process the incoming new information becomes con- nected to them, evolving during the process. The learners thus adapt and link information to their existing schemas, thus creating a new, specifically individual construction. Consequently, each knowledge and learning process is unique and individual. The role of the teacher is to help this construction, to aid the process itself.5 According to the constructivist view, learning is not a passive but an active pursuit, in which the affective, volitional factor is of importance. Knowledge is the result of an internal, constructive process in which new information constantly seeks its place, modifying existing constructions. The aim of learning is to adapt to the environment, to acquire knowledge that can be used and transformed. It is clear, therefore, that if we want to adapt to modern theories of learning and teaching in higher education as well, a significant change in approach and methodology is required.

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