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| Jarkko Lampiselkä's presentation on "How to Teach Chemistry" White boards were used extensively in interaction. |
My first day as a Fulbright Teacher at the University of Helsinki.
On my first day as a Fulbright Teacher at the University of Helsinki, I met my advisor Docent Kalle Juuti. He picked me up from the front entrance to the building and we chatted for an hour in the cafeteria. I explained my “wish-list” what I want to experience while staying in Finland. Later we moved to his office and he started emailing to his colleagues about my desire to learn everything about Finnish Education system. One response from a colleague was immediate and soon I was sitting in a classroom of Jarkko Lampiselkä, who is a professor of Teacher Education
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| Student presentations |
That word didactics is hardly ever used in English language in US. I had to use a dictionary to understand the meaning of it. According to Wikipedia “Didactics finds a response to the question of what a good teaching is. The subject of didactics is teaching, not teaching or learning. Descriptive didactics is a study of the prevailing circumstances and their effects in teaching. Normative didactics, on the other hand, leads to the theory of instruction in teaching design, implementation and evaluation.
Simplified didactics means learning from teaching, while pedagogy means learning from education.”
WOW, how do I make a sense of this? I hope by sitting through professor Lampiselkä's lectures, the meaning will be clear. So, I sat for two hours in his teacher education class. What an eye-opening experience. All the students in this class will be future chemistry teachers. According to Lampiselkä, students, who are preservice teachers, had lectures on pedagogy a semester before. This spring semester they put their knowledge in action. Today’s task was to create a lesson plan to measure the skills that students had learned previously.
Here are some notes I made during the session.
Teacher said, good morning. He asked me to introduced myself.
The future teachers prepared their own lessons in chemistry.
”Opetustiedon mittaaminen”. This title was projected on the board. The direct translation is "Measurement of Educational Information"
Students divided into small groups. The task was to prepared lessons on how to measure learning. The class lasted for 1.30 hrs. The teachers eagerly discussed and brain stormed ideas.
First, they picked up books from the book self and googled information. They had 30-45 minutes to prepare a lesson plan and then 15 minutes to present the lecture to the class, followed by discussions.
I sat with 4 female students and follow their discussions.
There were 10 students in the class and they were divided into three groups; 4,3, and 3
The group I followed decided to give a chemistry problem to future high school students. In the assignment, the students have to prepare a medical nasal spray solution to clear allergies. “Students need to prepare a 0.2 molar salt solution of sodium chloride, describe how to do it, list what materials are needed, and how to use them and describe the calculations".
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Student group giving a presentation.
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This lesson was planned for high school first year chemistry students. It needed to included analysis, knowledge comprehension, and how to apply known knowledge to new situations. This is all the information that will be given to students.
A second group gave presentations:” How do you separate sand from salt”? This problem requires basic cognitive skills. It was designed as a Junior High level open ended problem, and a biological problem.
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| The third group used a computer and prepared a Power Point Presentation. This slide was projected on the board. |
