In this study, we aimed to identify how the learning activities elicited in a lesson study project contributed to self-perceived change in supervisors’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Lesson study is a method which combines both professional and educational development. During a lesson study project, teachers collaborate in a team and develop, teach, evaluate, and redesign a research lesson. During the 4-month lesson study project described here, four supervisors designed a protocol for research supervision meetings aimed at enhancing undergraduate students’ learning. During the project, they experimented with open questioning and giving positive feedback instead of giving instruction and explanations. A mixed-methods design was used in this study. Data on the supervisors’ learning activities and PCK were gathered using learner reports, video-recordings of meetings, and exit interviews. The analyses of these data showed that the lesson study project contributed to the development of the supervisors’ PCK on instructional strategies and student understanding. The learning activity that contributed most to these changes was reflecting on their own practice and that of their students.
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Using the past to orientate on the present and the future can be seen as one of history’s main contributions to educating future citizens of democratic societies. Because teachers often lack useful methods for pursuing this goal, this study explores three pedagogical approaches that may help them making connections between the past, the present and the future: working with longitudinal lines (LL), with enduring human issues (EHI) and with historical analogies (HA). The efficacy of these approaches was examined in three case studies conducted in two Dutch secondary schools with eighth- to tenth-grade students (N=135) and their teachers (N=4) as participants. Explorations took place within the boundaries of the existing history curriculum and in close collaboration with the teachers who participated because they felt a need to motivate their students by means of a pedagogy to make history more useful. Findings suggest that implementing the LL- and EHI-approaches in a traditional history curriculum with chronologically ordered topics is more complicated than implementing the HA-approach. The HA-approach appears to have more potential to encourage students to use historical knowledge in present-day contexts than the other two approaches. In terms of students’ appraisals of the relevance of history, the application of the EHI-approach showed positive effects.
Workshop summaryIn this workshop we work together with the participants towards concrete steps that educators could take to promote inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems. Nowadays, entrepreneurial ecosystems do not provide all entrepreneurs equal access to opportunities, resources, and support. Specifically, entrepreneurial ecosystems remain heavily male-dominated with women and other underrepresented groups facing challenges to access resources and grow their ventures due to a range of (institutional) barriers. This lack of inclusivity is problematic as it limits the release of untapped entrepreneurial potential necessary to maximize the societal and economic benefits of entrepreneurship. During this workshop we want to engage in discussions and propose actions to be undertaken by educators and HEI’s to foster the inclusivity of their institutional and regional entrepreneurial ecosystem in which they are embedded. By using the ‘inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem framework’, we want to raise awareness of this topic and share actionable ideas that participants can implement in their daily practices.
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Teachers have a crucial role in bringing about the extensive social changes that are needed in the building of a sustainable future. In the EduSTA project, we focus on sustainability competences of teachers. We strengthen the European dimension of teacher education via Digital Open Badges as means of performing, acknowledging, documenting, and transferring the competencies as micro-credentials. EduSTA starts by mapping the contextual possibilities and restrictions for transformative learning on sustainability and by operationalising skills. The development of competence-based learning modules and open digital badge-driven pathways will proceed hand in hand and will be realised as learning modules in the partnering Higher Education Institutes and badge applications open for all teachers in Europe.Societal Issue: Teachers’ capabilities to act as active facilitators of change in the ecological transition and to educate citizens and workforce to meet the future challenges is key to a profound transformation in the green transition.Teachers’ sustainability competences have been researched widely, but a gap remains between research and the teachers’ practise. There is a need to operationalise sustainability competences: to describe direct links with everyday tasks, such as curriculum development, pedagogical design, and assessment. This need calls for an urgent operationalisation of educators’ sustainability competences – to support the goals with sustainability actions and to transfer this understanding to their students.Benefit to society: EduSTA builds a community, “Academy of Educators for Sustainable Future”, and creates open digital badge-driven learning pathways for teachers’ sustainability competences supported by multimodal learning modules. The aim is to achieve close cooperation with training schools to actively engage in-service teachers.Our consortium is a catalyst for leading and empowering profound change in the present and for the future to educate teachers ready to meet the challenges and act as active change agents for sustainable future. Emphasizing teachers’ essential role as a part of the green transition also adds to the attractiveness of teachers’ work.
"Taste Europe on the Go!" is a cross-sectoral international project in which we include two universities of applied sciences from the Netherlands and Finland into the successful project of vocational business college and restaurant service college partners from Finland, Italy and Spain.The project aims at learning about entrepreneurship in an international context through setting up pop-up restaurants in the participating countries. Every six months, one of the participating countries welcomes other participants to host a pop-up restaurant together. In December 2019 it was BUas' turn. A total of 50 international students and staff members from different countries united their entrepreneurial and cooking skills to serve international dishes at the Belcrum Wintermarket (Breda) of 2019.Vocational education needs pedagogical innovations to increase student motivation to complete studies, graduate on time and gain lifelong learning skills so that their capability to get employed with up-to-date knowledge and skills be better. In this project we focus on learning entrepreneurial skills using an eLearning platform and strengthening key competences in Vocational Education Training (VET) curricula by learning entrepreneurship in new way.PartnersPerho Liiketalousopisto (Finland), Mercuria Kauppiaitten Kauppaoppilaitos (Finland), Col legi Badalonés (Spain), Istituto di Istruzione Superiore “De Amicis” (Italy), Estudis d’Hoteleria i Turisme CETT (Spain), IPSAR “Luigi Carnacina” (Italy), Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences (Finland) and Breda University of Applied Sciences
