With co-creation towards teacher education of the 21st century

Lue koko alkuperäinen blogiteksti suomeksi projektin kattohankkeen sivuilta.

The very first co-creation seminar of the Progressive teacher education -project was held on April 10th 2018. This event kickstarted the collaboration between project partners, who co-operatively formulated the central research and development questions and a shared vision for the project. Different partner universities, organizations, companies and the city of Helsinki were for the first time joined together around the important topics of 21st century skills, cutting edge pedagogics and innovative learning environments.

Throughout an intensive and creative brainstorming session, the core themes of the session shaped out to be time-management of individuals in the constant stream of stimuli over the internet as well as systems thinking and sense of self as part of a larger environment. Creative and critical formulation of questions as a central requirement in phenomenon-based projects was an important topic of discussion as well. How to narrow out the unessential in a world, where all the art and science is at your reach with the click of a button through the internet? How to perceive the scalable relation between oneself and the wider environment, such as nature, society and media? How can the teacher possibly find joy in the situation where the pupils are asking hard questions and challenging them to learn new things like some annoying “know-it-alls”?

“At least one positive experience”
The central outcome of the project was at the end of the session established as producing at least one, genuinely positive and engaging experience of a phenomenon-based project for the teacher students in a new kind of learning environment. The shared vision is to kickstart a conceptual change in the teacher student towards a mindset more in line with the new curricula and the technology intensive future of our planet. The project co-design started out with enthusiasm and the partners openly offered their own resources to aid the development, at the same time finding the project beneficial considering their own aims. The project now continues towards collecting a course material library and the next stage in co-design starting in August.