A teacher toolkit for developing positive relationship with students

Posted on by Lais Oliveira Leite

When I came to Finland for my Master studies, I wanted to research about a topic that already intrigued me in Brazil when I was working as school psychologist in a rural school of Ceará.

I was interested in understanding how some teachers managed to have such a good relationship with their students, which impacted positively on the students’ learning; while other teachers struggled with it. By good relationship I mean when teachers and students are focused on teaching and learning the content while they are also relaxed. Spontaneous actions such as jokes, laughs, personal reflections, and life stories’ sharing color the interactions and are important parts of the education process. I could observe that the students were more focused on the content when they had such a good relationship with the teachers, than when they did not. I could also see how this impacted on the teachers’ satisfaction regarding their work from the way they talked about it.

Picture resource: Phys.org

In Brazil I had already started searching for answers. I asked one of the best teachers of the school: “what took you to develop such good relationships with this group of students?”. The answer was more complex than I thought. The teacher explained that once she had a fight with one of the students, and that fight impacted the whole classroom atmosphere. The relations were stuck and she felt anxious just with the thought of going to teach there. One day, she decided to change things and she organized a day just for playing video games with them. They had a lot of fun together and after that, things changed from water to wine. They became a class very united and cared for each other. Sometimes, the teacher said, it was even too much, because she was emotionally too involved with the students and when something happened to them (e.g. a family member passed away), she would feel the pain for all of them. And sometimes this was overwhelming.

The lesson I learned was that teachers are constantly learning from daily classroom situations about how to relate better with their students. I understood that developing relationships with students cannot be taken for granted and it takes a lot of time and effort. And it might need surprising actions that do not even have an education purpose per se, but are focused exclusively on the human relations of the group. And sometimes it might cost too much emotional involvement for the teacher. I wanted to find a balance on this equation and I decided to look for it in Finland during my Master program.

In Finland, I have visited some schools, participated in classes and facilitated workshops. Mostly I’ve observed classroom activities and interviewed teachers about their routines. By the end of my Master program, I developed with Havu-Nuutinen and Go the exploratory framework Teachers learn by interacting that attempts to represent how teachers constantly learn how to build positive interactions with their students. According to the developed framework,

1. Teachers need to be motivated to learn about supporting their students’ growth;

2. They also need self-efficacy beliefs to overcome the challenges they will face when learning on how to support the individual learning paths of their students.

3. Both their motivation and efficacy beliefs activate a broad range of learning strategies. “Everyday practices of providing emotional support to pupils, such as (1) showing sensitivity, (2) building a positive climate, and (3) taking the pupils’ perspective into account were the most important actions reported by the participants.” (Leite et al., 2020). First, showing sensitivity means to be attentive to pupils’ academic and socio-emotional levels of functioning and actively respond to them. Second, building positive climate is done through horizontal conversations, trust, and life history sharing. Third, actively promoting dialogues and seeking feedback are powerful strategies to account for students’ perspectives.

4. Surprisingly, the study also revealed that teachers’ “learning processes support their interactions with pupils, but do not radically alter their interactions over time, because these interactions are actually grounded in their identity as a teacher and as a person” (Leite et al., 2020). Therefore, how teachers see themselves as responsible for promoting their students’ growth and how much engaged they are in learning about how they can do it, ultimately create authentic interactions between teachers and students that develops into positive and good relationships.

By the end of my Master, this framework represented a sort of teacher toolkit comprising “transferable skills that support a deep pedagogical understanding of the learner and his/her individual learning process.” (Leite et al., 2020). However, it is important to consider that “engaging and sustaining positive relationships in an everyday manner can be supported not only by personal factors, but structural factors as well. ” (Leite et al., 2020). Such structural factors in Finland are well developed and available for school teachers here. The challenge is to promote change at organizational level in education systems that, sometimes, burden teachers’ work instead of supporting it.

If you want to know more about Finnish Education system, we tailor education workshops to your needs and interests. Contact us: lais@eduix.it (+358 40 1246931).

Reference

Leite, L. O., Go, W., & Havu-Nuutinen, S. (2020). Exploring the Learning Process of Experienced Teachers Focused on Building Positive Interactions with Pupils. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 1-15.

Developing museums’ resilience by digitizing archives and operations

Posted on by Lais Oliveira Leite

Institutions that store and protect cultural heritage, such as museums and archives, are vital resources for mental health, well-being, social cohesion, and cultural learning. Today, more than ever, the importance of culture and creativity for society is clear. During the Covid-19, those with access to the Internet have constantly resorted to online cultural production provided by institutions and private initiatives. Who, during the past months, has not watched a live session with their favourite singers, read an e-book temporarily available during the months of lockdown, or visited a museum “walking” through its digital corridors in a 360-degree view?

Unfortunately, the lockdown measures over this year and the impossibility of physical visiting have caused massive loss of revenue for cultural institutions such as museums and archives. In addition, the digital gap due to lack of Internet accessibility in many regions around the world have increased largely and strongly affected those institutions that cannot resort to such resources, especially the smaller and private initiatives in small cities or rural areas.  

In order to tackle these major challenges, museums and archives must urgently assess their needs to survive bankruptcy, digitize their operations for remote work, adopt a sustainable business model by partnering with other social players, and rethink new ways of relating with the public.

The positive lesson learned, according to the UNESCO report about how museums are dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, is that many institutions around the world have shown strong resilience in adapting to the social isolation measures and have adopted long-term reforms. Among the actions taken, using digital environments through virtual visits and the use of social networks have been the most popular ways of museums trying to maintain contact with their audience and generating financial resources. However, such initiatives depend on the region’s access to Internet connectivity, which is not the case for many countries, especially in Africa.

“In this respect, the implementation of a more balanced digital policy requires an overall reflection, focusing on the digitisation of collections, an up-to-date inventory of collections, minimum IT infrastructure, sufficiently stable Internet access and adequate staff skills.” (UNESCO, 2020, p.18)

If your institution is looking for ways to digitize your archives and museum collections, contact us to learn more about Collecte, our tool for storing and preserving history in all its richness.

Collecte is a modular storage platform for event- and phenomenon-based objects. It offers entry forms for different object types, such as archive, artefact, artwork, audio-visual, and photos. It is mobile-friendly and provides a powerful search mechanism for finding stored objects as well as mass manipulation of entered data. The one cloud-based installation is done in a few hours and enables agile development and maintenance. In addition, our competitive pricing is based on an annual fee, supporting your organization growth without changing its value.

Contact us for helping you in mapping out your short- and long-term goals to increase your institution’s efficiency by digitizing your archives and operations.

Scaling up our digital ecosystem in Namibia …

Posted on by Lais Oliveira Leite

… The COVID-19 pandemic, as well as digitalization in general, are putting pressure on the schools’ curricula and education, and it is challenging for them to support the digital leaps in the society.

The digital transformation in schools requires constant and close support, and to be beneficial, local school processes and practices have to be understood and taken into account.

To achieve sustainable solutions, the local edTech solutions and ecosystem supporting them have to be available, and this kind of local ecosystems should be possible to be set and scaled up agilely.

Read more about it in the Glowdom blog! 

When I learned that hard work and free time are not mutually exclusive

Posted on by Lais Oliveira Leite

When I arrived in Finland in 2016 to start my Master degree in Education, I was stressed. I had to carry luggage everywhere, buy and arrange furniture, organize University papers, attend meetings with supervisors… I also had to deal with the fact that I was in a new place, far away from home, my family and friends. But I was where I wanted to be and I was familiar with stress.

Eventually I started to focus on integrating myself in the University life. I had over 30 ECTS to complete and I was excited and ready to work “full-on”, get stressed by deadlines, reduce my social life and increase my Education expertise. After all, I didn’t come to Finland to make friends, I came to study and get a Master diploma. Well, things happened in a different way.

I saw myself, in the middle of the first semester, with “too much” free time. I wasn’t sure how it happened, because I was attending all the classes I enrolled, studying the materials, doing my assignments, and making research for my thesis. And still I was getting to know the international community, making friends, attending social events (sometimes even organizing them through the ESN group). And I still had free time … How?! By that time, I had a slight disturbing feeling of guilty that I shouldn’t have “so much” free time, because I was supposed to be using all my time to study hard – even though I was!

Well, that’s what happened: Finnish Universities have Bachelor and Master programs in a particular way.

  • One of my first surprises was that there was an obligatory course dedicated only to adapting to the University life. Meaning, I would get actual credits and reserved time to learn how to effectively use the University resources (libraries, study rooms, computer software, enrolling for courses etc.) and how to manage my own time for studies. Kind of learning how to learn in an University setting. From where I come, in Brazil, this is taken for granted – and if you don’t know it yet, catch up! all-by-yourself-in-your-short-free-time-after-(or-during)-an-exhausting-day-full-of-classes-from-9h-to-17h.
  • Some of the courses we have in a semester start only by the middle of the semester, while others start in the beginning. The courses have varied length of duration. Most of them also don’t have a fixed schedule. Meaning, in a week I might have a class from the Intercultural Communication course on Monday at 9h, and in the following week it will happen on Thursday at 12h, probably in a different place. I have to say that this was strange in the beginning, but not hard to adapt. I just needed to keep my schedule organized.
  • A considerable time of the courses is dedicated to self-study, when students have a significant amount of reserved time to read and do assignments (and this is counted as time of the course). The other side of this is that there was not a fixed schedule during the whole semester in which I had to go to a classroom with a teacher speaking and the students listening (I purposefully wrote speaking and listening, instead of teaching and learning). Of course this happened, but it was not every day, every week at a fixed schedule. It happened from time to time.
  • The fact that the courses reserved time for self-study didn’t mean I was studying alone only. Many courses involved structured study groups (with obligatory meeting memos, pre- and post-meeting tasks, group report on the findings etc.) as the main method of learning and passing the course. Actually, many teachers offered different ways of evaluation, such as a final individual exam, or a study group report, or submitting 3 short essays about different topics etc.
  • For many courses, we wouldn’t get a final grade (0-5), but rather a simple Pass or Fail. And this relieved so much unnecessary stress related to getting a good grade. It didn’t mean I would be lazy and do an unqualified work for the course. After all, it was my learning, my competences, and my expertise that was being developed for my future career. I absolutely had no interest in making an unqualified work. But the effort I would put on the work, this time more than ever in my study life, was not directed to get a grade, but authentically directed to develop a professional skill. In addition, if you fail a course (for different reasons), it will not appear in your academic record and final diploma. How relieving is when we can fail and this will not mark our future performance.
  • When there was a face-to-face meeting in the course, there was an actual effort by most of the lecturers to make the most of that social encounter. For instance, my Quantitative Methods course teachers used Flipped Classroom methodology to teach SPSS. We had to watch and read some materials before the classroom time, and in the classroom we would engage in data analysis and actual exercises with the help of the teacher. Seminar presentations, dynamic activities for reflections and, of course, online education resources (e.g. teachers here love kahoot) among other inter-active methods.
  • Finally, there is one word that best describe the relationship between teachers (lecturers, professors, researchers) and students: friendly. I don’t mean that my teachers were my friends, but there was a friendly atmosphere between teachers and students. Teachers were flexible, understanding, open to talk and to consider case-by-case situations.

Of course many circumstances of my descriptions can vary in different departments of the same University. In addition, managing my own time to learn was not new for me, on the contrary, I was on my territory. However, I’ve seen many international colleagues struggling with the self-study, autonomous Finnish way of learning. They would come from similar education systems as mine in Brazil, with strict schedule, full day of classes (at the same time and place, on a weekly basis), and teachers putting a lot of pressure on deadlines and grades. In other words, my friends were not used to manage their own study pace autonomously. And I will write a post about that later.

But this was my experience. And what I realized was that this type of study program, in which the students get credits and have reserved time to learn how to learn and make the best of University resources, to choose what to study, when, by which methods, choosing how I would be evaluated, with not excessive time in a classroom; all culminated in the fact that I was focused and efficient because I was learning what I chose to learn in my time and pace. And this increased my learning performance, resulting in finishing my studies fast and having free time.

Patvinsuo National Park, Finland. Photo by Piotr Bartczak.

Although I had to keep checking on myself that I have done everything I was supposed to do, I finally started to enjoy my free time. And that was liberating.

If you want to know more about Finnish Education system, we tailor education workshops to your needs and interests. Contact us: lais@eduix.it (+358 40 1246931).

eExams – today

Posted on by Lais Oliveira Leite

By Johanna Kiviranta

“We can’t organize the course exam as a mass event with everyone in the classroom. The exam will be organized online. How that happens, well, to me that might be an even bigger mystery than to you. I will get back to this, when we have come up with a solution.” 

This is a direct quote from my professor in one of my university courses at the beginning of the semester. This is just one course that has been monstrously affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Multiply this by the amount of courses and the amount of education institutions around the globe, and we can say that the education sector is facing huge challenges and a pressing need for re-organization due to the current crisis. 

I have been thinking about eExams since the beginning of the semester. How would we organize them in a simple manner – and now, not after years of product development? One idea came to mind. Our product, Formjack. If this is the first time you hear about it: simply put, Formjack is a user-friendly and secure software for form-based transactions, especially created for public sector. Formjack can be used, for instance, to create questionnaires, handle registrations – and organize eExams. 

How would it be done, in all simplicity?

  1. Create the exam in Formjack
    1. When you have the questions ready, creating the exam in the system is fast and easy. 
    2. The system supports several question types, such as essay format and multiple choice questions.
    3. Assignments requiring the use of excel or drawing formulas by hand can be answered through attachments in the form.
    4. Info-texts are easily added to the form to guide the student forward in the exam. 
  2. Limit the forms publicity time: Open it up at the beginning of the exam, and close it when the exam ends. 
    1. Add the link to the form to a platform where the students know to look for it. They can open the form in the moment of its publication. 
  3. Create course-specific authentication for the students to use to open the form. 
  4. Students submit their answers.
    1. All submissions are saved in one view – it’s easy to access the submissions for grading.
    2. The submissions can be downloaded in PDF-format if needed. 
  5. Grade the submission in Formjack
    1. You can use hidden fields in the form – they are not visible for the student, but will become active for the one assessing the submissions. The grade can be added to this field. 
    2. If you so choose, you can send the assessment and any comments to the student’s email from the software. 
    3. If you have used the hidden field for grading, you can import all the grades from the programme to, for instance, excel, and then take them to other systems if needed. 

This is just one idea on how Formjack can be used in education processes – already today. More you find in our Services for Schools.

Would it work for you?

Those painful 10 seconds of silence waiting for a reply

Posted on by Lais Oliveira Leite

If you are a teacher or educator of any sort that have already organized a virtual lecture, and at some point of your presentation you wanted to engage your audience by asking a question, you know what I am talking about.

It takes about 5-15 seconds for someone to find the mic icon, turn it on, and speak up. But these seconds are enough time for you to wander around all your insecurities about teaching in a virtual setting. It goes more or less like this: “OMG, nobody is paying attention to what I am saying and I am speaking alone here” – since in many situations the video camera is off and you cannot actually see what your audience is doing.

https://schools.eduix.fi/formjack/lomakkeet/119/lomakkeet.html

If you are interested, contact lais@eduix.it to discuss more about it.

  • Man hands holding global network and data customer connection on nature background.

Schools are reopening – now what?

Posted on by Lais Oliveira Leite

Now that a new academic year/semester is about to start, the hot topic of the past weeks has been how to proceed with the reopening of schools amid the Covid-19 pandemic, taking into consideration the implications of it for the population health and education. Among teachers, parents, school leaders, and academic researchers there seems to coexist opposite, but also complementary, opinions.

So far, children who attend kindergarten and initial years of primary education seem to be the safest cohort of pupils to come back to school routines thanks to the shared evidence that the vast majority of them do not suffer from hard symptoms due to the virus. Additionally, parents with younger children might need a faster return of them to school activities, so parents can have better conditions to work. However, although younger children are safer to be exposed to physical and face-to-face socialization, they can also be potential carriers and spread the virus among family members, affecting mostly the ones who are in the risk groups (e.g. grandparents who take care of them).

Parallel to that, there is a huge discussion if private schools should be able to return to the routine activities faster and before the public schools. This issue arises from the fact that many private institutions have the urgent need to return the school activities due to the payment of school fees, teachers salaries etc. Also, private institutions might have better conditions to create a safe infrastructure that guarantees social isolation and hygiene measures. However, the reopening of private schools – while the public ones are still closed – will most probably increase the social and educational gap between the ones who can afford a private education and the others who attend public schools. Among interesting developments on this matter, we have identified some government initiatives in allowing only the simultaneous reopening of public and private schools, so the educational gap (and consequently the social disparity) will not increase for the time being.

Meanwhile, remote learning should vastly continue in a variety of formats, not only dependent on Internet connectivity, but using different resources that most of households have, such as TV, radio, and mobile phone features (e.g. SMS) . Such mass education programs can be complemented and personalized according to the schools, grades, and individual pupils’ needs and resources. In addition, education leaders should be investing time on continuous professional development of teachers and school staff, so they will be ready to integrate new practices and edtech solutions to the “new normal” schooling system that seems to be in developmental progress worldwide – although no one actually knows how this “new normal” will look like, also considering that it will depend on second/third waves of the virus infections, successful integrations of new technology in education processes etc.

In any case, it is of ultimate relevance that systematic data collection at school level and beyond – municipal, regional and national levels – is carried out in order to base robust and long-term effective decisions. Opinions of teachers and families (especially parents) on what they believe will be the impact of re-opening schools and if they think it will be safe but also effective to promote learning are a few ideas on how to understand the people’s feelings and needs. If your school is looking for a ready- and easy-to-use digital tool for systematic data collection, access our school services page and request our data collection and management tool for free.

Webinar Series: Glowdom and Eduix leveraging the digital ecosystem for education in Namibia

Posted on by Lais Oliveira Leite

Glowdom and Eduix have joined forces to provide a national-grade education digitalisation ecosystem for Namibia. Eduix is the leading education software ecosystem in Finland. Glowdom has in-depth knowledge about the opportunities in Namibia and a hands-on experience on delivering local solutions. Our goal is to completely and rapidly change the way school and student management and related services are done in the country.

In order to share our experience with all our contributors and partners (that is, you!), we decided to organize a webinar series to share what we have learned and connect with relevant stakeholders to join efforts in bringing Namibia education to the next level.

The webinars will count on the participation of experts in the edutech field from Finland and Namibia. After the speakers present their ideas, we have Q&A sessions with the audience. This webinar series include the following themes:

WEBINAR 1. Digitizing education management in emerging markets 

In our first episode, Lais Oliveira Leite (education consultant, Eduix) briefly presented what is digitization of education management and a roadmap on how to implement it. Next, Rami Heinisuo (Eduix CEO & Founder) reported his views on enforced remote education in Finland during the Covid-19 pandemic and how digitized education management supported this process. Finally, Sebulon David (Glowdom CEO & Founder) shared his experiences on leveraging education in Namibia by digitizing education management, approaching both successes and challenges along the way.

Watch the recording of the episode 1 here on Youtube.

WEBINAR 2. Digitizing the teaching practice amid the Covid-19 pandemic in Namibia

In our second episode, Lais Oliveira Leite (education consultant, Eduix) presents different models to understand the integration of technology in education, taking into account the human and teacher perspectives within this process. Next, Iina Shivute (program manager, Glowdom) discusses challenges and possibilities of digitizing education amid pandemic from her perspective as a software educator. Tugela Sakarias (Teacher in the De Duine High School, Namibia) presents his perspectives as a change agent teacher about the successes and challenges on adopting remote education amid the pandemic

Watch the recording of the episode 2 here on Youtube.

WEBINAR 3. Education in the world 4.0: bridging the gap between education and the market

In our third episode, Pauliina Halme (Partner Director, Eduix) presents a case example of how Eduix has started to build a new age system around skills and competences. Next, Hasekiel Johannes (Head of Innovation, NUST)) presents how private-public, education centers-enterprises collaborations can boost local/regional/national development from his experiences in Namibia. Finally, Altti Lagstedt (Senior Lecturer, Haaga-Helia UAS) discusses different aspects of learning analytics in supporting student academic progress.SHOW LESS

Watch the recording of the episode 3 here on Youtube.

Webinars on-demand

Our most important goal is to share stories and connect with you. Therefore, we are very open to hear your suggestions of what kind of webinars you would like us to organize, who are the people you think we should invite and how we can make this experience more relevant to you.

Suggest your webinar ideas here!

How schools become change agents in the community by implementing edutech solutions

Posted on by Lais Oliveira Leite

The education sector has been one of the most affected amid Covid-19 pandemic, with over 1.5 billion students around the world experiencing significant interruption in their learning routine (UNESCO). School closure, and more recently reopening, has posed new demands for rethinking the school system, such as increasing the role of online pedagogical tools, reforming the curriculum to adjust to the “new normal”, and dropping teaching practices that cannot be integrated to a hybrid format of education, among others.

Continue reading “How schools become change agents in the community by implementing edutech solutions”