The School of Vocational Teacher Education
Our key objective for the year was to implement vocational education and university of applied sciences education through diverse learning environments. Important themes included the challenges that teaching staff, supervisors and management as well as representatives of the working life are facing amidst the changing vocational pedagogy.
We realised our goal concerning diverse learning environments by allowing our teacher students to practice teaching in classrooms, workshops, genuine workplaces and by applying digital methods. We also focused on guidance by having the students practice both personal guidance, group guidance and guidance of students needing special support. During the year, 267 teachers, 34 special-needs teachers and 19 student counsellors graduated from our degree programmes.
Vocational teacher gradutes
We invested in high-quality research, development and innovation activities that focus on pedagogy concerning higher education institutions and the working life and, in particular, the related educationalisation and smooth transfers of students from vocational education to higher education. During the year, we managed 15 research and development projects and produced 78 publications. We productised competence generated in teacher education and the RDI activities into continuing education activities. Continuing education was funded by the income from commercial implementations and funding from the Finnish National Agency for Education. We reached the set turnover objective.
We continued exporting teacher education. The successful cooperation with the Tshwane University of Technology in South Africa continued and 23 teachers graduated from our degree programme there. We received extremely positive feedback on the quality of education and on how it is organised. A new export project in Uruguay was also started with EduExcellence Ltd. and Valkeakoski Vocational College.
Promoting a sense of community was one of our focus areas in our unit during the year. We agreed on common procedures for face-to-face meetings. Personnel competence was developed by implementing job rotation and emphasising digital competence. The feedback we received from the work atmosphere survey conducted in the autumn in our unit was extremely positive. With regard to quality management, we agreed to prepare quality documents on our commercial activities and RDI projects and to systematically monitor quality.
The teacher education council had an important role in the development of our operations. The chairperson of the council was Tiina Immonen, president of Mercuria Business College.
Haaga-Helia started a training programme for education personnel on becoming a coaching supervisor. The programme was implemented in cooperation with Business Coaching Institute and is a development programme in a process form. This means that each participant receives support in finding their own way to apply a coaching approach in their work. At the same time, they are guided to apply methods which could help them support their employees as professionals and individuals. The framework and core contents of the development programme are based on the core skills of coaching defined by International Coach Federation (ICF). The target group of the education is the supervisors of institutes of vocational basic education and vocational adult education.
The TuTu project carried out in 2018 examined the role emotions play in a learning setting and the development of emotional competence in the context of higher education. The study targeted students in the three Universities of Applied Sciences in the greater Helsinki region (3UAS). The data highlighted the importance of networks, support, feedback from peers and teachers as well as teachers’ pedagogical skills. The results were collected in a publication at the end of 2018. TuTu was a joint project of Haaga-Helia, Laurea University of Applied Sciences and Metropolia University of Applied Sciences funded by the Wihuri Foundation.
The 2016 education agreement with the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) in Pretoria, South Africa, continued to be successful. In June, 23 teachers trained by Haaga-Helia graduated from the training programme in Pretoria after the approximately ten-month teacher training period. Towards the end of 2018, the fifth group started their teacher training studies in Pretoria. Thirty-five teachers is completing 60 credits in accordance with the vocational teacher education curriculum in Pretoria. The cooperation between Haaga-Helia and the universities in Pretoria has been on-going for several years and will continue in the coming years as well.
