VOC II

For the VOC II course, I worked with Anna Pesonen-Smith and William O'Gorman to create a presentation and exercises based on Entrepreneurship in Vocational Education.

For the task, we created a Prezi presentation, which can be found here. It was a lot of work and it took all of us using our specific sets of skills to bring it together.

The feedback we got from the others was overwhelmingly positive, they found that the Prezi was something new, fresh an, importantly, different from the other tasks, which were involving blogs.

The tasks we set were done well and everyone was given feedback.

References:

1. Nevanperä, E. 2008. Toisen asteen opettajien yrittäjyysintentiot. Tutkimus kansainvälisen yrittäjyyskasvatuksen kontekstissa. Ammattikasvatuksen aikakauskirja 11 (1), 18-32:

http://www.okka-saatio.com/aikakauskirja/arkisto/2009-1/Ammatti09_Nevanpera18_32_2.pdf

2. Yrittäjyyskasvatuksen suuntaviivat. 2009. Helsinki: Opetusministeriö:
http://www.minedu.fi/export/sites/default/OPM/Julkaisut/2009/liitteet/opm07.pdf?lang=fi

3. Römer-Paakkanen, T. (toim.) 2011. Yrittäjyyden ituja. Näkökulmia opiskelijoiden yrittäjyyteen. Helsinki: Haaga-Helia: http://www.haaga-helia.fi/fi/palvelut-ja-yhteistyo/julkaisut/HH%20Yrittajyys_verkkoon.pdf/view

4. A European Commission report on Entrepreneurship in Vocational Education and Training from 2009: http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/files/smes/vocational/entr_voca_en.pdf

5. A report on Entrepreneurship Education in the Nordic Countries, from 2012: https://www.tem.fi/files/35613/Entrepreneurship_Education_in_Nordics_web.pdf

6. Practical models for entrepreneurship education: http://193.208.197.11/kasvuyrittajyyteen/opetuksenyrityspalat/ammattiopisto.html

7. A video about making a business plan:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN1wgKosS8A

8. A David Rae’s slideshare about entrepreneurial learning:

http://www.slideshare.net/ZoneGlyndwr/entrepreneurial-learning-david-rae

Global and Multicultural Activities, 9.2.14 

For our VOC II course, the group which has taken on the role of creating an online course on Global and Multicultural Activities, has issued the task of asking us to answer the following two questions:

1. What is meant by the word "culture"?

It goes without saying that this is an incredibly difficult question to answer. And yet, I said it.

From my own perspective, I ask myself, what the connotations are of that word? I made a mind map of what came to me regarding this issue. Here's what it looked like:

Now, it's pretty rough (using Paint to it's maximum capabilities), but some things become apparent in light of this exercise:

a) I place some importance on specifying the various art forms that I see as forming 'culture', which suggests that to me, art is significant in terms of defining culture.

b) The other thing which sticks out is the distinction between personal and national history. For me, one's culture is a combination of what has been going on historically (before one was even born) as a process that goes back hundreds or thousands of years, as well as being mixed up with key events and significant contributory factors on one's own life, such as education, religion, social class etc.

But what do the experts say? I turned to some of our great thinkers to pick out some interesting quotes:

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”  - Ray Bradbury

[here, I think the point is that culture is something that is living, within people, not any specific object]

"The crucial differences which distinguish human societies and human beings are not biological. They are cultural." - Ruth Benedict 

[I understand this to be saying that society is necessary in order to have culture. Without community, there can be none]

"Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers." - Simone Weil

[I'm honestly not really sure what Simone is getting at here]

So, in conclusion, looking for a distinction of what 'culture' is, is a fool's errand. One will easily find a hundred answers and all of them right or wrong, depending on your viewpoint. Is that they key? Should we be content to understand 'culture' as something potentially all-encompassing and ultimately devoid of meaning, lifted only on a shallow breeze of subjectivity? 

2. What is meant by the concept "cultural differences"?

Given the above meander on the meaning of the word 'culture', we're immediately back into the frying pan with this question.

To my mind, cultural differences come about when it is apparent that people are playing by different rules. We learn the rules of the world as we grow up. We come to interpret the world around us in certain ways, through a prism founded on the society we are raised in. Often, societies differ in the way they present reality and how to deal with it, which results in cultural differences.

What's interesting for me is how people deal with cultural differences. We are basically given two options each time we encounter conflict in our lives, no matter what the nature of the conflict is: Do I adjust myself to fit with the world (which can be represented in any form, from another person, to society at large) or do I set about adjusting the world to fit me?

I like to think that I embrace cultural differences. For me, it's all part of the rich tapestry of life that there exists different ways of seeing the world and interacting with it. If everybody was the same, that would be rather boring.

Here's a joke about cultural differences:

Two immigrants arrive in the United States and are discussing the difference between the Old Country and the U.S. One of them says that he's heard that people in the U.S. eat dogs, and if they're going to fit in, they better eat dogs as well. So they head to the nearest hot dog stand and order two 'dogs.' The first guy unwraps his, looks at it, and nervously looks at his friend.
"What part did you get?"

References:

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/culture

http://www.quoteland.com/topic/Culture-Quotes/513/

http://www.jokes.com/funny-nationality-jokes/7fh9xn/culture-shock

Continued...

Having been asked by the Global and Multicultural Activities team to assess my strengths in intercultural competences, I would say that they are the following:

- I am able to identify when there are cultural differences and appropriately understand their origins

- I am pro-different cultures, so I don't react negatively when I find myself in a multicultural environment

- I like to travel and do so as often as I can, which broadens my understanding of different cultures

Another question was how I could enhance my intercultural competence.

- I could read more books about history

- It would probably be good to return to my own home country more often, so that I don't lose touch with that culture too much


Internationalization

I have been asked to create a plan to enhance my own or my students' internationalization. I chose the internationalization of my students. Here goes!

To help matters along, the group have asked some pertinent questions:

1. What kind of skills you need for encountering diversity? Knowledge? Attitudes? 

The key skills that are needed are, I would suggest, patience, acceptance and adaptability.

2. How would you develop your intercultural competences 

In terms of how to develop those skills in the internationalization context, spending time with foreigners both at home and abroad in their own country seems to be the key. One way in which this can be achieves would be to make is a mandatory part of the curriculum, rather than something optional, though strongly advised.

The challenge there is the funding. We have had in place for some time the funding to send many students abroad, but it is by no means guaranteed for the future. To guarantee this, it would take a financial commitment from the school to back the project in the event that outside funding dried up.

3. What kind of international competences students will need for working in future’s society? 

I think students must be confident in their English skills (all round, including grammar, professional vocabulary, writing, reading, listening, formal language, conversational language) as this is something that becomes more and more necessary in the workplace of the future.

In addition to that, a willingness to adapt and accept foreign cultures is necessary. Students should not be afraid of new ideas, new ways of doing things and should be aware of the opportunity to improve that comes with shifting consciousness in the face of other cultures.

4. How could you support your students’ globalization process

The support can come through various methods. I can encourage them to go abroad, I can help them to find places, I can make moves towards securing funding for them to do that, I can offer support before and during the period abroad and I can encourage them to process the experience and pass on their feelings and suggestions to other students. 

Interview, 11.2.14

For my interview for the Global and Multicultural Activities group assignment in VOC II, I asked Anna Pesonen-Smith a series of questions about what it was like to study in India as a Finn. In the Hofstede Dimendion comparison, the key differences centred around equality and gender issues, so I focused on that:

1. Did you notice differences between Finland and India in terms of power distance between people?

Yes, I would first point out that according to the Hofstede Centre the percentage of India's power distance is as high as 71, whereas Finland's is 24. This means, and I observed the same, that there's a huge gap between the rich and the poor, the people in higher positions and lower positions and different castes.

I noticed this at my university, where I was calling my professors sirs (unlike in Finland) or more locally and comfortably with an ending -da. This refers to dada, as in big brother, in Bengali. Similarly older women can be called as didi, big sister for talking politely yet not being overtly formal. Sir can be also shri in India, this is more formal way.

In Kolkata lots of people live on the streets. The situation is not the same in Finland. In India the caste system is illegal by law but it's a living thing in people's everyday. I heard an example some time back that a doctor may not want to touch straight the skin of a person from a lower caste, therefore s/he would place fabric in between her/his own hand and the skin of a lower caste patient - to mention just one small example.

In work places every person has a specific task to do, however small it is. In principle a person in a higher position doesn't touch to the tasks of a lower position and the other way round. In Finland one person can take care of many different tasks more often than in India. This has to do with hierarchy and also the fact that in India there are so many people - it's hard to find everyone a thing to do.

2. What about the roles of men and women in society compared to Finland?

Basically men dominate the public sphere, whereas women dominate the domestic sphere. There are still, of course, exceptions to this.

I needed to internalise new rules of being in India as a woman that I hadn't needed to follow in Finland: if alone, don't be out very late (the darkness comes at 6pm, so after that slowly women disappear from the streets for their safety and comfort), preferably cover your shoulders and knees and dress up the local way, let taxi drivers and others on the streets to know that you're not alone by for example talking to the phone when travelling, asking someone local on the phone to give the taxi driver directions to follow to their place, expressing that you know the routes and the habits, and maybe most importantly just observe around and understand that you will not make a change in a minute, therefore respect the guide lines in local buses and metro, where there are separate compartments for ladies and elsewhere. With the experience of 14 years travelling and living a couple of years in the country, you do as fine as you could with a smooth respect and understanding. (Of course if having a proper chance sometime to express different opinions, use those chances.)

In Finland women are more free than in India but it's a false belief that women would be as free as men in Finland. Strong women in both countries can do a lot.

What's funny and combining thing between Finland and India concerning the role of women, is in both countries women started to work historically early. But this is because of farming in both countries, so actually working of women has to be measured from the time women started to work outside their homes, in the public sphere.

3. Or any other intercultural differences?

 Way of expressing for example anger in some formal offices is different in Finland and in India. In India it was normal that one needed to go to offices to shout for getting her/his things (for example visa extension or university certificate) done. Third time you go and start really demanding, and then it may work. After you and the person in the office have shouted to each other heads red for five minutes, there's silence and then you both agree and laugh, shake hands and wish all the best and if anything, let's be more in touch. Of course.

This doesn't quite go like this in Finland, where you might get angry but don't express that aloud so often.

Sometimes you notice that when for example asking for directions on the street or even at the airport, people don't like to say that they don't know the place you're asking. They would many times rather just show you some direction. So you should ask from three-four persons and count the average. In this kind of things people are more straight in Finland.

4. Has any of this impacted your experience of India?

At times I have found it tiresome to fight and demand things there (when it's about opening your own internet account with fifteen attachments to give about your stay, home and university, bothering some ten people with the matter), or at times be so alert, when in Finland it would all be so easy. Of course, it's always different to do things at your home or anywhere abroad. First I feared in India (in 2000), because the traffic seemed so chaotic and there were numeral chances to get killed each day. When getting over the fear, the love-hate relationship (that's mostly still love) with India was established and it was a long-term set-up. I love India, because it's so alive and there I feel so alive. I guess I'm then fine with the challenges in India, I know some would dislike them too much.

5. Did you receive any kind of tutoring for intercultural awareness issues when you moved to India?

Some official tutoring no. I have lived in India two times, first in 2000 for a short period of a couple of months and after that in 2007-2009 two years (otherwise have been travelling there all together maybe about a year, during 2004-2006 and 2010-2013) and those times just taught me slowly all that I know. It was more like advice from neighbours, contact person at work, later class mates... And then rest of the learning has come when moving around among the local.

6. Did your school take multicultural issues into account in its teaching?

I guess not very much, when I did my first degree of culture production in Turku 1998-2002, except we had courses on Swedish (in Sweden) and sami culture. Even later degrees not so much. In India (first MA) we studied other colonised countries' films and globalisation. In Finland (second MA) some of the studies were in English and in international contexts. I think most of my multicultural issues learning, anyway, has come through my own choices in studies and life.


Sustainable Development, 13.2.14

Here follows my task answers for the Sustainable Development course.

Firstly, I was asked to come up with my own definition of sustainable development, without regarding any references or anything, so just off the top of my head.

I would say that sustainable development involves exploring means of consumption that give the best chance of maintaining current practices.

Then, after watching one video and reading some text, I could refine my definition:

Sustainable development encapsulates other factors than ecological, which is what my definition rather narrowly centred on. It also includes a social and economic side and involves the ways in which those areas overlap.

Finally, I answered the questions put to me in the blog:

a.    Please explain briefly your own interest in Sustainable Development.

I would say that my own interest in sustainable development is rather tenuous. If anything, my level of apathy towards these issues might be something I’m uncomfortable about.

At best, there might be something going on at a fairly subconscious level.

I suppose, when I think about it, I try to not use the car if I don’t have to (sometimes), I try to buy products that I believe are not directly responsible for messing up the planet and I recycle paper and cardboard. When I lived in Scotland, I voted for the Green party. I don’t vote in Finland. And I’m a vegetarian, though whatever sustainable benefits that has are accidental.

b.    If you are from another culture than Finnish give a brief overview of the socio- political landscape of the country, resources and their constraints. What are the values and the attitudes of the local people towards sustainable development? Are there any concerns related to sustainable development long term?

I am from another country, but it’s been many years since I lived there. In Scotland, I remember there being a real lag in implementing things like recycling options with different types of bins and options for bottle and can returns. I don’t know if those things have caught up now. I think there’s still lots to be done in this area in Scotland, but I am just not sure what advancements have been made in recent years.

c.    How should one direct, govern and teach sustainable development in schools?

The situation in school is critical, I would say. How should it happen? With gusto! With imagination, enthusiasm, support, with a long view to making a real difference to the way people think about these things, so that children are raised with a holistic view of sustainability, so that it influences the way they think about everything.

d.    How does sustainable development link to your area of work or study? (Think of the three spheres of sustainability: economic, social and environmental) Please give some ideas of how you could combine or apply a sustainability perspective to your subject.

The subject that I primarily teach is in film studies; chiefly documentary, scriptwriting and directing performance.

In terms of economic sustainability, I guess I could speak to students about awareness of the economics of the film industry, so that they are aware of the costs of things and so on. I don’t really know.

The social side is easier. I can influence the types of material the students work with in documentary, both those documentaries that are watched in the class and those subjects which they choose to tackle. Looking at issues of poverty, gender equality, racism, etc. would help the students themselves to understand these issues better.

Likewise the social aspect can be influenced by the types of material they students look at and the types of subjects they tackle.

e.    What was especially interesting or even surprising for you in this material?

The thing that most piqued my interest in this subject was the concept of economic sustainability. I’m pretty naïve on the subject of economics generally, so I found that this is a big hole in my knowledge.

The best definition I found for this term was:

“Economic sustainability is the word used to pinpoint numerous strategies that make it conceivable to use accessible resources to their best advantage. The idea is to uphold the use of those resources in a way that is both skillful and responsible, and likely to deliver long-term benefits.” which I found here.

I plan to investigate further this idea and see what effect it can have on myself as a teacher.

Special Need Education, 16.3.14

The first part of the Special Needs Education task, writing a reply to the following email:

“Dear Eki,

I’m writing this letter because I’m starting to worry about my son’s future. At the moment he is a happy, 16 year old student on a special class, where he has studied since he started school. My son is autistic (communicating with him is difficult and his behaviour and speaking are often repetitive) and has always had problems in math. I think that part of the learning disability can be just because he is not interested I math and the teachers during the years have not always been qualified. His intelligence is anyway a bit above average and he is very talented in geography. Also his memory is extremely good. He has still a year to go before making decisions about the future, but I have some questions I would like to have answered, to calm my nerves:

1. Is it possible that he could continue in normal vocational education or upper secondary high school with an assistant? He has had one since he was three. What requirements there are in his case? Are there some other options if the normal vocational school is not a possibility?

2. What laws and standards there are concerning special needs in vocational education? What rights (f.ex. inclusion, special support) my son has as a student of a vocational school?

Daddy -71”

And my response:

 

Dear Daddy -71,

Thank you for your letter. It’s always good to receive questions from parents about their children and we do our best to provide the answers you are looking for.

In answer to your first question, yes it is possible that your son should be able to continue in vocational education and there are a number of avenues open to him in that area. There are courses which are entirely set up for special needs students and then there is the possibility to enroll in other courses with a personal study plan so as to overcome any specifically challenging subjects.

There are, as with all vocational education dreams, some limitations about exactly what subjects one can study and where, so it’s sensible to keep in mind the locations of those possibilities and see what your son is most interested in and where those places can be applied from.

For the second question, it is very much worth noting that everyone living in Finland legally has the right to education, regardless of mental or physical state. That your son has been able to lean on support thus far in his education should only go to underscore this fact and put you at ease. Nothing changes beyond any point and I hope and trust that you will always find people willing to help find solutions to the challenges you face.

The next step, I suggest, would be coming in for a meeting, with myself, your son and the careers councellor all present, so we can together weigh up the best options.

For further information, you can check out the following links:

http://www.ammatillinenerityisopetus.fi/

http://www.luovi.fi/

http://www.esteetonamis.fi/

I hope this response has proven useful and I look forward to hearing from you again in the near future.

All the best for now,

Christopher (Eki) Smith

For the second task, I interviewed one of my colleagues, Tuija Niinisalo, about what it's like to work with secial needs children, the day to day challenges and how she overcomes them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAFOr9PtQkU