Week 10 ( Mon 19th March - Sun 25th March)

Professional blog

This week we had our first education class and all of the ERASMUS students, including three Danish students that we had never met before were in the class.  Our new teacher Peter was relaxed and promoted an open learning environment where we felt at ease to introduce ourselves and ask any questions.  It is now very apparent that the University of Zealand teachers all promote this informal, relaxed and open learning environment.  I assume that the schools here would also follow this ethos.  I like learning here as I feel totally at ease with the teachers and can easily express my opinions or ideas to the rest of my class, without the fear of saying something wrong or naïve.  The teachers take such an interest in what you have to say and like to ask you questions and take notes on what you have to share.  Furthermore, I don’t feel like there is a hierarchy between the teachers and the students, it is encouraged that we can learn a lot from each other.

The education semester plan was displayed as an overview in a Prezi presentation and the content is basically the same as education studies back in Stranmillis e.g. learning theories, teaching styles etc.  We also played ‘Jeopardy’ which involved two pairs competing in a questions and answers activity.  The aim of the game was to revise education studies terminology and content, for example, I had to describe Success Criteria to the opposing pair of students and they had to guess the answer as ‘success criteria’.  I discovered that as students described things to me I could relate them to things we had studied in education at Stranmillis, however they used different words for the same definition, for example, differentiation and inclusion had different names in the Danish education system.  I also found that were a lot of things I had never heard of, including terminology for research on society and gender and its implications for teaching.

I am really looking forward to finding out more about learning theories and teaching styles that the Danish consider important to underpin teaching.  I have already heard the familiar theorists; Vygotsky and Bruner mentioned as well as another theorist Krashen.