The faculty of the Warner School of Education at the University of Rochester (USA) will present their vision of the future of the teacher's school during the pandemic.
Their speeches will take place during the conference "Trajectories of education in an era of extreme events" of the VII International Forum on Teacher Education. The session will be moderated by Martin Lynch, professor at the University of Rochester, USA.
Martin Lynch teaches counseling, counseling education, and human development at the University of Rochester. His research focuses on the following topics: the influence of social context on human motivation, personality development and well-being from the point of view of the theory of self-determination.
Martin Lynch not only takes part in the Forum for several years, but also participates in applied research carried out at our university.
Thus, together with scientists from the Institute of Psychology and Education of the Kazan Federal University, he conducted a unique study of teachers' ideas about the basic psychological needs of a child in the process of development. The next topic of the joint research was the study of the characteristics of teachers' ideas about the psychological needs of schoolchildren, primarily the ideas about the need for autonomy. According to a professor at the University of Rochester, he is especially proud of the joint project with colleagues from KFU.
His colleagues prepared reports for the Forum, about which they told the journalist of the IFTE press center.
For example, Rafaella Borasi, director of the Center for Learning in the Digital Age, will talk about pedagogical prospects in the era of a pandemic.
She recalled that the COVID-19 pandemic has forced teachers around the world to teach remotely. And this situation could be repeated in future emergencies. Before teachers preparing future teachers, the question arose: how best to prepare students - future teachers for such situations?
“Our experience in training online instructors over the past decade has allowed us to identify a small set of effective online teaching methods that, when mastered, can help teachers better support online learners, regardless of age and subject area,” said Rafaela Borasi. “We've also created strategies as well as publicly available online materials to help teachers develop these methods.
In his talk, Barasa will talk about six teaching methods and briefly describe how they structured teacher professional development opportunities around them.
Alice Harnishfeger, Director of Inclusive Education Teacher Training at Warner Teachers' Training School, will speak on creating inclusive education programs to use in times of need.
- Warner Teachers' Training School has developed special programs for inclusive education. This is our purposeful choice based on the philosophical views of the school and the observance of the goals of social justice.
Instead of using the conventional “medical model” of public education to identify and address the needs of children with disabilities, the school has developed a program that emphasizes models for disability research and innovation in practice.
The program aims to help teaching students to prepare for the complexities of the system and practice their skills in inclusive education before starting their practical work.
- Today, in such a difficult time caused by the ongoing pandemic, more attention should be paid to innovative teaching methods in inclusive education more than ever.
Karen Mickey, Associate Professor at the University of Rochester, will also talk about the impact of the pandemic on the entire education system.
- The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a rapid transition to distance learning, regardless of the well-being of students, their anxiety from isolation, unusual conditions, feelings of loss, social restriction. Teachers note concerns about the social and emotional health and well-being of both their students and their colleagues, all of whom face uncertainty about their health, economic instability and their impact on the future.
In this regard, the scientist notes, academic learning and teaching now coexist with the need to provide students with individual and group psychological support and collaborate with class teachers while participating in the school during difficult transition periods.
Karen Mickey will present to the Forum participants developed and tested strategies to meet individual student needs, aimed at increasing resilience to stress.
But the pandemic is not just a time of restraint. It's also a time of opportunity, '' said April Lümann, an assistant professor at the University of Rochester, and Yang Zhang, a doctoral student at Warner Teachers' School