Innovative teacher education through personalised learning

• Published in: ICERI Proceedings, ICERI2020 Proceedings
• Main Authors: Ališauskienė, Stefanija, Kaminskienė, Lina, Miltenienė, Lina, Melienė, Rita, Kazlauskienė, Aušra, Rutkienė, Aušra, Venslovaitė, Vita, Kontrimienė, Simona, Širiakovienė, Asta
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: teacher education; personalised learning; higher education; Iceland
• Online Access: http://vu.lvb.lt/VU:ELABAPDB74930778&prefLang=en_US

Lithuania highlights the priority to promote changes in the educational systems aimed at ensuring the quality of teacher education and quality education for every learner and creating a good school for all. It requires that educators and education support professionals have the appropriate competences and are ready to work in the rapidly changing innovative school. Changes within the educational system, which are initiated by educational policy makers and academic communities, are closely related to the shift in the educational paradigm from teaching to learning and collaboration-based learning. A consortium of three Lithuanian universities, i.e. Šiauliai University (SU), Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) and Vilnius University (VU) – teacher education centres – in cooperation with international partners from Iceland and Ireland implements the project that focuses on strategic partnership for consolidation of academic resources in order to develop innovative teacher education practices of personalised learning (PL) in different socio-cultural contexts. The aim of the project is to develop, implement, test and transfer innovative practices of PL within the teacher education system(s). In this paper, the authors aim to share the first findings from the written interviews revealing the students’ study needs and questions related to students’ participation in their study process. Forty students and 20 teachers took part in the written interviews. Interview findings reveal the focuses, including challenges, of teacher training in three Lithuanian universities mentioned above – teacher education centres. The results of the research revealed that students in the study process identify themselves as an episodic partner in making decisions about the planning of the study course and the improvement of the study subject, and teachers usually consider students as partners or episodic partners, rarely as independent decisionmakers. When creating conditions for students to make independent decisions, become partners or establish agreements in the study process, teachers use those methods that are inseparable from the collaborative process (reflection, discussion, self-assessment, listening to opinions, expectations). In the study process, teachers create conditions for students to self-assess the achieved study results at the beginning, during the course, and at the end of the course, paying much attention to the analysis of the current situation. Students are more aware that they have an opportunity to self-assess the achieved results at the end of the course.