September 2005 - Association Comenius

We live in a globalized world and it is our belief
that students exchange program is more
important than ever. We will give them the
opportunity to take part of different culture, the
education system in different countries and of
course to learn more about them selves and
about others. Our society is a part of the big
world with a lot of mixed culture and each
student need a lot of knowledge about the new
world. Each teacher has to coop with a lot of
complex and mixture questions in a school for
all children. So what is so special about
Sweden?
Mostly we have incoming students and
teachers from January to April. The first
question we get is about the snow, but Sweden
is more than snow. What will the Erasmus
student explore? What we see when we meet
Erasmus students and incoming Staff is that
they get surprised when they visit our
compulsory school. The first thing is about the
contact between teachers and the pupils. T h e y
realize that the relationship is more open and
warm compared to their own school system. ”
When we first got confronted with that
connection between teachers and pupils it
really amazed us. It was something that re a l l y
touched us.” (a student from Belgium 2005)
The second thing is about the freedom pupils
have in our school system. They can choose a
lot and take a big responsibility about their own
learning and the work is more individual.
“ F reedom. I would like children to have more
f reedom in everything for they could learn and
understand what responsibility is and to take up
responsibility on them. Also freedom helps to
develop imagination. If they not are free the
imagination can´t grow or develop.”(a student
from Lithuania 2005) But isn´t the diff e r e n c e s
the reason why we exchange?
K I M BAG, Kia
kkg@hig.se
Lecturer in Education
International relations department level
Department of Education and Psychology,
The University of Gävle, Sweden
When we change we get a possibility both to
see a new idea of another teaching educational
school system and at the same time have a
possibility to compare with our own system. A
teacher standard in Europe isn´t possible, we
are different and have different experience and
educational systems. But what is standard or
what could be a standard? We look at students
in different ways, this is something our
Erasmus students attend when they are here
both with the lecturers at the University and
with teachers at the practice school.” I was
more like one of them, more like a friend. At the
school we were seen as colleagues of the
teachers and not as teacher trainees.” (a student
from Belgium 2005) Another experience for
incoming students is to explore that we have a
lot of older (between 20-55 years old) students
in our teacher training programme. Some of
them have been working with other
occupations before they decide to become a
t e a c h e r. They often have family houses,
families with children and because of that it is
d i fficult for them to go on an Erasmus
exchange programme. This is possible one of
the reasons why we have a problem to sending
s t u d e n t s .
Something else that we really think is important
for them to see, is the inclusive education. In the
new teacher training programme all teacher
student need to have knowledge about the
variation among children in a school for all
(inclusive education). Children are diff e r e n t
and not only because they might have some
sort of disability, we also learns in diff e r e n t
ways. This is big challenge to assess the
environment to meet all children and of course
the teacher student must get involved in this
during the time of education.
S WARD, Ann-Katrin
asd@hig.se
Lecturer in Special Education
MA, PhD student Special Education
I n t e rnational cooperation perspective s ?
We also have some teacher student with
disabilities, with special needs at the University,
for example Dyslexia or A s p e rger Syndrom.
One challenge for us as lecturer is to assess our
education to those students. One question to
discuss further can be how students with
special needs can go into an exchange program.
Other issues are how we can create courses
who suits both for incoming students and for
our own. So, finally our incoming exchange
students will see a different level both at
university and in practice schools. They will
also explore the different weather, our culture,
get new friends and hopefully learn something
for their lifetime.
Further we will open up a discussion about
how we can cooperate in the field of research
and how the students can get involved. This is
important when we will continue to compare
our systems. Our resources have decreased and
how can we continue with the international
work and exchange without loosing quality?
Because we are different we might see things
d i ff e r e n t l y. This should be the power instead of
being the problem. We all come together and
exchange experience and of course give
inspiration to each other.
Cormenius Journal | 29