International Teacher Education Conference 2014 1

International Teacher Education Conference 2014
the facilitator, but after that each student teacher was encouraged to define his/her learning goals, define learning
activities to be utilized for achieving the goals and also define the assessment criteria to be used. Because the
student teachers were working mostly in educational organizations they were encouraged to develop their
working skills alongside their studies. Therefore, it was crucial that the student teachers used their own work as a
learning context as much as possible. Each student had an online personal guidance meeting with the facilitator,
during which the first version of the personal development plan was guided. During the first guidance meeting,
prior competences were also discussed. If a student had prior competences to be recognized, the student was
asked to present them in a portfolio and have another meeting with the facilitator to present her/his competences
with the help of certificates, work examples and reflections. Figure 4 illustrates the prior competence assessment
and recognition model.
Personal guidance
meeting: Need for
prior competence
assessment?
Yes
No
Competence
assessment:
Recognition or not?
Yes, competence
recognized partly or totally
No
Figure 4: Prior competence assessment and recognition model
It seems that the use of the prior competence assessment and recognition model also supported the
individualization of the curriculum. The personal guidance meetings with students took place online, but the
competence assessment meetings took place face-to-face, because it was unclear what type of materials students
would be presenting in these meetings. In the future, it is planned to arrange the competence assessment
meetings online as well, because it seems that the materials can be presented in a digital form.
DISCUSSION
The main research objectives of the study were to gain a better understanding of the recognition of
competences in online teacher education programmes, and to create a model that suggests how recognition of
previous competences could be performed. The two other objectives were individualization of the curriculum
and facilitation of personalized learning processes online. The preliminary results indicated that the model is
better than the one used earlier. Due to the prior competence assessment and recognition model, some students
graduated earlier, and were more motivated than before. The students had already worked in real life working
situations before, but instead of peers they were able to work more in their own networks with their own
colleagues. With the help of the competence requirements defined in the curriculum students created learning
goals, which resulted in larger targets combining several competence areas and individualized learning paths. A
student stated that she had never before seen a curriculum use a tool so well. The students felt that the holistic
approach supported them and enabled student-centred approaches. On the other hand, there were students who
requested, instead of a holistic approach, a well-defined step-by-step definition of what was required of them.
CONCLUSION
Personalization, collaboration and informalization are expected to be part of future learning. Cyberspace will
play a more crucial role as a learning environment than it currently does. There will be new devices that enable
learning in new situations, and new ways to utilize those. All these changes demand accompanying changes in
the models, methods and practises at universities and other educational organizations. One of these models is the
prior competence assessment and recognition model, which is tightly connected to the future learning trends of
personalization, collaboration and informalization. The government of Finland has demanded that students
graduate earlier nowadays. The wider use of prior learning assessment and recognition in universities could
enable earlier graduations for some of the students. Individualized learning paths and collaboration in real
working situations motivates students and engages them more in their studies, and could even decrease dropouts.
REFERENCES
Aarreniemi-Jokipelto, P. (2013a). Personalized and collaborative learning models through social media. In
book: Laukia, J.,Aaltonen, K., Isacsson, A. & Vanhanen-Nuutinen, L. (Eds.). “Practical skills, education and
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