Planning Process and Learning at Vocational/Higher Education Level – Student Centred Competency-based Learning and Pedagogical Scripts
In my previous blog, I discussed the role
of legal documents and learning theories in guiding educational course planning
at the vocational and higher education levels. The planning process is
discussed further in this post. When teachers have developed their own
understanding of laws and learning theories, it is time to focus on the needs
of the learners based on these prior understandings. To focus on such needs the
teachers in vocational education need to build upon student centred competency
-based learning approach, where pedagogical scripts can help them to organize
for achieving such goals.
At this point one might ask, what does
student-centred competency-based approach means? Aurora Institute highlighted the
following seven foundations of competency-based education.
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| Competence-based Learning (Levine & Patrick, 2019) |
All seven elements should be used in a
setting that is truly competency-based, and their use calls for "policies,
pedagogy, structures, and cultures that assist every student in acquiring
fundamental knowledge, skills, and attitudes." (Levine & Patrick, 2019).
The fundamental tenet of competence-based education is that, with the teachers'
ongoing assistance, students can demonstrate what they have learned. Every
student may have unique demands, background knowledge, and experiences in this
regard. As a result, competence-based education must be student-centered and
tailored to each individual learner. Teachers and students collaborate to
jointly design a learning plan or pathway that best meets the needs of each
individual learner in a learning environment that is truly student-centered.
Yes, this implies that numerous strategies or routes will be available inside a
single cohort. Because of this, in order to fully execute the student-centered,
competency-based OAMK approach, participants develop their personal study plans
(PSP) in collaboration with the tutor. Assigned tutors regularly conduct individual
tutoring sessions for each participant to guide the later to improve and show
their competence development.
To this aim, group 2 did a great job of
helping the cohort participants understand the various ways teachers might take
the student-centered, competence-based approach into account while preparing.
The responsible group adopted the strategy of identifying a competence goal,
the evaluation criteria for demonstrating the competence, and then
demonstrating how different paths could be taken to accomplish those goals
based on the needs and level of the students. Examples of the many pathways
included gamification, analytical proofs, and visual evidence. In order to help
the participants, comprehend the need for such learning in vocational
education, Group 2 employed tools like paddlet to get them involved in various
discussions.
Pedagogical scripts are activity programs
that aim to facilitate collaborative learning by specifying activities in
collaborative settings, eventually sequencing these activities and assigning
the activities to individual learners (Weinberger et al., 2005). Simply said, a
pedagogical script is a technique to plan out the activities of students and
teachers, as well as their interactions and timing during a learning session. I
suppose in a very traditional setting, such as a university lecture, the script
can be very simple because student activity is kept to a minimum, but
especially in the era of online learning, this pedagogical scripting has become
even more important and certainly has its benefits in improving learning
outcomes.
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| Pedagogical Script Example (Mari Jussila and Pauliina Kupila) |
Our group (group 4), conducted the teaching
session for our cohort. In this session we provided the theoretical
understanding of the pedagogical scripts (as described above). Later on, we used
the google jam board to let the participants practice creation of a pedagogical
script. Lastly we held a discussion on the application of such scripts in
different scenarios to heighted the contextual differences.
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| Pedagogical Scrpit Jamboard (Copyright Group 4, OAMK 2022, Professional Teacher Training Program) |
Both blog post one and this article's topics centred on the documentation for the methods used to design for competency-based, student-centered learning. Legal requirements, knowledge of learning theories, and a programme design that outlines the competences needed at a given programme level (in this example, professional teacher training) while considering the unique needs of students make up the documentation. Last but not least, we suggest using pedagogical scripts to operationalize the aforementioned needs and interactions with the students in order to put all the planned information into reality.
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References
- Levine, E., & Patrick, S. (2019). What Is Competency-Based Education? An Updated Definition. Aurora Institute.
- Weinberger, A., Ertl, B., Fischer, F., & Mandl, H. (2005). Epistemic and social scripts in computer–supported collaborative learning. Instructional Science, 33(1), 1-30.
- Mari Jussila and Pauliina Kupila https://blogs.helsinki.fi/sulautuvaopetus/files/2010/09/sulautuva_tyopaja2_11032011.pdf
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Making pedagogical script's via jamboard was very efficient for me to participate and learn by doing so. And see and compare how other participant's doing the task, although it was first time for me to try jamboard. Pedagogical script is somehow in accordance with pedagogical models, because both of them are focusing and defining on either learning outcome or competence goals. What student can do, should learn etc.
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