Second Benchmarking Workshop held in Budapest 25.-27.11.2013

Our workshop took place in Budapest University of Technology and Economics (main building in the picture above, other building below). The surroundings for our workshop was excellent and we were very well taken care of. The discussions were interesting and it is always useful to compare and discuss some "hot topics" concerning university pedagogics and curriculum design anddevelopment.

On the fist day we introduced our universities a little bit and of course we also started to discuss the workshop themes as well. The themes for the first day were curriculum work, design, implementation and development.

 On the second day the discussions continued with themes: pedagogical competence, participatory pedagogy and fostering creativity and innovativeness and supporting international students.

The last day was spent in terms of exploring the paths to becoming a vocational teacher in Finland and in Hungary as well as closing discussions and developing future project ideas.

The collaboration between Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Tampere University of Technology and Budapest University of Technology and Economics continues with the workshop themes in our home institutions. After final exchange if information, knowledge and good practices, all the partner universities can then self analyse what practices to furher develop and what kind of actions to take in the future. We hope to see as many of the Budapest colleagues as possible in project's closing seminar in May 2014 in Tampere.

 Photos: Pekka Kalli

Participatory pedagogy and fostering creativity and innovativeness

  There is a tension between Creativity and Innovation. They are like two Dogs in their play: sometimes it is hard to say if they are fighting or playing a rough play or game. Some times it seems for me that we can not see world in all it´s colours. Of course there is allways a realm of economics and necessities. But there is and should be also the realm of culture, art and freedom to create.

But how to foster creativity and innovativeness? I attended three years of higher education project, which is called "Campus Conexus". The central result of the project closer to the idea of participatory learning and engagement to learning. It is not a narrow pedagogical theory but a broader idea of ​​democracy and people's ability to develop themselves, their society and culture. This pedagogy has its roots in John Dewey's "partisipatory pedagogy" and Freire and bell hooks' "engaged pedagogy ". Also, Bereiter´s and Scardamalia´s thoughts support the idea that genuine participation in community activities enables an in-depth knowledge and adoption of individuals and groups in a creative exchange of information and knowledge production.

Student engagement has been suggested as an indicator of quality of teaching. In turn, work engagement models among teachers appear to emphasize the significance of a sense of vigour, dedication and absorption as the key elements of job satisfaction. So far, however, teacher engagement has not received much attention in the context of higher education. Therefore, if engagement is seen as a predictor of students’ success in their studies, it can be assumed to be a good descriptor of teachers’ work engagement.