This is your colleague Maria writing from Åbo (or Turku, if you speak Finnish)! I'm a 2nd year student in the pedagogy / vocational teacher program at the Åbo Akademi University in Finland. In the photo you can see my workplace; I'm a teacher of International Marketing at the Åbo Akademi School of Business and Economics. At the moment I'm resposible for basic courses in Marketing (more about that in a later post..).
Our campus is situated next to the medieval cathedral of Åbo/Turku, which you can see in the background behind the school. I'm excited to share some photos and to take part of your lives for the duration of this blog project! Talk to you soon!
// Maria
Hi, what is including international marketing? Is your school working together with other European schools? Do you have partner schools? Do you do student exchange?
ReplyDeleteHello! The subject International Marketing includes a range of topics such as international business networks, entrepreneurship, supply chain management, consumer behavior and branding. We have a lot of cooperation with other schools both in Europe and overseas. In fact, our whole Master's program is taught in English, and we have a large number of incoming exchange students every year. Our own students are also eager to do exchange either for 1/2 year or a whole academic year. The first course I taught this fall (called Introduction to Marketing) had students from 9 different counties!
DeleteWe belong to the ERASMUS network so there are a number of partner schools all around Europe. In addition to those, our students also do exchange outside of Europe, for example in the US, in Australia and in Brazil.
DeleteHi Maria. How long is your VET teachers course and what is the qualification called? Can you tell me what subjects you study, and how much is 'prac work' - practice teaching opportunities.
ReplyDeleteHi Gillian, I think I answered most of the questions in my earlier reply :) But just to add, within the VET program we study subjects like didactic theory and the pedagogy for students with special needs. We also write a longer research paper in the end of the program (we can choose the topic ourselves as long as it has to do with pedagogy).
DeleteHi Maria. How long is your VET teachers course and what is the qualification called? Can you tell me what subjects you study, and how much is 'prac work' - practice teaching opportunities.
ReplyDeleteHi Gillian, thanks for your question and sorry for the late reply! The VET teachers course is altogether 60 ECTS, so when done as part-time studies it takes a couple of years. The qualification we get is called "yrkeslärare" in Swedish, which means "vocational teacher". The practice period is divided into 2 sections; partice period 1 and 2. Each include 20 hours of own teaching (under the supervision of a mentoring teacher), 20 hours of observing another teachers' work and 10 hours of observing a teacher as a group.
DeleteHi Maria , what is your earlier profession? For how long time do you study in Finland to become a VET teacher? What is the main subject you teach?
ReplyDeleteHi Mia, thank you for your questions! :) I'm a Master of Economic Sciences, and before becoming a teacher I was working as a communications/PR officer for a Finnish company. The studies for becoming a qualified VET teacher are altogether 60 ECTS (and 1 ECTS accounts for about 27h of work; so the whole program would be 1620 h.) Usually it takes a couple of years to complete when done as part-time studies. The main subject I teach is International Marketing.
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