TEPATE Mozambique – development activities under way

The development activities of TEPATE project are proceeding according to plan. Due to the pandemic, the development activities are being carried out online, at least until the end of June. After that, the project activities continue in September. The modality of those activities will be assessed later.

In March and April, the first part of the Training of Trainers Programme designed for 30 Teacher Educators acting as Key Experts in the Project was carried out online. The first part consisted of workshops over the course of 10 days. The workshops focused on learner-centred pedagogical approaches. The workshops were built on collaborative working methods with short introductory sessions, reading materials, and learning assignments provided by the Finnish experts.

The recently completed workshop was very important, not only to understand the spirit of the TEPATE project, but to enrich my learning in teaching practice. The intersection between the constructivist, cognitive and humanist theories and the methodologies used was spectacular. Student-centred learning was at the heart of our discussion. The methods “collaborative learning, problem-based learning, project-based learning, the Flipped-learning method were very clear to enrich my teaching practice. the supporting texts were fundamental for the construction of the theoretical framework. This workshop has no other, but excellent, qualifier. I hope that the other workshops will have the same content.

Also the development of the first study module for teacher trainees started in May. The development process is facilitated by Finnish experts, during which a new study module will be jointly developed by 7 local key experts from the two partner universities. In the first sessions, the local key experts were capacitated on developing a study module on the principle of blended learning. The development of the new study module will continue in September and October, after which the newly developed study module will be piloted with selected groups of teacher trainees at the two partner universities.

I just want to reiterate that the two training sessions we had this week were very interesting and I can not wait for the upcoming sessions next week.

In total, three new study modules will be developed in the project to be included in the teacher training curricula of the partner universities in Mozambique.

Adhering to the project plan, also the development of the teaching practise component begun in May when a development team consisting of 9 key experts from UP and ISET One World started working together. The team will continue working together for the whole duration of the project to develop the teaching practise component of their universities’ teacher education programmes.

The development activities listed above relate to project output 1: Capacities of selected teacher educators of partner HEIs enhanced to deliver more theory-practise balanced teacher education and output 2: The quality and relevance of teacher training programmes at UP Maputo and ISET- ONE WORLD developed.

This post was written by Project Manager Irmeli Maunonen-Eskelinen