First Training Courses for “Pupils on the Move” Concluded

July 7, 2014 - PRLog -- The PUMO Project has concluded an extensive testing phase for its critical product, the PUMO Teacher Training Course. The course supports teachers who teach children temporarily residing in a country in maintaining pupils’ progress in areas of study specific to their countries of origin, including language, history, and other subjects specific to national curricula. After the successful pilot implementation in Brazil, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia, and Ukraine, the PUMO Consortium has gathered valuable feedback for final improvements to the course.

The PUMO Course is available in English, as well as Estonian, Greek, Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, and Portuguese. It contains four modules to assist teachers in their teaching skills, enabling students to develop the culture and language of their ‘home’ countries alongside the education they are receiving in their country of residence. Each module has an estimated duration of ten hours and includes technology-enhanced aspects to take advantage of recent innovations in education.

The first course module informs participants about the latest concepts in multicultural education and intercultural pedagogy, detailing the role of the teacher in mobile students’ learning process. This provides an overarching theoretical basis for the remainder of the course.

After establishing this theoretical basis, the second module reinforces teachers’ practical skills for teaching and designing learning materials which integrate first language learning and ‘homeland-specific’ subjects. An example of the latter would be the respective history of the student’s country of origin.

The third PUMO module leverages recent innovations in distance and technology-enhanced learning to improve the learning quality for the target students. The provision of these tools reflects the mobile needs of PUMO students and the sometimes necessary geographical flexibility in educating them.

Finally, the fourth PUMO module addresses organisational and networking skills among teachers. This module has a special focus on the challenges and necessities of distance learning, such as how to inspire motivation in the learners, as well as communication with parents.

The project consortium is now undertaking studies into the future of the course, including dissemination possibilities. For this reason, potential users of PUMO interested in participating in the course or disseminating it through their own institutions should contact the project consortium through their website at www.pumo.info.