Virtual preschoolers don't cry
Kindergarten classes are the most difficult internship for some students at the academic teacher training college. In a virtual classroom environment at the University of Groningen, they practice classroom management strategies and receive quick feedback.
Image Jan Anninga
Femke, a student at the Academic Primary Education teacher training course in Groningen, will be doing an internship in two kindergarten classes this semester. One is real: a group of fifteen students at a village school in the Frisian Scharsterbrug. The other is virtual: a spacious classroom, with homemade nursery drawings on the windows and a round table in the center, an environment that university information engineers have created on the computer.
Femke - sneakers, fashionably ripped jeans - stands with a Virtual Realityglasses in a sober white room of the University of Groningen (RUG), but she imagines herself in a class with twenty restless toddlers. They chat with each other or hang out in their chairs. Claiming the attention of this irregular group is now Femke's first assignment.
Preschoolers never do what you want them to do
The intention is that she uses the strategies for keeping order in a kindergarten that she learned earlier in the academic teacher training college. Singing a song to get their attention, for example. Or raise her hand to give the silence signal; two sensors in Femke's hands also register her gestures. “There is no single right way to demand attention,” says Jolien Mouw, assistant professor at the RUG and the inventor of this educational innovation. “Our students have to find their own way in which they want to deal with this age group. The virtual kindergarten helps them to discover it. ”
Impact
After completing the teacher training college, sleeve worked for several years as a substitute teacher in a kindergarten during her follow-up study. She now familiarizes students in Groningen with ideas from developmental psychology during lectures, in which, for example, it is outlined how teachers best respond to the moral and socio-emotional developments of young children. These theories can in principle be applied in a kindergarten, but there is quite a gap with everyday practice. During lectures, sleeve sometimes heard students who took part in internships say that they thought infants were 'terrible'. Not badly intended, but after their experiences with group 5 and group 8 in the first internship year, it takes a lot of time for them to get used to the very youngest. “Toddlers never do what you want them to do,” says sleeve.
During lectures she does her best to link theory to practice. "But we don't supervise our students on site, so we can't see if they are able to apply classroom management strategies effectively."
When the teacher gets angry, preschoolers crawl under the table in fear in the virtual classroom.
That is possible in the virtual kindergarten. “In this environment, our students experience that what works in the upper years is not just useful for the toddlers,” says sleeve. “You might say to a student in the upper grades 'You sit down separately, you are not participating anymore'. With the pre-schoolers you think twice, because something like that can have a huge impact. ”
If the teacher gets angry, sleeve and the other supervisors can let the toddlers crawl under the table in fear of the virtual classroom. Making them cry realistically has not yet worked, because every toddler cries in its own way. “It is one of the things we hope to model in the future,” says sleeve. "Although you have to be careful, because we also don't want students to leave here with the unpleasant feeling that they just made a toddler cry."
While you talk you should be very aware of what is going on in the classroom
When the virtual toddlers sit quietly, most of them neatly with their hands on their knees, Femke can start her lesson. On the board is a 'talking picture' of a busy city center and she has prepared a lesson to match, according to her own insight. “It's fine if a student chooses to tell about his own experiences for five minutes,” says sleeve. "If you want to delve deeper into content, that's fine too."
More important than the lesson content is that Femke practices in the virtual kindergarten the somewhat elusive skill that teachers must apply to maintain order: not only talking, but also constantly scanning your environment to see if your class is following the rules. If not, you intervene. Whiteness they call it at the RUG: “The point is that you are talking and at the same time you are very aware of what is happening in the classroom,” says Femke.
Mask
“We don't do that to Abel, we don't talk through each other”, says Femke in a calm but firm tone. Abel obeys, thanks to a push on the laptop of an assistant behind the buttons of the virtual classroom. A toddler with black hair and a tail is turned backwards, now hangs over the back of her seat and looks out. “Gaia will you please sit down. And look at the sign, what do you see there? ” Sleeve asked the students to memorize the names of their students in advance. After all, they need to know this at their internship school.
We absolutely do not pretend that we can replace an internship
Normally four students work together in the virtual classroom, but due to a strict interpretation of the corona guidelines, sleeve advised two students not to come to university. These days, setting up virtual reality glasses also requires protocol. Femke places a white cloth mask around her eyes, disinfects her hands, cleans the display of her glasses and 'oh dear' I just sneezed, so disinfect it again.
Femke does not use a mouth mask yet, but a week later the university makes it mandatory everywhere, including in the virtual kindergarten. “We come into contact with 53 students, who in turn go to 53 schools in Groningen, Drenthe and Friesland,” says sleeve. "I feel very responsible that those schools do not get infections, but I also think it is very important that we have physical contact with our students, because we have hardly had that since the start of the corona crisis."
Assistant professor Jolien Mouw is the inventor of the virtual kindergarten. "In this environment, our students experience that what works in the upper years is not just useful for the pre-schoolers."
Fellow student Charlotte is also present in the classroom. After the lesson she gives Femke feedback. Briefly mentioning the name of a toddler who is not paying attention, Charlotte thinks an effective strategy. She also applies them in her lessons.
A student can also move closer to a toddler in the virtual environment to silently remind her to silence, but Femke did not feel sufficiently familiar with the VR glasses for that. The RUG classroom is pretty cleared out, but you can still have the feeling that you could just bump into a chair. Thanks to the sensors, a student can also bring his hand close to a toddler, but a stroke on the head, a hand on one shoulder or turn over a chair; that is not yet possible.
Interaction
The glasses can be taken off. Femke is quite satisfied with the course of the lesson. “You learn, for example, how to correct children when they talk through you. What you do miss is the interactive. In real life you keep students engaged by, for example, asking them open questions. Of course that is not possible now. ”
Interaction is possible, says sleeve: “We have included most of the standard responses, so we can have preschoolers say things like: 'Yes', 'no', 'I know', 'I don't dare' with the push of a button. , 'I have to poop', 'I have to pee' and so on, but answering open questions is something that our virtual toddlers are indeed not yet able to do. ”
For example, you learn how to correct children when they talk through you
Some class management strategies only prove their worth over time. For example, Groningen education scientists concluded in a review earlier that teachers who want to keep order should not be strict, but should agree clear rules with the class at the beginning of the year and that they should take the time to practice them and that they should be consistent. must apply. Realistically modeling such a development is not that easy in a virtual classroom.
“We absolutely do not pretend that we can replace an internship,” says sleeve. “But hopefully we will help our students to try things out and build a better bridge between theory and practice. There is always room for improvement, but this is so much better than watching a movie or evaluating afterwards what you did during your internship a few days earlier. ”
This article appeared in the January issue of the Onderwijsblad. AObmembers automatically receive the magazine eleven times a year in the mail.
