Saqqummersitaq

Presentation of work in progress: Research project about new solutions for teacher education as distance education in Greenland.

The teacher education has been offering correspondence education for two decades. But didactical possibilities from digital solutions has yet to be explored and taken advantage of. Distance education is expected to show more potential in the Greenlandic educational system in the future. From fall 2017 a fresh start has been launched utilizing a hybrid educational format.

As part of research based on Øgaards ph.d. dissertation (Øgaard 2015) on distance teaching in school, pupils in a small settlement in the Disko Bay where connected with an educated sloyd teacher working in the nearest town. Assignments, projects and results from the pupils where distributed through the use of iPads and internet. An important part of the didactical design was small workbenches and selected tools developed for the project to frame and support sloyd as distance teaching.

The teaching took place october- december 2018. The didactical design has been working very well. On request from the local headteacher the sloyd distance teaching will continue. Following Øgaards research, distance teaching in schools is studied for progressive and didactical developmental components. Distance teaching is usually associated with high priority school subjects like math and language. Choosing sloyd as a subject for distance teaching is, beside support of sloyd as a school subject, also an effort to stretch and challenge the possibilities with distance teaching in schools, for its support of didactical and pedagogical development.