Magic Happens: International Teacher Education Collaboration

After a long period of post-pandemic travel restrictions, the UTS initial teacher education team were finally able to have their Korean partners visit Sydney, to meet their UTS collaborators in person and to experience the diversity of the Australian education system in NSW through UTS’s three amazing partner schools: MLC, Inner Sydney High School and Killara High School.

The Korean delegates were Prof Youngsoon So (Dept of English Education, Vice Dean of CoE), Prof Duck-Joo Kwak (Dept of Education) Prof Junehee Yoo (Dept of Physics Education) and two postgraduate students and physics teachers, Gyeongmo Min and Hyun Jung.

During this visit we could see magic happening for our Korean visitors, who could re-imagine new possibilities for transformative learning in schools and teacher education.

The UTS initial teacher education staff had received a grant for international and cross-institutional research from the Department of Foreign Affair’s Australian Korean Foundation. This involved the Schools of Teacher Education at UTS and Seoul National University coming together to share their innovative practices.

Day 1: A Visit to MLC (Burwood) School and Building International Partnerships

Exploring MLC junior school, our Korean guests were welcomed by brightly coloured carpet, glass walls and children’s colourful artworks. They were delighted by the light streaming in through glass windows, the hum of voices collaborating and the feeling of expansiveness from the wide-open co-teaching classrooms. 

Prof Kwak remarked; “although there are many similarities between the Korean and Australian education systems, there are many differences".

The Korean guests noted the design of learning spaces that cater for collaboration and innovation and were particularly impressed by the transparent glass walls that allowed visitors and other teachers to observe excellent teaching in practice.

“Watching expert teaching in practice is the key to great professional learning,” Cathryn Moore, MLC’s Strategic Projects Coordinator.

The Korean guests marveled at how the young children could focus on their work despite the multiple activities occurring within a wide co-teaching space, and were impressed at the MLC teachers working so collaboratively to engage their students, noting their hard work that makes teaching appear so effortless.

Guided by Cathryn and Susan Rowley, the Teacher Accreditation Coordinator, the Korean delegation encountered the elements that made MLC such a positive and vibrant school, with every decision made with the ‘girl at the centre’.

Hoping to generate collaboration between the International Baccalaureate (IB) classes in Australia and Jeju Island, the Korean staff also participated in an ‘Theory of Mind’ class. Facilitated by a renowned IB teacher trainer Manuel Condoleon, they brainstormed artefacts to put in their 2022 time capsule alongside a cohort of year 12 students.

Later at UTS, the Korean team shared their innovative applied research into chat-bots and South Korea’s plans to revamp their teaching placement program.

Chat-bots 

Chat-bots involve Artificial Intelligence to minimise the burdens of human labour. Physics teacher and doctoral student, Gyeongmo Min had built a chat-bot to address the untenable workload of teaching during long covid-related lockdowns.

Finding himself answering student questions till the early hours of the morning, he created an online ‘teacher’ to respond on his behalf. This chat-bot drew on the data from thousands of student questions and teacher generated responses.

After the grueling initial work, he found that his workload drastically decreased as his chat-bot provided automated responses to frequently asked questions.

(‘This is amazing!’ Pauline Kohlhoff, UTS’s PEX Director exclaimed. ‘I’m going to build me one of those!’ The UTS professional experience office inbox gets equally inundated with emails from students and school partners. A PEX-related chat-bot that could answer the common questions would be worth its weight in gold.)

Prof Prof Junehee Yoo (Dept of Physics Education) then showed the UTS team how teachers can create a ‘chat-flow’ so that these interactions could be built into conversations that enabled a deeper learning of concepts.

Professional Experience in Korea

When teams discussed Professional Experience for student teachers, Prof Youngsoon So sighed.

“Korea only has one four-week placement in the last semester of their year,” she told the UTS team, shaking her head. (Prof So is with the Dept of English Education,Vice Dean of CoE). "The Korean government is planning to extend it to 16 weeks by 2028. Any ideas of how we can go about this?”

Warren Poole is a key member of UTS’s PEX team and a long-standing champion of preparing classroom ready teachers. Responding to Prof So's cry for help, Warren emphasised the key qualities that have made the PEX program at UTS so successful:

“Early on. Frequent. And variety.” 

The possibilities for research and collaboration appear endless as UTS staff and the PEX team share their PEX related processes with Prof So, working towards the common goal of creating the best possible teachers all around world.

Day 2: Can a view from a school window cause a student to catch their breath? Take a walk through Inner Sydney High School and understand how learning spaces can sharpen focus and give students an edge.

Inner Sydney High School (ISHS) is a world class 14-storey facility in the centre of the city.

The principal, Robyn Matthews, believes that this future-focused environment will allow students to embrace lifelong learning as they engage in purpose-built flexible learning spaces that facilitate contemporary ways of working and learning.

Transparency through the glass walls, and the flexible and fluid learning spaces, catch the breath of our Korean visitors as much as the views.

Professor Yoo took multiple pictures of the floorplans, hoping to replicate such a lay out in her workplace.

Prof Yoo said; “Changing culture takes time. In Korea, it is difficult to see what a teacher is doing in their learning space due to the closed walls and windows, but both MLC and ISHS have shown me the strong benefits of transparency in building positive professional practice. I will take the first step by creating such a space in my university building.” 

Day 3: Ingredients of a positive school culture: dedicated teachers, a charismatic school leader and an empowered student body – Killara High School

Koreans are extremely hospitable by nature. In Korea, there is a word ‘jung,’ which some experts say has no English equivalent. Roughly speaking, it means ‘heart.’ You give your heart to someone when you make them feel ‘at home.’

For our Korean guests, being at Killara High School (KHS) was like being at home as teachers, students and the principal, Robin Chand, opened their arms wide open, helping our visitors experience every aspect of their school life.

Our Korean guests observed classes, spoke with students, staff and broke bread with the entire KHS staff. They observed the learning spaces of every KLA and spoke with passionate teachers who shared their craft and their joy of seeing their students learn. Their tireless work was evident throughout the student body, as pupils spoke of their deep love of their school and their wonderful teachers.

What happens when UTS teacher education staff engaged in international research with visitors from overseas? Magic. Magic is what happens when people fly across the world to see how other cultures live and work.

As teacher education academics, we have learnt from one another’s strengths, walking alongside together in our professional journeys.

UTS academics look forward to the next chapter of this journey when they visit their Korean counterparts in Seoul in June 2023. We trust that we will have an equally magical experience.

Dr. Joanne Yoo 
Master of Teaching in Secondary Education Combined Degrees Course Coordinator, School of International Studies and Education