4th year: Specialised Teaching Practice

The aim of the specialised teaching practice is for our students to acquire teaching experiences in the field they wish to focus on, and to put their skills and knowledge into practice. The teaching practice can take place wherever seems fit – in the students’ home countries, in Denmark or in one of the many worldwide projects with which DNS collaborates.  

The fourth year has three periods in total:

STUDY PERIOD · three months of studying and preparing

This period is filled with both pedagogical and didactical studies and preparations for the following period — the specialised teaching practice. 

In this period, the students take on a higher responsibility in the school. They are invited to weekly teachers’ meetings, and they contribute to governing the school. They now play a critical role, by leading Common Meetings, creating an active life in the campus and offering guidance to the newly started students. 

SPECIALISED TEACHING PRACTICE · six months of teaching

The team will individually and commonly reflect on what they wish to achieve during this period, and they will organise themselves in trios. Then they will go out to work in local schools or projects in a selected country, in non-formal learning projects in Europe, in Teacher Training Colleges in Malawi/Guinea Bissau/Mozambique or maybe in some Danish care homes’ schools.

The students should shape this year by keeping into consideration what they aim to do in the future. The goal is not just to learn, but to apply the knowledge and experience gained over the last years of DNS in the field. During this year, our pedagogical principle of “the higher degree of reality in the training, the more is learned” is genuinely practised.

STUDY PERIOD · three months of studying

During the last three-month study period, the students focus on completing their last examinations and Bachelor Thesis. In the meanwhile, they will keep playing an active part in running Another Kind of School. 

Examples of specialisations could be:

• “The pedagogy of transforming ideas into action”
• “The class as a collective”
• “Why cooperating with parents is a must, and how to do it”
• “Teaching youngsters who are fed up with school”
• “What children can do — Breaking down the traditional view of children”
• “Teaching primary school children”
• “Teaching and learning math as a real-world subject”
• “Pedagogy of ‘the world is our classroom’”
• “Pedagogy of DNS”
• “Preparing the future generation for the world to come.”
• Eco-literacy
• Planet protection
• “‘Bring it to the public’ in primary or public schools”
• “What does it take to run a school or a project?”