The cooperation agreement signed on Tuesday by the Faculty of Education for Children and Special Educational Needs of the University of Debrecen and the Nagyerdei Cultural Park will help the practical work of teacher-candidate students in the future.
Our country’s first rural botanical garden and zoo welcomed more than 170,000 visitors in Debrecen last year. The Nagyerdei Cultural Park, which looks back on a six-decade history, constantly strives to provide a kind of educational activity in addition to entertaining the public.
Zoo pedagogy was institutionalized here in the early 2000s. As part of our missionary activity, we consider it important to leave the gates of the cultural park, which is why we have been organizing professional internships for students in close cooperation with the university’s Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Sciences and Technology for several years now. We are now expanding this activity together with the Faculty of Education for Children and Special Educational Needs, with the aim that teacher candidates can learn about the operational features, pedagogical possibilities, zoo pedagogical practice of the Nagyerdei Cultural Park as part of their training
– emphasized director Sándor Gergely Nagy at the event organized for the signing of the agreement on Tuesday.
The cooperation offers more than a thousand students studying at the Hajdúböszörmény faculty the opportunity to expand their professional knowledge in the field of zoo pedagogy.
Advanced training in animal-assisted pedagogy is very popular at our university, but kindergarten teachers and special education students can also work in this field during their training. This agreement not only provides an excellent practice field for the acquisition of professional knowledge but can also play an important role in social responsibility, as from now on all our students can undertake volunteer work in the cultural park, which is recognized with credits
– emphasized Dean Erzsébet Gortka-Rákó.
Zoo pedagogue Rebeka Mohácsi added: students can get involved in the work of summer thematic camps already this year. During the one-week courses, the future professionals can hold informative and craft sessions for the children, but they can also help with organizational and management tasks.
These so-called experience-based pedagogical methods are gaining more and more emphasis in the child-centered training of the Faculty of Education for Children and Special Educational Needs, so it is important that our students get to know the procedures for gaining experience. The cooperation can also extend to the academic activities of the faculty, as students can find excellent research topics here for their thesis or even for an OTDK thesis
– added associate professor Imre Fenyő.
The Faculty of Education for Children and Special Educational Needs is also planning to launch a new zoo pedagogy specialized further education course in the near future.
unideb.hu
