Finnish Mobility 26^th Jan -1^st Feb 2019

In our Erasmus+ Master –project the fourth mobility was to be held in Finland in the end of January 2019. The main themes of the mobility were life management and metacognitive strategies in life, which can be seen to cover three different areas such as how to deal with stress, how to become a responsible adult and how to succeed in life. Nature being our “red thread” of the week, we wanted to look at these three areas from the nature’s point of view.

Firstly, the topic of how to deal with stress requires a basic understanding of the importance of right amount of sleep and daily exercise as well as the meaning of healthy nutrition and interests in life. During the week, we tried to take a deeper look at these issues by using the methods of mindfulness, the impacts of traditional Finnish sauna and ice-swimming and hiking in the middle of pure, fresh and snowy nature.

Secondly, the theme of how to become a responsible adult is based on the understanding how to take others into consideration. In order to give our youngsters a deeper, nature-based experience of the meaning of the responsibilities the adulthood will bring, we decided to give the students a lesson of everyman’s rights and responsibilities in the wilderness. Furthermore, we wanted them to start thinking about the meaning of recycling in general and what everyone is able to do on an individual basis.

Thirdly, how to succeed in life depends very much on the ability of mastering metacognition and metacognitive strategies. Mastering metacognition means understanding how the brain works as well as understanding how feelings and actions are connected, and this way how they can be guided toward certain actions. Possessing or teaching oneself to have a positive, inner attitude, growth mindset, when facing challenges in life, plays an important role in succeeding in life.  Moreover, knowing what metacognitive strategies are and being able to choose the right ones for oneself in certain situations can be seen one key to have a success in learning and in life.

From the day 2 on, the students were divided into 6 international groups and given 5 different group tasks, which, every day, had to be thought over individually by filling in a metacognitive strategies’ chart and answering some open-ended questions concerning reflections of chosen strategies as well as personal feelings when facing any challenge. Thus, as the students kept a learning diary on the strategies they had used, they became more aware of the different strategies and began to choose the most suitable ones for every situation, and they also reflected their growth mindset the whole week. Everyone’s learning diaries played very important role at the end of the week. The final task for the groups was to share their experiences within the groups, discuss their learning diaries and make a presentation on the topic Keep calm and manage your life. These six outcomes of the week were to serve as one bigger outcome of the whole MASTER project proving a thorough learning of the life management as such.

In the opinion of the Finnish Team, the week was successful and full of joy. The students worked smoothly in the groups, they were enthousiastic to participate whatever the task were, they accomplished the homework of keeping the diary and finally were able to make excellent presentations of their experiences during the week. These presentations really served as a perfect outcome of the whole two-year project and they can be found in the official webpage of the project (https://mastererasmusplus.blogspot.com).