ECA concept on education and learning as personal growth
Connecting to Judeo-Orthodox Christian anthropological and theological tradition and the Mission Statement
At the Academy, students acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes and professional qualities that are specific to the scientific discipline. Students at ECA are equipped in their education to contribute to the risk society in a caring, sustainable and dialogue-based manner.
Embedding knowledge in students’ vision of the future
Education helps young people to build their knowledge by acting educationally correctly and aesthetically pleasing the European understanding of beauty. The current vision adds a perspective of future. In order to strengthen the quality of knowledge, the concept invites us to focus on our students’ vision of their future in labor market and Lifelong Learning education. Who do students want to be? What place does their scientific qualification have in their vision of the future? The argument for addressing students’ disciplinary future is kept throughout their study path: we work into a source of motivation and personal development. From that motivation, students learn more deeply into what we have not explicitly addressed up to now.
Education that orients, deepens and broadens the employability future
ECA as university of applied sciences designs the program courses through which students can envisage their employability future. It is achieved this by:
- Orientation: the program indicates what it stands for. It is done by showing characteristic approaches, mapping major challenges for the discipline and by indicating how it is related to other disciplines. Consequently, students can test their employability future self against the program.
- Deepening: the program introduces to the key concepts of the discipline. It teaches the language, the methods, the way of thinking and acting within the discipline. In addition, students are exposed to research issues during internships and theoretical studies. They challenge each other, so they show themselves as a members of the disciplinary community.
- Broadening: the program positions its own discipline in relation to other disciplines. Students solve interdisciplinary research problems together with colleagues from other disciplines. In this dialogue they discover the uniqueness and complementarity of their own discipline. This helps to position their disciplinary future self more clearly.
Education contributes to personal development
The program is more than a sum of credits and course components. It forms the current and future disciplinary identity of students as personalities and challenges them to embed the disciplinary identity in who they are as a person. The disciplinary “self” that students develop during their studies at the Academy becomes a guideline for their “being” and “belongin” of the unique person. In this way, the program contributes to the development of the personality.
The vision in short
Higher education is a big challenge for every person. In our society different people are changing their previous education into profession which is needed for risk society and their own future. They decide what niche of scientific discipline is worth to invest their time and energy. They’re painting an image of what they will be doing within this discipline. This image we call – their disciplinary future self.
In the Academy, students become personalities with caring approach to their lives. At the same time they are engaged with intelligent people – researchers, teachers, representatives of clergy, artists, scientists from different fields who contribute to the spiritual wealth of society. During their education, they get the opportunity to acquire the knowledge, skills and attitude needed to be a scientist in their chosen field. Beruf and Bildung will also take an important place in their education, which is person-centered in all facets. Study programs have their own disciplinary vision mainly interdisciplinary. It helps to experience the field of their choice.
This increases their motivation. They perceive the learning environment as a positive tool to reach their objectives.
Students will be challenged to think about their own identity. How does this relate to the characteristics of the field? By providing the education on all levels, the Program is also person-centered.
During the course of their education, they slowly but surely will become future artists, iconographers, social workers, supervisors. They are graduates who, through their own particularities, will provide a society with scientifically approved, liturgically appreciated, classical, modern and critical contributions. And even after obtaining their diploma, the learning process will never end because of appreciation of learning as a value..
In short, research driven, interdisciplinary, European society oriented, person centered - are the basic components of our educational vision.