DNS - TVind - the necessary teacher training college
Ulfborg, Denmark
About DNS - TvindDNS Tvind is a teacher-training college located in rural Denmark. It is founded on holistic principles and places a particular emphasis on international development, sustainability and cooperative living. The campus consists of several “heart chambers”: a high school (“Dagskolen”), a number of smaller care homes for students with particular behavioural or social needs, an adult special needs program, a wind energy farm and the teacher training college. Since its inception, several other Tvind schools for children have been founded throughout Denmark. DNS stands for Det Nødvendige Seminarium, best translated as the Necessary Teacher Training College. Tvind is Danish for “twine or twist,” as the river does along the campus.
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Physical Composition & Location
DNS Tvind is located on a former farm in a rural area near Ulfborg in Western Jutland, Denmark. It was founded in the 1960s by a group of travelling teachers whose pedagogy was based on a study tour through Europe and northern Africa. Since then, the program and facility have expanded to include all the heart chambers as well as several “teams” of student teachers who balance coursework, practice teaching and experiential learning on site and abroad as part of a three-years-long program.
While there are traditional classrooms at DNS Tvind, the school considers “regular life experiences” to be sites of learning, and so a farmer’s field, the bus on the way to a dirt-floor classroom in Malawi, the fish market and the sink where dishes are washed in the communal kitchen are all considered “classrooms,” too.
Additional projects which have been taken on by the membership at DNS Tvind include building what was, at the time (1975), the biggest windmill in the world, and, in 2009, adding a self-sufficient garden farm to bring the facility back to its agrarian roots.
While there are traditional classrooms at DNS Tvind, the school considers “regular life experiences” to be sites of learning, and so a farmer’s field, the bus on the way to a dirt-floor classroom in Malawi, the fish market and the sink where dishes are washed in the communal kitchen are all considered “classrooms,” too.
Additional projects which have been taken on by the membership at DNS Tvind include building what was, at the time (1975), the biggest windmill in the world, and, in 2009, adding a self-sufficient garden farm to bring the facility back to its agrarian roots.
Demographics & Staff
All student teachers and instructors live together at DNS communally. All income is pooled (student teachers must contribute a minimum tuition, but may — and often do — contribute much more) and cooking, cleaning and maintenance responsibilities are shared amongst all.
Most student teachers and instructors at DNS Tvind are European and, further to that, the majority are Danish. Nevertheless, the school considers the global community in its pedagogy and interest — there are DNS Movement family schools founded after the Tvind Danish model in Mozambique, Angola, Malawi and India.
Most student teachers and instructors at DNS Tvind are European and, further to that, the majority are Danish. Nevertheless, the school considers the global community in its pedagogy and interest — there are DNS Movement family schools founded after the Tvind Danish model in Mozambique, Angola, Malawi and India.
Holistic Curriculum
One former student teacher (and now instructor) at DNS Tvind describes the program: “Students run the school and their education, teachers organize, facilitate, motivate, and challenge the students.” DNS is “about decentralization of authority and . . . the holistic view.” All projects are undertaken as a collective — “all important decisions of the team are taken in a common meeting.” DNS refers to this process “radically democratic.”
The school features an original teaching style called DMM, or Determination of Modern Methods. It is divided into three parts:
· Studies, in which students take the lead in their own learning through a digital library that contains subjects divided into specific tasks for students to undertake on their own initiative;
· Courses, which are more traditionally teacher-led interdisciplinary lessons; and
· Experiences, wherein students participate in travel, employment, sporting events, arts programs and other individual and shared projects.
In addition to their responsibilities working within the heart chambers and their classes in education theory, teams of student teachers and instructors save up money communally and travel to developing countries, teaching and learning from communities in need. Students raise money for these excursions through activities that promote sustainability such as collecting and selling used clothing and working with local farmers.
An important tenet of DNS is that life experience is teaching experience. This is best expressed in their nine principles:
1) You have to go exploring to acquire new ideas — AND explore further to form better ideas.
2) You have to get close to the thing you want to learn about. The closer you get, the more you learn.
3) Together with your fellow students you must be the driving force in the work in order to learn much more.
4) You should be forewarned: once you get into your stride, you’ll want to do more and more. The deeper you go into a question, the more you’ll want to know.
5) There isn’t time to learn everything at school.
6) Only Adam, at first, was alone in the world. All the rest of us are here together.
7) The things you learn should be put to use.
8) You have to be mobile, and then you will encounter many things.
9) All this applies to instructors, too.
The school features an original teaching style called DMM, or Determination of Modern Methods. It is divided into three parts:
· Studies, in which students take the lead in their own learning through a digital library that contains subjects divided into specific tasks for students to undertake on their own initiative;
· Courses, which are more traditionally teacher-led interdisciplinary lessons; and
· Experiences, wherein students participate in travel, employment, sporting events, arts programs and other individual and shared projects.
In addition to their responsibilities working within the heart chambers and their classes in education theory, teams of student teachers and instructors save up money communally and travel to developing countries, teaching and learning from communities in need. Students raise money for these excursions through activities that promote sustainability such as collecting and selling used clothing and working with local farmers.
An important tenet of DNS is that life experience is teaching experience. This is best expressed in their nine principles:
1) You have to go exploring to acquire new ideas — AND explore further to form better ideas.
2) You have to get close to the thing you want to learn about. The closer you get, the more you learn.
3) Together with your fellow students you must be the driving force in the work in order to learn much more.
4) You should be forewarned: once you get into your stride, you’ll want to do more and more. The deeper you go into a question, the more you’ll want to know.
5) There isn’t time to learn everything at school.
6) Only Adam, at first, was alone in the world. All the rest of us are here together.
7) The things you learn should be put to use.
8) You have to be mobile, and then you will encounter many things.
9) All this applies to instructors, too.
Personal and Leadership Development
DNS-Tvind is dedicated to building leaders as part of its teacher-training program. From its website:
The pedagogical ideas and the human outlook of the schools, are, in short, an attempt to: realize that living, experiencing and learning basically is a social process, regard the students as social and political individuals each being active in the society, emphasize practical teaching and tasks besides the theoretical teaching, include students with different social and personal problems, integrate students with backgrounds of being emigrants or former refugees, further a positive attitude to the non-fortunate of any kind and emphasize the importance to know about and see the world.
This teaching philosophy aims to produce teachers who will lead by example, think outside the box and “respond to the challenges of our time across social divisions wherever it is needed — and that is everywhere.
The pedagogical ideas and the human outlook of the schools, are, in short, an attempt to: realize that living, experiencing and learning basically is a social process, regard the students as social and political individuals each being active in the society, emphasize practical teaching and tasks besides the theoretical teaching, include students with different social and personal problems, integrate students with backgrounds of being emigrants or former refugees, further a positive attitude to the non-fortunate of any kind and emphasize the importance to know about and see the world.
This teaching philosophy aims to produce teachers who will lead by example, think outside the box and “respond to the challenges of our time across social divisions wherever it is needed — and that is everywhere.