In higher education, student-activating methods have been developed over the last 30 years, based on research in student learning and theories of educational psychology. During this time, teacher learning has also become a focus of interest to meet these evolving needs. Teachers are increasingly expected to prioritize the development of active, self-regulated, and collaborative learning for both themselves and their students. Contemporary educational approaches emphasize the importance of teachers functioning as facilitators of learning, rather than solely being providers of knowledge.

The present study investigates how theories and practices of modern educational psychology, as applied in Finnish teacher education, can be implemented in an intercultural context in the Middle East. The "Introduction to Human Learning and Educational Psychology" course was offered as part of the one-year Post Graduate Diploma in Education Program (PGDE) developed in Finland and conducted at a teacher training institution in the UAE. The course explores the fundamental principles of educational psychology and how to tailor teaching to align with learners' cognitive processes, including attention, memory, self-regulation, and teachers' epistemic beliefs. The course was delivered 80% online and 20% face-to-face. The online materials were designed by the Finnish team, while the contact/webinar/hybrid teaching was organized by the host institution in the Middle East.

The flipped classroom design used to implement the course was based on the Engaging Learning Model (Lonka, 2018), which is currently applied in Educational Psychology courses for future teachers at the University of Helsinki, Finland. The participants (n = 13) of this study worked in private schools as full-time teachers, with 11 of them being females. The teacher students were originally from seven different countries across Africa, Asia, and Europe.

The data utilized in this study comprised one of the course assignments, specifically a summary of the students' learning diaries. Learning diary assignments are suggested to help students reflect their learning and improve their self-regulative knowledge. Units representing surface-level learning were classified into the reproduction category. Another category, elaboration, reflected the writer presenting reasons for or drawing conclusions based on facts. The third category, critical self-reflection, indicated new discoveries, insights, or changes in participants’ thinking. This developed classification was applied in the preliminary content analysis. To assess the inter-rater reliability of the measure, half of the material underwent simultaneous analysis by raters. The agreement between the two raters was calculated using Cohen’s kappa, resulting in a value of 0.719, indicating substantial reliability of the measure.

The results indicated that about two-thirds of all reflections were elaborative or insightful, while one-third remained at the reproduction level, indicating that the course effectively expanded participants’ theoretical comprehension of pedagogy. Although the results of this particular study should not necessarily be considered applicable to a broader population, the study sought to contribute knowledge. It aimed to understand the effectiveness of the modern content and an innovative implementation method of the course for international students in the Middle East.

Keywords: Intercultural environment, teacher training, flipped learning, educational psychology, Engaging Learning Model, classification.