Arts-based Methods and Organizational Learning, 2017
The Finnish school produces good results; however, reports by teachers and students suggest a lac... more The Finnish school produces good results; however, reports by teachers and students suggest a lack of enjoyment in schools with an atmosphere described as unapproachable. This atmosphere has resulted in school enjoyment problems in Finnish schools. To implement changes in schools, it is necessary to address changes in teacher education. We describe an innovative teacher education program that provides opportunities for enhancing communal engaged learning. The program includes music theatre as a basic element and focuses on expression, cooperative learning and experiential learning. The program is called OpeArt, which started in Savonlinna, Finland, in 2014. In this program, students encounter elements supporting their growth as teachers in and through theatre/drama and expressive processes and elements. The program contributes to the development of personality, creativity, courage, self-expression, collaboration and project execution. The basic elements of the OpeArt program are phenomenon based, with project-, cooperative- and inquiry-based learning. Students are encouraged to expand outside their comfort zones and explore their limits and possibilities by experiencing new personal and artistic horizons.
As in Finnish higher education in general, student selection in initial teacher education is unde... more As in Finnish higher education in general, student selection in initial teacher education is undergoing a major upheaval. Along with general reforms such as increasing the weight given in selection to matriculation exam grades, there is also a sector-specific selection reform being carried out in teacher education, resulting in a shift towards a genuine joint admission process. In this article we examine how the extensive reforms in 2020 relate to the continuum of selection reforms carried out during the history of primary teacher education in Finland. We assign a special status to the causes and consequences of the following innovations: scrapping gender quotas in 1989, bringing the selection process forward from August to June in 1997 and the transition to the nationwide collaborative project VAKAVA in 2007. As a whole our article indicates that there is abundant trust in and ample use of logical rationalization, but that this is a somewhat inefficient method of developing student...
ABSTRACT Background The COVID-19 crisis forced education providers around the world to cancel con... more ABSTRACT Background The COVID-19 crisis forced education providers around the world to cancel contact teaching in schools as part of measures to limit contact between people and to slowdown the spread of the virus. The rapid and unexpected transition to distance teaching in the beginning of the pandemic posed an unprecedented challenge for teachers and placed a significant demand on their informal professional learning. This study focused on Finnish primary teachers’ professional learning domains and activities during the first weeks of Finland’s COVID-19 school lockdown. Purpose The aim was to understand what and how primary teachers learnt during the beginning of the distance teaching period. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted individually with 20 Finnish primary school teachers, all of whom had been delivering distance teaching from the beginning of the lockdown, during the fourth week of the distance teaching period. Two separate qualitative analyses were undertaken. Findings The first analysis indicated that teachers’ professional learning involved more than progress in the most self-evident and apparent technological knowledge domain: learning was also firmly connected to pedagogical knowledge and coping skills. The second analysis identified the individual learning activities, such as learning by doing, experimenting and considering one’s own teaching practice, and revealed three levels of collective learning activities (with a close colleague, in the school community and in larger online communities) carried out with the aim of improving distance teaching. Conclusions The study draws attention to primary teachers’ multifaceted professional learning domains and the activities entered into during the rapid shift from contact to distance teaching. It highlights that even in emergency circumstances, teachers’ individual and collective learning processes are interrelated and supplementary to each other. Educators’ hard-earned understanding achieved in relation to distance teaching should be nurtured and refined to further benefit and support the profession.
School amalgamation has been studied chiefly from the economic viewpoint. Our research study, whi... more School amalgamation has been studied chiefly from the economic viewpoint. Our research study, which deals with the joining of two different lower schools, gives a voice to the students and teachers affected by the change. The research data consists of interviews and observation notes as well as a field diary. Amalgamating schools is a more complicated process than is commonly assumed, and the students and staff in our study had very different experiences of the progress of the amalgamation. The teachers’ experience was that students had quickly adapted to the amalgamation, even though the students themselves felt there was considerable separation between student groups. Attempts were made to speed up the process through rhetoric, but without success. The study shows, among other things, that instead of suppressing discussion about the former schools, experiences related to them should be dealt with systematically.
The Finnish school produces good results; however, reports by teachers and students suggest a lac... more The Finnish school produces good results; however, reports by teachers and students suggest a lack of enjoyment in schools with an atmosphere described as unapproachable. This atmosphere has resulted in school enjoyment problems in Finnish schools. To implement changes in schools, it is necessary to address changes in teacher education. We describe an innovative teacher education program that provides opportunities for enhancing communal engaged learning. The program includes music theatre as a basic element and focuses on expression, cooperative learning and experiential learning. The program is called OpeArt, which started in Savonlinna, Finland, in 2014. In this program, students encounter elements supporting their growth as teachers in and through theatre/drama and expressive processes and elements. The program contributes to the development of personality, creativity, courage, self-expression, collaboration and project execution. The basic elements of the OpeArt program are phe...
Suomalaiset korkeakouluopiskelijat ovat Euroopan toisiksi iäkkäimpiä. Kun opiskelijat muualla Eur... more Suomalaiset korkeakouluopiskelijat ovat Euroopan toisiksi iäkkäimpiä. Kun opiskelijat muualla Euroopassa ovat keski-iältään (mediaani) 23-vuotiaita, on suomalaisopiskelijoiden keski-ikä selkeästi korkeampi (25,5 vuotta). Myös nuorien opiskelijoiden osuus on maanosan toiseksi pienin: ainoastaan 46 prosenttia opiskelijoista on alle 25-vuotiaita, kun vastaava osuus muualla on 68 prosenttia. Yhtenä syynä suomalaisopiskelijoiden korkeaan ikärakenteeseen pidetään poikkeuksellisen hidasta korkeakouluopintoihin siirtymistä. Yli neljännes (27 prosenttia) opiskelijoista aloittaa opintonsa vasta yli kaksi vuotta toisen asteen koulutuksen päättymisen jälkeen, kun muualla osuus jää keskimäärin 14 prosenttiin. Ainoastaan Ruotsissa opintonsa viiveellä aloittavien osuus on prosenttiyksikön verran Suomea korkeampi. (Eurostudent, 2018.)
Aivan kuten edellisinäkin vuosina, johdantoartikkelin, josta ei laadita koekysymyksiä, tarkoitus ... more Aivan kuten edellisinäkin vuosina, johdantoartikkelin, josta ei laadita koekysymyksiä, tarkoitus on johdatella lukijaa vuoden 2010 kirjallisen kokeen aineistoon. Johdannon tehtävänä on paitsi kertoa artikkeleista yleensä myös välittää artikkelit koonneen työryhmän ajattelemaa punaista lankaa lukijoille. Saamamme palautteen perusteella tällainen menettely on koettu hyväksi ja tarpeelliseksi. Kokeeseen voi toki lähteä ilman, että on lukenut johdantoartikkelia. Toisin kuin aikaisempina vuosina tällä kertaa ...
Arts-based Methods and Organizational Learning, 2017
The Finnish school produces good results; however, reports by teachers and students suggest a lac... more The Finnish school produces good results; however, reports by teachers and students suggest a lack of enjoyment in schools with an atmosphere described as unapproachable. This atmosphere has resulted in school enjoyment problems in Finnish schools. To implement changes in schools, it is necessary to address changes in teacher education. We describe an innovative teacher education program that provides opportunities for enhancing communal engaged learning. The program includes music theatre as a basic element and focuses on expression, cooperative learning and experiential learning. The program is called OpeArt, which started in Savonlinna, Finland, in 2014. In this program, students encounter elements supporting their growth as teachers in and through theatre/drama and expressive processes and elements. The program contributes to the development of personality, creativity, courage, self-expression, collaboration and project execution. The basic elements of the OpeArt program are phenomenon based, with project-, cooperative- and inquiry-based learning. Students are encouraged to expand outside their comfort zones and explore their limits and possibilities by experiencing new personal and artistic horizons.
As in Finnish higher education in general, student selection in initial teacher education is unde... more As in Finnish higher education in general, student selection in initial teacher education is undergoing a major upheaval. Along with general reforms such as increasing the weight given in selection to matriculation exam grades, there is also a sector-specific selection reform being carried out in teacher education, resulting in a shift towards a genuine joint admission process. In this article we examine how the extensive reforms in 2020 relate to the continuum of selection reforms carried out during the history of primary teacher education in Finland. We assign a special status to the causes and consequences of the following innovations: scrapping gender quotas in 1989, bringing the selection process forward from August to June in 1997 and the transition to the nationwide collaborative project VAKAVA in 2007. As a whole our article indicates that there is abundant trust in and ample use of logical rationalization, but that this is a somewhat inefficient method of developing student...
ABSTRACT Background The COVID-19 crisis forced education providers around the world to cancel con... more ABSTRACT Background The COVID-19 crisis forced education providers around the world to cancel contact teaching in schools as part of measures to limit contact between people and to slowdown the spread of the virus. The rapid and unexpected transition to distance teaching in the beginning of the pandemic posed an unprecedented challenge for teachers and placed a significant demand on their informal professional learning. This study focused on Finnish primary teachers’ professional learning domains and activities during the first weeks of Finland’s COVID-19 school lockdown. Purpose The aim was to understand what and how primary teachers learnt during the beginning of the distance teaching period. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted individually with 20 Finnish primary school teachers, all of whom had been delivering distance teaching from the beginning of the lockdown, during the fourth week of the distance teaching period. Two separate qualitative analyses were undertaken. Findings The first analysis indicated that teachers’ professional learning involved more than progress in the most self-evident and apparent technological knowledge domain: learning was also firmly connected to pedagogical knowledge and coping skills. The second analysis identified the individual learning activities, such as learning by doing, experimenting and considering one’s own teaching practice, and revealed three levels of collective learning activities (with a close colleague, in the school community and in larger online communities) carried out with the aim of improving distance teaching. Conclusions The study draws attention to primary teachers’ multifaceted professional learning domains and the activities entered into during the rapid shift from contact to distance teaching. It highlights that even in emergency circumstances, teachers’ individual and collective learning processes are interrelated and supplementary to each other. Educators’ hard-earned understanding achieved in relation to distance teaching should be nurtured and refined to further benefit and support the profession.
School amalgamation has been studied chiefly from the economic viewpoint. Our research study, whi... more School amalgamation has been studied chiefly from the economic viewpoint. Our research study, which deals with the joining of two different lower schools, gives a voice to the students and teachers affected by the change. The research data consists of interviews and observation notes as well as a field diary. Amalgamating schools is a more complicated process than is commonly assumed, and the students and staff in our study had very different experiences of the progress of the amalgamation. The teachers’ experience was that students had quickly adapted to the amalgamation, even though the students themselves felt there was considerable separation between student groups. Attempts were made to speed up the process through rhetoric, but without success. The study shows, among other things, that instead of suppressing discussion about the former schools, experiences related to them should be dealt with systematically.
The Finnish school produces good results; however, reports by teachers and students suggest a lac... more The Finnish school produces good results; however, reports by teachers and students suggest a lack of enjoyment in schools with an atmosphere described as unapproachable. This atmosphere has resulted in school enjoyment problems in Finnish schools. To implement changes in schools, it is necessary to address changes in teacher education. We describe an innovative teacher education program that provides opportunities for enhancing communal engaged learning. The program includes music theatre as a basic element and focuses on expression, cooperative learning and experiential learning. The program is called OpeArt, which started in Savonlinna, Finland, in 2014. In this program, students encounter elements supporting their growth as teachers in and through theatre/drama and expressive processes and elements. The program contributes to the development of personality, creativity, courage, self-expression, collaboration and project execution. The basic elements of the OpeArt program are phe...
Suomalaiset korkeakouluopiskelijat ovat Euroopan toisiksi iäkkäimpiä. Kun opiskelijat muualla Eur... more Suomalaiset korkeakouluopiskelijat ovat Euroopan toisiksi iäkkäimpiä. Kun opiskelijat muualla Euroopassa ovat keski-iältään (mediaani) 23-vuotiaita, on suomalaisopiskelijoiden keski-ikä selkeästi korkeampi (25,5 vuotta). Myös nuorien opiskelijoiden osuus on maanosan toiseksi pienin: ainoastaan 46 prosenttia opiskelijoista on alle 25-vuotiaita, kun vastaava osuus muualla on 68 prosenttia. Yhtenä syynä suomalaisopiskelijoiden korkeaan ikärakenteeseen pidetään poikkeuksellisen hidasta korkeakouluopintoihin siirtymistä. Yli neljännes (27 prosenttia) opiskelijoista aloittaa opintonsa vasta yli kaksi vuotta toisen asteen koulutuksen päättymisen jälkeen, kun muualla osuus jää keskimäärin 14 prosenttiin. Ainoastaan Ruotsissa opintonsa viiveellä aloittavien osuus on prosenttiyksikön verran Suomea korkeampi. (Eurostudent, 2018.)
Aivan kuten edellisinäkin vuosina, johdantoartikkelin, josta ei laadita koekysymyksiä, tarkoitus ... more Aivan kuten edellisinäkin vuosina, johdantoartikkelin, josta ei laadita koekysymyksiä, tarkoitus on johdatella lukijaa vuoden 2010 kirjallisen kokeen aineistoon. Johdannon tehtävänä on paitsi kertoa artikkeleista yleensä myös välittää artikkelit koonneen työryhmän ajattelemaa punaista lankaa lukijoille. Saamamme palautteen perusteella tällainen menettely on koettu hyväksi ja tarpeelliseksi. Kokeeseen voi toki lähteä ilman, että on lukenut johdantoartikkelia. Toisin kuin aikaisempina vuosina tällä kertaa ...
Uploads
Papers