Significant networks and meaningful conversations observed in the first-round applicants for the Teachers’ Academy at a research-intensive university

The University of Helsinki established a Teachers’ Academy to reward excellence in teaching. This study focuses on teachers’ significant networks and their meaningful conversations about teaching and learning before the establishment of the Teachers’ Academy. The research data consisted of answers to open-ended questions, and were examined using social network analysis. The teachers’ network consisted of significant relations with (1) colleagues and other teachers, (2) peers in pedagogical courses and pedagogical experts, (3) students, and (4) family members and friends. The conversations with different parties varied in nature, content and the level of confidentiality.     

Indirekte Gesundheitseffekte des Unterrichtsprogramms HealthyPEP

Numerous studies have confirmed direct health effects of interventions with a physical activity component on students without providing sufficient information on the contents or the degree to which the programs have been carried out. The empirical evidence of the indirect health effects of physical education is weaker. In this article the focus is placed on the evaluation of the indirect health effects, such as the enhancement of physical activity and its psychological determinants (e.g. motivation, attitudes, self-efficacy and knowledge) of the health promotion program HealthyPEP, using a quasi-experimental design with 516 sixth grade students. When taking into account the contents of HealthyPEP and the degree of implementation, it was clear that the program had different effects on the two genders whereby girls evaluated HealthyPEP in a more positive way compared to boys. In girls, positive tendencies were observed on rational cognitive determinants (e.g. knowledge and attitudes towards sports). The contents of HealthyPEP must be further optimized in the future to achieve positive indirect health effects also on boys.     

Bureaucracies in Schools—Approaches to Support Measures in Swedish Schools Seen in the Light of Skrtic’s Theories

In Sweden, policy changes for provision of special support have been introduced, implying that teachers are obliged to provide and evaluate extra adaptations in regular classrooms prior to referring pupils to special support. The policy changes raise questions about school staffs’ views of support measures and of necessary professional competence for provision of the support measures. We conducted focus group interviews with 60 school staff representatives—headmasters, general education teachers, and special educators/school welfare teams—about their understandings of the new policy. The data were analyzed qualitatively, with the objective to explore school staffs’ approaches to the policy changes. Two main “ideal type approaches” were discerned, using Skrtic’s theories, viz. the bureaucracy approach and adhocracy approach. In the light of Skrtic’s theory, professionals’ reasoning about the new policy may reflect difficulties that are encountered in the process of implementing the policy in bureaucracy-steered schools.     

The Internationalisation of University Education: Australia and Finland Compared

This paper examines alternative attitudes to internationalisation, using Australia and Finland as case studies. In Australia, the principal thrust of “internationalisation” has been one of the export of educational services. The fees paid by the majority of the 84 000 international university students have become a critical part of the funding of Australia’s university system. In Finland, universities continue to be funded almost exclusively through government grants, and official philosophy towards the internationalisation of higher education differs from the more direct economic Australian model. Comparative philosophy, mobility and comparative numbers are considered. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Dynamics of GeoGebra ecosystem in mathematics education

Education and Information Technologies - The purpose of this study was to investigate the trends of GeoGebra related studies. We focused on the articles published between 2009 and 2021 and existed...     

Exploring an intervention’s impact on everyday school activities

The focus of this paper is on a group of pupils with reading and writing difficulties who have been participating in an intervention study using assistive technology. That intervention study contained supervised training sessions with reading and writing tasks using an iPad with special supportive applications. The current study is a qualitative investigation of whether there has been any transfer from the intervention, to the pupils’ everyday school activities. Interviews with pupils and their teachers and observations during classroom lectures have been used to collect data. The results show that the pupils were positive to the assistive technology (the applications on the iPads), they found the apps easy to learn how to use and they appreciated the benefits they could give. Even so, only a few of the pupils had found use for and continued to use the tools after the intervention period finished. Possible reasons are that when the novelty wore off, students reverted to their usual study habits and that older students with many teachers and different classrooms were less able to adapt to using the apps. To improve transfer, it is suggested to introduce assistive technology earlier to students, in the younger grades, before study habits have been formed and to inform teachers about the use of AT in the classroom, including what is available and how it can benefit students.     

Inter and intra-document contexts applied in polyrepresentation for best match IR

The principle of polyrepresentation offers a theoretical framework for handling multiple contexts in information retrieval (IR). This paper presents an empirical laboratory study of polyrepresentation in restricted mode of the information space with focus on inter and intra-document features. The Cystic Fibrosis test collection indexed in the best match system InQuery constitutes the experimental setting. Overlaps between five functionally and/or cognitively different document representations are identified. Supporting the principle of polyrepresentation, results show that in general overlaps generated by three or four representations of different nature have higher precision than those generated from two representations or the single fields. This result pertains to both structured and unstructured query mode in best match retrieval, however, with the latter query mode demonstrating higher performance. The retrieval overlaps containing search keys from the bibliographic references provide the best retrieval performance and minor MeSH terms the worst. It is concluded that a highly structured query language is necessary when implementing the principle of polyrepresentation in a best match IR system because the principle is inherently Boolean. Finally a re-ranking test shows promising results when search results are re-ranked according to precision obtained in the overlaps whilst re-ranking by citations seems less useful when integrated into polyrepresentative applications.