Kindergarten teachers adjust their teaching practices in accordance with children’s academic pre‐skills

This study examined the extent to which kindergarten children’s academic pre‐skills are associated with their teachers’ subsequent teaching practices. The pre‐skills in reading and math of 1268 children (655 boys, 613 girls) were measured in kindergarten in the fall. A pair of trained observers used the Classroom Assessment Scoring System instrument to observe 49 kindergarten teachers on their emotional support, classroom organisation and instructional support in kindergarten in the spring. The results of the multilevel modelling showed that low levels of academic pre‐skills in kindergarten classrooms in the fall predicted high classroom quality in the classrooms later on. The results suggest that the overall level of children’s academic pre‐skills in the classroom plays an important role in the ways in which teachers adapt their instructional practices to the needs of a particular classroom.     

‘New Ways of Working’ as a tool for improving the performance of a knowledge-intensive company

This paper explores ‘New Ways of Working’ (NewWoW) – that is, non-traditional mobile and flexible work practices, settings and locations using sufficient ICT tools – as a novel approach to improve the performance of a knowledge-intensive organization. This paper makes a contribution by illustrating how the measurement of the impacts of NewWoW can be done and by producing empirical evidence of the benefits of NewWoW. The conceptual background of the study is anchored in the literature on knowledge work productivity and performance as well as on NewWoW. The empirical section reports a longitudinal case study of a change process during which the case company, Rapal, went through a NewWoW project. The impacts of the change are evaluated based on the results of both objective and subjective performance measures. The project was successful and resulted in significant cost savings as well as improvements in environmental performance (CO₂ emissions).     

Finnish pre-service teachers’ and upper secondary students’ understanding of division and reasoning strategies used

In this paper, we focus on Finnish pre-service elementary teachers’ (N?=?269) and upper secondary students’ (N?=?1,434) understanding of division. In the questionnaire, we used the following non-standard division problem: “We know that 498:6?=?83. How could you conclude from this relationship (without using long-division algorithm) what 491:6?=?? is?” This problem especially measures conceptual understanding, adaptive reasoning, and procedural fluency. Based on the results, we can conclude that division seems not to be fully understood: 45% of the pre-service teachers and 37% of upper secondary students were able to produce complete or mainly correct solutions. The reasoning strategies used by these two groups did not differ very much. We identified four main reasons for problems in understanding this task: (1) staying on the integer level, (2) an inability to handle the remainder, (3) difficulties in understanding the relationships between different operations, and (4) insufficient reasoning strategies. It seems that learners’ reasoning strategies in particular play a central role when teachers try to improve learners’ proficiency.     

Vocational teachers' gendered reflections on education,teaching and care

In this article, we discuss teachers' reflections on the relation between teaching and care in the two most gender-segregated sectors of vocational upper secondary education in Finland, namely Health and Social services and Transport and Technology. We first discuss the concepts around education, teaching, taking care for and caring about students, using theoretisations of care and feminist pedagogies. Using teacher interviews and field notes, we then analyse teachers' ambivalence about care work in the context of teaching, placing special emphasis on care as a gendered task, and then discuss the ‘moral panic’ or ‘worry speech’ about young people in vocational education from the perspective of caring about. The findings are reflected through earlier studies in lower secondary schools. We argue that even if teachers in vocational education, especially male teachers, tend to feel awkward about caring work, they cannot avoid it, and they do care about their students and regard care as a general responsibility.     

Integrating art into science education: a survey of science teachers’ practices

ABSTRACT

Numerous case studies suggest that integrating art and science education could engage students with creative projects and encourage students to express science in multitude of ways. However, little is known about art integration practices in everyday science teaching. With a qualitative e-survey, this study explores the art integration of science teachers (n?=?66). A pedagogical model for science teachers’ art integration emerged from a qualitative content analysis conducted on examples of art integration. In the model, art integration is characterised as integration through content and activities. Whilst the links in the content were facilitated either directly between concepts and ideas or indirectly through themes or artefacts, the integration through activity often connected an activity in one domain and a concept, idea or artefact in the other domain with the exception of some activities that could belong to both domains. Moreover, the examples of art integration in everyday classroom did not include expression of emotions often associated with art. In addition, quantitative part of the survey confirmed that integration is infrequent in all mapped areas. The findings of this study have implications for science teacher education that should offer opportunities for more consistent art integration.     

Primary Student Teachers' Ideas about Teaching a Physics Topic

This study examines Finnish and English primary student teachers' ideas when planning to teach a physics topic during their science education studies. Many primary student teachers lack sufficient subject knowledge, which prevents them from constructing the scientific pedagogical content knowledge that enables them to concentrate on pupils' thinking and process skills needed in a physics topic. Therefore they will have problems constructing learning environments that encourage pupils to take active control of their learning. In order to develop effective pedagogical content knowledge it is of the utmost importance that the science educators responsible for physics courses pay special attention to the promotion of favourable attitudes towards the teaching of physics topics. This can be done by focusing on how to teach some basic familiar topics. Quality, not quantity, is important in focusing on both subject knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. The construction of pedagogical content knowledge is a complex interrelationship of attitudes, subject, and pedagogical knowledge. All three of them need to be developed to enable students to confidently and effectively teach young children.     

PRE-SERVICE PHYSICS TEACHERS’ UNDERSTANDING OF THE RELATIONAL STRUCTURE OF PHYSICS CONCEPTS: ORGANISING SUBJECT CONTENTS FOR PURPOSES OF TEACHING

Good conceptual understanding of physics is based on understanding what the key concepts are and how they are related. This kind of understanding is especially important for physics teachers in planning how and in what order to introduce concepts in teaching; connections which tie concepts to each other give direction of progress—there is “flux of information” so that what was learned before provides the basis for learning new ideas. In this study, we discuss how such ordering of concepts can be made visible by using concept maps and how they can be used in analysing the students’ views and ideas about the inherent logic of the teaching plans. The approach discussed here is informed by the recent cognitively oriented ideas of knowledge organisation concentrating on simple knowledge organisation patterns and how they form the basis of more complex concept networks. The analysis of such concept networks is then very naturally based on the use of network theory on analysing the concept maps. The results show that even in well-connected maps, there can be abrupt changes in the information flux in the way knowledge is passed from the initial levels to the final levels. This suggests that handling the information content is very demanding and perhaps a very difficult skill for a pre-service teacher to master.     

From vocational training to open learning environments: vocational special needs education during change

This paper describes the development of education of students with special needs in vocational education. The paper is based on a case study research conducted in 2001–2005 in Jyväskylä Municipal Federation of Vocational Education in Central Finland. The study consisted of two parts: firstly of the historical analysis of special educational stages, and secondly of the contemporary analysis of special educational challenges in the research target. The Developmental Work Research model was used in attempting to get a systemic view of different factors affecting a special educational entity. The study showed the importance of a holistic view. The special educational system in the research target seems to be strongly linked to the general structure of vocational education, its goals, learning principles, legislation and personnel structure. The development of vocational special education in Jyväskylä followed the strongly regulated national guidelines set for vocational special education until the end of the 1990s. At that time new legislation, structural reforms and the change from norm‐based towards an autonomous information‐based self‐government opened doors for new special educational implementation. From the perspective of teachers specialized in special educational needs (SEN‐teachers) a clear change can be seen from an autonomous, defined work towards a loss of an expertise position. However, the strong linkage between general and special education in vocational education offers possibilities for inclusive education. In order to face the new challenges, the work of SEN‐teachers has to be redefined to clearly broaden the perspective from teaching towards new expertise in each educational establishment.