Scientific Reasoning,School Achievement and Gender: a Multilevel Study of between and within School Effects in Finland

The relationships between reasoning and school achievement were studied taking into account the multilevel nature (school- and class-levels) of the data. We gathered data from 51 classes at seven schools in metropolitan and Eastern Finland (N = 769, 395 males, 15-year-old students). To study scientific reasoning, we used a modified version of Science Reasoning Tasks, tapping control-of-variable schemata. Analyses were conducted by MLwiN2.10 multilevel modelling. The present results showed that the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) of schools for scientific reasoning is 7% and that the corresponding ICC of classes is 10%. Whereas the first finding confirms earlier PISA results, the second finding provides new insights into class variation within schools. In practice, class composition seems to be an efficient solution to meeting the differing needs of individual students.     

Co-Producing Children's Sociality in Parent–Teacher Conferences

The aim of this article is to describe how parents and preschool teachers talk about children's interactional skills in parent–teacher conferences in the Swedish preschool and how this can be related to socialization processes. The analyses show that children's communicative skills, such as turn-taking in conversation and co-operation, are considered as important for both parents and teachers and talked about in terms of trouble or success. Children's skills are often assessed by using chronological age as a parameter. Our analysis suggests that the talk about children's interactional skills may be interpreted in terms of deficiency discourses founded primarily on theories in developmental psychology, and that parents, and particularly the teachers, present themselves as socializing agents with regard to children.     

Pressures,rewards and teacher retention: a comparative study of primary teaching in England and Finland

The article presents some findings from the York‐Jyväskylä Teacher Professionalism project. The project was a follow‐up study to earlier case‐study research in six schools in Finland and six schools in England on the impact of educational reforms on teachers' work. Data were collected by re‐interviewing a sample of teachers from the original schools six years later. The views of English and Finnish teachers concerning the ways in which changes in practice, pay and working conditions affected their perception of teaching as a profession are contrasted. The crucial factors discouraging teachers from remaining in teaching were work intensification, low pay, deteriorating pupil behaviour and a decline in public respect. Positive influences on teacher retention were commitment to children, professional freedom and supportive colleagues. Suggestions are offered as to how policy makers should act to preserve the commitment of primary teachers and to promote their retention.     

Educational Psychology: some thoughts on the transformation of learning in social practices and its consequences for a field of research

The relevance of psychological knowledge to education and learning has been recognized for long time. Educational psychology was thus, one of the first subdisciplines of applied psychology to emerge on the academic scene, and most scholars in the area — internationally as well as in the Nordic countries — have had a firm grounding in psychology. For a couple of decades or more during the second half of this century, educational psychology held a central position within education in most of the Nordic countries. Research within this field has been varied and vigorous. However, although psychological theories should be seen as important intellectual resources, it must be recognized that the relationship between a general discipline such as psychology and a particular area such as education is complex. Important problematics inherent in this relationship are illuminated and discussed in the contribution by Säljö on Sweden. It is argued, that recent attempts to develop a cultural psychology, explicitly recognizing the socio‐cultural nature of learning and other psychological processes, promise to pave the way for conceptions of human activities that are relevant to human concerns in general. The second article in this section, on Finland, contrasts with the first by focusing on educational research performed during the last few decades. This article describes trends in the content and methodologies of this research. The developmental orientation has been very strong in Finnish educational psychology during the whole of the post‐war period. Early research was highly influenced by a differential‐psychology approach, whereas later research has adopted social, motivational and cognitive frameworks. This article discuss the influential theoretical trends and developments.     

Questions,Instructions, and Modes of Listening in the Joint Production of Guided Action: A Study of Student–Teacher Collaboration in Handicraft Education

This article concerns a central issue in education as an institutional activity: instructions and their role in guiding student activities and understanding. In the study, we investigate the tensions between specifics and generalities in the joint production of guided action. This issue is explored in the context of handicraft education—or more specifically, a teacher education program in sloyd. Handicraft is particularly interesting when analysing instructions, since the purposes of instructions are often dual: (1) to bring about a broad, instructionally relevant mode of understanding artefacts (including their origin, aesthetics, etc.), and (2) to guide manual action in the production of such artefacts. In the article, a detailed analysis of an instructional sequence, which includes the production of two distinct types of embroideries, is reported. The analysis sheds light on the role of educational examples in sloyd as well as on the related issue concerning the distinctive difference between the activities of listening to instructions as part of a lecture, on the one hand, and, on the other, listening to instructions in order to be able to accomplish a task.     

Silenced Truths: Relational and Emotional Dimensions of a Beginning Teacher's Identity as Part of the Micropolitical Context of School

This article focuses on teacher identity. Based on two small stories told in a peer group by a beginning teacher, we ask: How does a beginning teacher tell about her identity as part of the micropolitical context of school? Theoretically and methodologically, the research is committed to a narrative approach in understanding teacher identity. The material consists of small stories based on videotaped peer group discussions of 11 Finnish teachers. The results of the research illustrate the micropolitical context at the heart of how a beginning teacher's identity is constructed through diverse emotionally significant relationships. Narrative ways of working, such as group discussions, can offer teachers an opportunity to recognize different dimensions of their identity.     

“A bad head for maths”? Constructions of Educability and Mathematics in Adult Students' Narrative Life Histories

The article focuses on the social differences of educability constructed in Finnish general upper secondary school adult graduates' narratives on mathematics. Social class, gender, and age intertwine in the narratives that express the adult students' worries about their ability and competence to study and learn mathematics. Social differences of educability are transformed into individual conceptions of ability in an intrusive way that has consequences far beyond the ability to learn mathematics. This concerns such issues as whether one's ability and competence as a student and learner suffice to complete studies at GUSSA1 ¹The general upper secondary school for adults—GUSSA for short in this text—is an institute that provides formal general education for adults of all ages. For students the schooling is free of charge, except for subject studies, and entrance is not limited by strict age requirements as the age limit of 18 can be lowered under special circumstances. GUSSA students can either aim at the general upper secondary school certificate and/or passing the matriculation examination, that is the school leaving exam of Finnish upper secondary school, or take courses in individual subjects. Today there are approximately 50 institutes specializing in general upper secondary education for adults in over 40 municipalities in Finland. In 2008 over 10,000 GUSSA students were pursuing general upper secondary qualifications and about 6% of the matriculation examinations were taken and passed by GUSSA students (Statistics of Finland, 2008 Statistics of Finland. 2008. Perusasteen jälkeisen tutkintotavoitteisen koulutuksen opiskelijat ja tutkinnot koulutusmaakunnan, koulutuslajin ja opintoalan (opetushallinnon luokitus) mukaan [Students and qualifications of postcompulsory formal education based on school location, type of education and branch of education (National Board of Education classification). Retrieved June 19, 2010, from http://pxweb2.stat.fi/Dialog/varval.asp?ma=260_opiskt_tau_102_fi&;path=../database/StatFin/kou/opiskt/&;lang=3&;multilang=fi  [Google Scholar]). Besides this, there is an increasing number of students taking individual courses in some subjects. For more information see The Finnish National Board of Education (2008 Finnish National Board of Education (2008). General upper secondary education. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from http://www.oph.fi/english/education/general_upper_secondary_education  [Google Scholar]). and pass the matriculation examination, as well as one's chances of succeeding in further studies and working life. The study confirms that mathematics continues to be constructed as a masculine prototype of intelligence. Being “good” at mathematics, moreover, implies having intelligence and innate natural talent.     

Rural schoolteachers and the pressures of community life: local and cosmopolitan coping strategies in mid-twentieth-century Finland

This article discusses rural schoolteachers’ relationships with local village communities in mid-twentieth-century Finland. At the time, Finnish rural teachers were typically very public figures in their local community. To deal with the pressures of their position, teachers resorted to coping strategies which the authors name ‘local’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ after Robert K. Merton’s well-known categories. The local strategy required that teachers adapt themselves to the social demands of community life, whereas the cosmopolitan strategy was manifested in the teachers’ efforts to distance themselves from the local community, reflecting the increasing professionalisation of Finnish schoolteachers as well as a general social transition in which traditional community ties were gradually replaced by modern individualism.