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Matematiikan ongelmanratkaisutilanteita voidaan hyödyntää tunnereflektion eli oppimiseen kohdentuvien tunteiden tarkastelun harjoittelemisessa. Tämä tutkimus tarkastelee, 1) millaisia oppimiseen kohdentuvia tunteita ongelmanratkaisutilanne aktivoi perusopetuksen ensimmäisen ja toisen vuosiluokan oppilaiden (N=23) ongelmanratkaisun sekä matematiikan ja sen opiskelun reflektioissa sekä 2) miten itsearviointitaitojen harjoitteluun kehitetty Arviointimaa-kuva fasilitoi oppilaiden tunnereflektioita. Tutkimuksen aineisto tuotettiin matemaattisella ongelmanratkaisu-tehtävällä sekä haastatteluilla. Ongelmanratkaisutilanne tarjosi alkuopetusikäisille luontevia mahdollisuuksia tunteiden moni-puoliselle ja ikäsidonnaiselle reflektoinnille. Haastattelukysymysten muoto vaikutti oppilaiden taitoon reflektoida; toisen vuosiluokan oppilaat reflektoivat ongelmanratkaisuprosessin herättämiä tunteita ensimmäisen luokan oppilaita monipuolisemmin. Eläytyminen Arviointimaahan fasilitoi tunne- ja metatunne-reflektioiden kuvaustapaa, sisältöä ja ilmaisua. Tutkimus vahvistaa, että ongelmanratkaisun, matematiikan ja sen opiskelun synnyttämien tunteiden kielentäminen tarjoaa alkuopetuksessa otollisen tilaisuuden reflektion harjoittelemiselle.

Technology-enhanced Reciprocal Peer Tutoring (RPT) was carried out with Finnish, nine to ten year-old primary school students (N=40). The RPT as a method of paired mathematics placed specific emphasis on electrical mathematical writing and drawing. Little is known about the important area of implementing digital mathematical skills at the primary level. The contribution of this study is to address the research gap in implementing Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) into primary school students’ digital mathematics learning. Data was collected from one primary school mathematics lessons by videotaping student’s peer collaboration. In this empirical educational study, the data was analysed qualitatively with content analysis and quantified based on the Contact Summary Sheet (CSS)-instrument and TPACK -framework. This work sheds a light on how students’ collaboration such as instruction, thinking aloud, feedback, support and new ideas during their peer tutoring arouse students’ mathematical attainment and technological discourse. The results indicate that all dimensions of TPACK emerged during primary school students Technology-enhanced RPT. Data reveals that there was a high degree of PK in all videotaped episodes. More research on RPT with an empirical electrical mathematical focus is needed.

This study investigated the role of co-teaching in the development of students' mathematics motivation and achievement. More specifically, we examined how sixth-grade students’ (N = 146) mathematics self-concept and individual interest changed over one school year, how these changes were related to each other and to mathematics achievement, and, most importantly, whether they differed between co-teaching and solo-teaching conditions. The co-teaching condition included 70 students in three classes with mathematics taught by pairs of teachers, while the solo-teaching condition included 76 students in four classes with mathematics taught by individual class teachers. The design included three repeated measures of mathematics self-concept and interest as well as pre- and post-measures of mathematics test performance and teacher-rated mathematics grades. A series of latent growth curve analyses showed both self-concept and individual interest to decline over time, and these changes to be strongly correlated: as self-concept decreased, so did interest, and vice versa. The changes in self-concept and interest were independent of prior achievement and did not predict later achievement either. Students in the co-taught group received better grades at the end of the year, but no differences in the development of self-concept and individual interest were found between the teaching conditions. That is, co-teaching contributed to improvement in mathematics achievement, but this was not mediated by changes in mathematics motivation.

Societies are confronted with significant and complex global challenges such as pandemics, climate change and the biodiversity crisis, which call for citizens’ better understanding of scientific information and its use in everyday decision-making. To narrow the gap between scientific knowledge and the public’s perceptions and everyday actions we need to know more about the factors that impact interest and positive attitudes toward science as well as understanding and acceptance of scientific information. Science capital, a concept that extends the bourdieusian notions of social and cultural capital to science, has been proposed to be an important factor in how people can understand and interact with science in their daily lives. In the present study, we examined science capital by conducting a population survey among Finnish adults. Participants (N=1,572) answered to 37 items concerning different aspects of science capital in addition to background questions of age, gender, education, and parental education. Exploratory factor analysis suggested that the science capital items formed four factors: visiting science-related places, science attitudes, science-related self-efficacy, and experienced early support to study science. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the four-factor solution. The results of structural equation models showed that older respondents had lower levels of science-related self-efficacy, they had experienced less early support, and showed more negative attitudes toward science than younger respondents. Higher education as well as higher parental education were associated with higher science capital across the four factors. Interestingly, age and education were stronger predictors of science-related self-efficacy and experienced early encouragement for men than for women, and mother’s education had a weaker association to science-related self-efficacy for men than for women. The present results shed new light to the concept of science capital and provide pointers for developing science-teaching interventions and policies that increase the acceptance and use of scientific information in society.

This research is a comparative study of Finnish and Australian science curricula in early childhood education (EC). The study aims to figure out the constructivist components of the science curriculum in two countries as well as locate the similarities and differences in the rationale and aims, contents, learning outcomes, learning activities, teacher’s role and assessment. The curriculum analysis framework developed by Van den Akker (2003) was used as a methodological framework for the curricula analysis. Based on the theory-driven content analyses, findings show that both countries have several components of constructivist curriculum, but not always clearly focused on science education. The Australian Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) integrates children’s science learning within their five specific learning outcomes, whereas the Finnish national core curriculum for early childhood education and care has no defined learning outcomes in general. The Finnish curriculum more clearly than EYLF encompasses science and environmental education as a learning domain, within which children participate in targeted scientific activities to gain procedural knowledge in specific environmental-related concepts. More focus should be turned to the teachers’ role and assessment, which are not determined in science context in both countries. This international comparative study calls for the need of a considered EC curriculum framework that more explicitly has science domains with specifically defined rationale, aims, content areas, learning outcomes and assessment criteria. The implications lie in providing early childhood educators with tangible and theoretically solid curriculum framework and resources in order to foster scientific thinking in young children.

This work investigated the processes of teacher informal learning focused on building positive teacher–pupil interaction. The conceptual framework “Teacher professional agency for learning” was mer...

Children’s digital competence (DC) is often poorly supported in early childhood education (ECE). Furthermore, common definition of DC is difficult to find. Therefore, the aim of this comparative curriculum study was to better understand how objectives and content of DC are defined in ECE. Australia and Finland curricula were analyzed applying theory-driven content analysis. The results indicated that in both countries theoretical basis of DC was present: objectives and content of DC referred to (1) technical skills and practices, (2) applying digital technologies, (3) evaluate digital technologies critically, and (4) motivation to participate in a digital culture. However, aims, content, and practical guidelines on the curricula were unclear. This study recommends that ECE curricula should better emphasis and make explicit the key elements of DC and how to holistically foster children’s DC in practice. Further studies to clarify the important elements of DC in ECE curricula frameworks is required.

Article, Pupils' conceptual change processes that have led to long-term changes in learning processes can be very challenging and interwoven with several issues. Meanwhile, school learning is often determined as fragmented, without providing connections to pupils' different life and societal contexts. In this study, Science, Technology, and Society (STS) instruction was conducted to enhance primary school pupils' conceptual change process with water-related concepts. Pupils (N = 41) studied water over four-week period and considered water-related concepts and phenomena in scientific, societal, and technological contexts. Before and after STS instruction, the pupils wrote the essays and based on an analysis of the essays, 10 pupils were selected for interviews. Prior the STS instruction, the pupils' conceptions of water were descriptive and were situated in regard to their everyday lives, and pupils considered their water-use subjectively. Pupils rarely were able to explain the relationships between the concepts or phenomena. After the STS instruction, the scientific explanations increased, and water was understood more globally, and different issues such as water states and water circulation were linked to each other. In this study, the pupils' conceptual change process mainly occurred as a reorganisation of conceptual hierarchies but also included some insights for the higher level changes. In addition, learning contexts seem to have crucial roles for the changes. The learning contexts supported the pupils to consider water as broad, interlinked phenomena. STS instruction dared the pupils to consider water phenomenon as a global issue., final draft, peerReviewed

This paper presents findings from an on-going international study (Australia and Finland) of preschool teachers’ beliefs and pedagogical practices in the integration of technology to engage young children in learning science. Scarcely used in early childhood education research, this study is framed using Mishra and Koehler’s (2006) Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) theory. Case studies presented in this paper are undertaken with data collected from three preschools in Australia. Participant observation of teachers’ (N = 7) and children’s play experiences, and semi-structured interviews, revealed that teachers occasionally used iPads and some apps within their intentionally constructed science investigations, both for teacher-initiated research and for communicating with parents via children’s journals. Teachers were not adverse to, but rather accepting of embedding technology as a pedagogical affordance and keen on planning for multimodal science-based experiences. The findings of this study imply the need for a pedagogical shift, wherein teachers’ technological pedagogical knowledge improves in how and when to sensibly integrate technology for children’s engagement in scientific inquiry, rather than relying on hands-on experiences alone. Implications lie in more closely aligning teachers’ TPK and related practices with science content knowledge by co-researching together with children and foregrounding both teachers’ and children’s perspectives.

The current study aimed to explore primary schoolteacher’s emotional stress-coping strategy and to examine its possible relationships with stressful situations caused by pupils’ misbehaviours in Finland context. A total of 12 items in four subscales with second-order model was the most appropriate structure to understand teachers’ emotional coping strategy. In the student-related stressful situations, the most relevant emotional coping strategies were religion/mindfulness,social support from family members, and self-blame. In addition, when teachers use self-blame to acknowledge their stressful emotions, they use another emotional strategy simultaneously, and vice versa. Those results showed significance of future studies on understanding more effective emotional strategies for student-related stress and investigating how teachers use several types of emotional coping strategies coincidently.

The present study tested the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model in explaining high school students' intentions to use bioenergy in Finland and India. Data were collected from 402 Finnish and 130 Indian students studying in the ninth and tenth grades in nine schools. Structural Equation Modeling was applied to test the TPB model. The results revealed that the construct ‘Attitude’ had the strongest and statistically significant positive effect on the students' intentions to use bioenergy in a cross-cultural setting and also within the Finnish context. The other constructs such as ‘Subjective Norm’ (SN) showed the second most positive effect on intention, whereas ‘Perceived Behavioral Control’ (PBC) had a negligible effect on ‘Intention’. However, SN was the only construct that had the strongest and statistically significant positive impact on the Indian students' intentions to use bioenergy. The results indicated the applicability of the TPB model in explaining students' intentions to use bioenergy in a cross-cultural context. Future studies could use an extended TPB model by including additional socio-psychological and contextual variables in explaining young students' renewable energy-related behavioral intentions.

This paper briefly presents emerging ideas for research about integrating computing educational practices, such as inquiry-based STEAM workshops merged with digital fabrication, into teacher education to foster student teachers' professional agency. Potential outcomes and benefits for both fields are discussed.

Creative Little Scientists was a 30-month (2011-2014) EU/FP7-funded research project focusing on the synergies between early years science and mathematics education and the development of children’s creativity, in response to increasing interest in these areas in European educational policy. Using a variety of methods, including desk research, a teacher survey and classroom-based fieldwork, the research provided insights into whether and how children’s creativity is fostered and appropriate learning outcomes, including children’s interest, emerge. Based on these and ongoing collaboration and dialogue with participants and other stakeholders the project proposed recommendations for policy and teacher education. This paper presents these recommendations and the research on which they were based. Throughout the study, mixed methods were employed, combining quantitative approaches used in surveys of policy and teachers’ views based on a list of factors, alongside qualitative approaches employed in case studies of classroom practice. A strong conceptual framework developed at the start of the project guided data collection and analysis, as well as the presentation of findings and the development of policy recommendations, thus ensuring the latter’s strong and consistent relationship with the relevant theoretical knowledge, the comparative research, analysis of classroom practices and the production of guidelines for teacher education.

The role of school teachers is crucial for promoting energy and environmental education in schools, and also instilling pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors among young students. However, studies are limited when it comes to analyzing teachers' perceptions and attitudes (PAs) related to the renewable energy technologies such as bioenergy from a cross-national perspective. The present study analyzed science teachers' PAs related to bioenergy based on data collected from schools in Finland and India. The sample size consisted of 50 science teachers from 10 high schools in these two countries. The study found that the majority of the science teachers had positive PAs regarding bioenergy in both of the countries. However, their willingness to pay more for using bioenergy did not appear to be very positive. In general, the positive PAs related to bioenergy among the science teachers should be encouraging for the educators and policy makers who are aiming to introduce renewable energy education in ...

The aim of this qualitative case study is to explore how the teachers, parents and children describe the advantages and disadvantages of preschool education when it is located in the comprehensive school context. In addition, the study aims to clarify which dimensions of the learning environment occur in preschool? The learning environment is defined in physical-aesthetic, psycho-social, and pedagogical-ethical dimensions. Accordingly, the school environment provided a socially rich learning environment for preschool children and allowed versatile relationships between the preschool children and the school's pupils. The physical proximity was beneficial to preschool teachers' co-operation with class teachers and other school experts. However, the physical proximity caused doubts which were related to parents' concerns about children's transportation, their long school days and the organisation of care in the school context. Many preschool teachers experienced that the school context lacked opportu...

This paper models learning environments as cultural ecologies and reports two case studies where technological resources are introduced into the cultural ecology to investigate the extent to which improvisation in learning arises out of the processes of collaboration facilitated by the technology. A student-oriented study investigated how 34 Master's students shared lecture notes in an online educational community. A lecturer-orientated study investigated the use of short message service communications in a lecture. Data were collected through the respective technological resources and through interviews. Results from both studies suggest that little improvisation occurs of its own accord; rather it requires interventions in the cultural ecology that promote an awareness of possibilities and develop the conditions to support them. Organisational, technological and pedagogical conditions that might support improvisation are discussed.

WOS: 000319106300002, Development of modern bioenergy sector is an important step toward meeting societal demand for reducing CO2 emissions and supplying eco-friendly energy. Young students are the future decision-makers and they will play an important role toward transforming the present fossil fuel driven society into a renewable energy based society. The study aimed to explain young students' intentions to use bioenergy by considering their knowledge perceptions, and attitudes related to bioenergy in Finland, Taiwan, Turkey, and Slovakia. Data for this study came from a previous survey in these countries among 15-year-old 1903 school students. This study with the help of Principal Component Analysis revealed the dimensions of the students' perceptions of and attitudes related to bioenergy. One of the dimensions pro-environmental intention was used as the dependent variable in the Multiple Regression Analyses. Results indicated that students' intentions to use bioenergy were mostly guided by their perceptions of the socio-environmental aspects related to bioenergy. Individual level decision-making such as communicating and learning more about bioenergy was also important; however, with a low impact value. Results also suggested that the criticalenvironmental dimension had only minor influence on the students' intentions to use bioenergy. Students' level of bioenergy-knowledge especially those with a relatively higher level appeared to have a strong impact on their intentions to use bioenergy. Young students should be facilitated to become aware of bioenergy in order to influence their intentions to use it in the future., OKKA-saatio Foundation (Helsinki, Finland), The Authors are thankful to the two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions, which helped to improve the manuscript. In addition, the authors acknowledge all the survey respondents, the schools and the municipal authorities in each country for their cooperation. Finally, yet importantly, the authors acknowledge the generous funding support by the OKKA-saatio Foundation (Helsinki, Finland).

The discourse on science education during the current decade has continuously referred to the significance of cross-curricular twenty-first century skills such as collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, design and engineering skills, creativity, and ICT literacy (Craft, 2005, pp. 56–57; Webb & Rule, 2012, p. 379). The worldwide debate of educational stakeholders has highlighted the need to revive and reinforce the above-mentioned skills and competences for the next generation to complement their content-based school learning.

This paper reports a case study for developing lecture teaching in higher education by connecting simultaneously the benefits of face-to-face teaching and social software for capturing and sharing students' lecture notes. The study was conducted with 12 university students taking a degree course on pre-primary education. Data were collected on (1) the nature of the shared lecture notes produced by the students; and (2) their experiences in creating and sharing lecture notes. Students wrote 367 notes in eight lecture sessions. Discourse analysis revealed five types of notes: reproducing lecture content; summarizing lecture content; connecting key concepts; developing lecture content; questions arising from lecture content. Content analysis revealed those aspects of the lectures developed through the shared notes. Discussions with four students at the end of the course explored their experiences of using the shared notes. The results are discussed in the context of changes to the cultural ecology of learning.

The present study with an international perspective, investigated the state of knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes among young students toward bioenergy in Finland, Slovakia, Taiwan, and Turkey. A total of 1,903 students with an average age of 15 years from 19 rural and urban schools participated in this study. The study found statistically significant differences in students’ bioenergy knowledge with respect to the countries. Only a small percentage of the students in each country were able to demonstrate a high level of bioenergy knowledge. In overall, the gender and rural–urban differences did not play a significant role in determining students’ level of bioenergy knowledge. The students appeared to be very critical of bioenergy and especially of the issues related to bioenergy production from forests. They demonstrated positive attitudes in terms of their willingness to learn about bioenergy and its use in their daily life. The study found statistically significant effects of gender and locality on students’ perceptions of bioenergy. Most knowledgeable students in bioenergy appeared to be most critical in their perceptions and attitudes toward bioenergy. The principal component analysis revealed three distinct dimensions of students’ perceptions and attitudes toward bioenergy viz., “motivation”, “critical”, and “practical”. A broader societal support is needed for the introduction of bioenergy in many countries and young generation’s positive attitudes to this matter is certainly important for people who will create policies in this area. More efforts are needed to support young students so that they understand the multi-dimensional issues related to bioenergy by allowing them to have practical experiences with bioenergy.

The study investigated the relationships between students’ perceived information on bio-energy from school, home and media and their perceptions, attitudes, and knowledge regarding bio-energy. The study also analyzed the scope of future policies to raise awareness among young students about bio-energy. Data drawn from 495 Finnish students studying in ninth grade revealed that the students were more positive in their attitudes towards bio-energy compared to their perceptions of it. They were very positive about learning about bio-energy, while not so eager towards its utilization. It appeared that school, home, and media all had statistically significant effects on students’ perceptions, attitudes, and level of knowledge related to bio-energy. Three principal components emerged from students’ perceptions and attitudes towards bio-energy viz. ‘motivation’ revealing students’ eagerness to know more about bio-energy; ‘considering sustainability’ revealing their criticality of forest bio-energy; and ‘utilization’ revealing their state of interests to use bio-energy. Bio-energy policies to be effective must consider the role of school, home, and media as important means to engage young students in bio-energy related discussions. It is also desirable to establish interactions between energy and educational policies to integrate the modern renewable energy concepts in the school curriculum.

Creative Little Scientists was a 30-month (2011–2014) EU/FP7-funded research project focusing on the synergies between early years science and mathematics education and the development of children’s creativity, in response to increasing interest in these areas in European educational policy. Using a variety of methods, including desk research, a teacher survey and classroom-based fieldwork, the research provided insights into whether and how children’s creativity is fostered and appropriate learning outcomes, including children’s interest, emerge. Based on these, the project proposed changes in policy and teacher education encompassing curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.

This paper presents a case study of the process of conceptual change in six‐year‐old children. The process of conceptual change in learning about floating and sinking is described from two different viewpoints: how the children’s conceptions change during the instructional process, and how the social discussion during the experimental exploration can be seen in terms of the cognitive changes in the children. Based on qualitative analysis of verbal data, changes in the children’s conceptions were mostly epistemological and the children’s theories of flotation became more complete with respect to the scientific view. From the viewpoint of the conceptual change, conceptually orientated teacher–child interactions seemed to support the children’s cognitive progress in cognitive skills and guided the children to consider the reasons for the flotation.