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The qualitative changes in teachers’ responses in challenging situations were analysed during a four-day Teacher Effectiveness Training (TET) course, which aimed at improving teachers’ interpersonal dynamics with pupils, parents and colleagues. The participants were 21 teachers from one elementary and 23 teachers from one secondary school attending a TET course in Finland. Qualitative abductive content analysis was used to classify the data. Frequencies based on this analysis were also looked at. After TET the teachers described the behaviour of their pupils and expressed their feelings and the actual consequences of that behaviour, instead of using generalized labels and subjective interpretations of the pupils’ behaviour. They were also more likely to support pupils’ autonomy and agency by acknowledging pupils more, by increased listening or by asking pupils to participate actively in problem solving. This study deepens our understanding of the nature of the qualitative shift in teachers’ thinking durin...

The purpose of the present study was to investigate knowledge-creating agency by examining doctoral students' accounts of their pursuits, using structured interviews. We examined all of the talk apparently related to agency of 13 doctoral students taking part in collective doctoral training in two, highly regarded Finnish research communities (natural science and medicine). The doctoral process involved the participants pursuing article-based theses based on collectively shared research problems and journal articles co-authored with the supervisor and other senior researchers. Based on the qualitative analysis of the interviews, three categories of agentic talk were identified, respectively, for three proposed types of knowledge-creating agency: personal, distributed, and ‘object-related’. Personal agency involved participants' reflection on their academic competence, self-efficacy, and personal strengths and weaknesses. Distributed agency played an important role in assisting these participants overcomin...

There is a variation in terms of how researchers perceive the nature of research work. Previous research has mainly looked at the members of academia who already have established themselves in the ...

This study investigates how doctoral students perceive research work in the context of their own PhD projects. Thirty-two students from a Finnish university were interviewed, representing three disciplines: medicine, natural sciences and behavioural sciences. Their conceptions of research varied in terms of describing research as a job to do, obtaining qualifications and gaining accomplishments, a personal journey, and making a difference. The conceptions in each category differed in terms of how product-oriented vs. process-oriented and person-centred vs. community-centred they were. The four categories were not exclusive: the students often reported overlapping conceptions. The emphasis of conceptions was different in each discipline, and also varied according to the phase of studies.

This paper explores doctoral students' experiences of their scholarly communities in terms of socio-psychological well-being. Further, the study examines how experiences were related to study engagement and to self-reported stress, exhaustion, and anxiety. Altogether 669 doctoral students from the University of Helsinki, Finland, responded a survey. The answers to an open-ended question were content analysed and then statistically compared to well-being and study engagement items. The results showed that there was variation in students' experiences of the scholarly community regarding socio-psychological well-being. More than half of the answers, where students had explicitly described their experience (n = 383), emphasised the scholarly community as source of burden (56%), but experiences of inspiration and empowerment were also frequently reported in the answers (44%). Feelings of empowerment were positively related to study engagement and negatively related to stress, exhaustion, and anxiety.

Studying in higher education requires long‐term commitment. Previous studies have shown that commitment, perceived competence, intrinsic motivation and work‐life orientation are positively related to academic achievement. This study examines the kinds of goals theology students have at the beginning of studies, and whether these goals are related to academic achievement during their first three years at university. Personal project analysis was used to acquire information about first‐year students’ study‐related personal goals and related evaluations. The evaluations were factor analysed, and three clusters of students were derived on the basis of the factors: the committed, self‐fulfillers and the non‐committed. The results show that students who perceived progress, were capable and had intrinsic reasons for their goals advanced more rapidly in their studies. The implication is that variation in academic achievement is at least partly a consequence of variation in orientation towards studying at the begi...

The relationship between medical students' well-being, motivation, and their conceptions of learning and knowledge has not been previously explored.This study aimed to validate a research instrument intending to measure medical students' (n = 280) (1) experiences of stress, anxiety and disinterest, (2) motivational (thinking) strategies, (3) conceptions of learning and knowledge (epistemologies), and (4) approaches to learning.We developed an instrument, MED NORD, which is a composition of scales measuring different theoretical constructs that previously have shown good predictive value, validity and reliability. A principal component analysis with Varimax-rotation was performed in order to see how the scales related to each other.The internal consistency reliability was found to be satisfactory or good for each scale. The results showed five factors: Dysfunctional Orientation, Collaborative Knowledge Building Orientation, Cookbook Orientation, Social Orientation, and Individual Abilities Orientation. These study orientations were related to how medical students perceived their learning environment.The new tool showed consistency and validity and was judged appropriate for future use in measuring medical students' well-being and study orientations.

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the learning outcomes expressed in the core medical curriculum at a Swedish university and how these were interpreted by, and related to, teachers’ teaching goals. Additionally, we wanted to find out how these teaching goals relate to the development of expertise, a key value in medical education. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with teachers in anatomy and surgery, which is taught in the first and fourth years of the medical programme. To be implemented, a curriculum has to be interpreted by teachers, and this can lead to a mismatch between curriculum intentions and teacher goals. Hence, it is necessary to provide guidance as to whether the application of a core curriculum should be focusing on content only or include socio‐cultural ideas of learning encouraging an emphasis on process. The degree of teacher involvment in the design of the core curriculum seems to clarify the role of the core curriculum to teachers and st...

The authors looked at aspects of successful and problematic studying in terms of three different research traditions: students’ approaches to learning, self‐regulated learning and cognitive strategies. These frameworks have been widely applied when explaining university student learning. However, relations among different traditions have not been sufficiently looked at. In this study the authors explored the relations between learning approaches, regulation of learning and cognitive strategies. The subjects were students at the University of Helsinki who filled in the Task Booklet of Learning and the Strategy and Attribution Questionnaire. Their academic achievement was coded from university archives. It was found that approaches to learning, regulation of learning, and cognitive strategies were related to each other, and further, to study success.

Cardiac auscultation is an important skill for medical students to master but students' exposure to cardiac auscultation is often unmonitored. The objective of this study was to gather data at the point of care about students' cardiac auscultation experience on a required medicine rotation using a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) 'murmur form'. During an eight-month period, 120 M3 students used the authors' PDA-based learning tool to record information on 940 heart sounds and murmurs. Some 93% of all heart sounds/murmurs reported by students were verified by either a faculty member (56%) or a supervising resident (43%). A PDA can be a useful tool to monitor students' experiences of cardiac auscultation and to track direct observation of such skills by faculty or residents. Medical students are eager to use technology at the point of care to practice their clinical skills.

SUMMARY During the past two decades, a constructivist approach to learning and knowledge has become dominant in educational psychology, especially in science education. Learning is viewed as an active, constructive process rather than a passive, reproductive process. However, our ways of instruction have not changed as much as our ideas which also need theoretical clarification. This article first challenges some claims that are made about differences between children and adults as learners. Evidence is presented according to which children's early and primary school learning exhibits features that previously were thought typical of adult learners only. Second, the idea of child-centred primary education is reconceptualised in the light of theories on expertise, conceptual change and epistemological development. Third, a theoretical approach to learning, based on questions, is explored. We call this approach progressive inquiry learning. Fourth, we present some evidence of computer-supported learning envi...

This study evaluated concept maps spontaneously constructed by applicants (N = 502) in a medical school entrance examination. In all, 36 maps were produced. Concept maps were evaluated for content of relevant terms and for the number of interrelationships indicated. The aim was to determine whether including relevant ideas on a concept map is related to the learning of those ideas. Because concept maps are effective tools for making the structure of knowledge explicit, it was hypothesized that the quality and content of spontaneously made maps would be related to improvement in the comprehension of text material. Understanding was assessed in terms of success in essay-type tasks designed to measure the ability to define, explain, and apply statistical knowledge. The results indicated that merely including the relevant concepts in a map has little effect on the comprehension of those concepts, whereas the extent and complexity of concept maps plays a powerful role in the understanding of scientific texts.

This study examined the conditions under which using notes while essay‐writing is helpful. The study was conducted among 226 high school graduates attending an entrance examination to a nursing school. All participants were provided with an opportunity to write notes about the text in any way they desired. Subjects were randomly assigned either to a group which was to write with notes or to a group that was to write without notes. It was assumed that the effectiveness of using notes while essay‐writing would vary depending on the nature of the task. It appeared that when a task called for text‐based reproduction of information, using notes in essay‐writing helped students to write lengthier, more coherent and cohesive essay‐type answers. In contrast, in a task which required critical review of the text information, there was not much use in having the notes present during writing. The results indicated that the advice to write an essay using spontaneously written notes is not applicable in all si...