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Kouluissamme siirryttiin keväällä 2020 lyhyellä ennakkovalmistautumisella etäopetukseen koronapandemian vuoksi. Samaan aikaan asetettiin rajoituksia myös harrastustoiminnan ja yleisötilaisuuksien järjestämiselle sekä suljettiin julkisia tiloja. Nuorten arki muuttui keväällä äkillisesti ja arvaamattomasti. Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan ala- ja yläkoulun oppilaiden sekä lukion opiskelijoiden poikkeusolojen aikaista hyvinvointia unen, ruokailun, liikunnan, vuorovaikutuksen, osallisuuden, yksinäisyyden ja kiusaamisen näkökulmista. Lisäksi selvitetään, miten nämä tekijät olivat yhteydessä heidän hyvinvointinsa muutokseen etäjakson aikana. Empiirisenä aineistona käytetään kevään ja kesän 2020 aikana oppilailta (n=970; peruskoululaiset ja lukiolaiset) kyselyjen avulla kerättyä tietoa. Tutkimustulosten perusteella etäjakson aikana tapahtui oppilaiden hyvinvoinnin eri osa-alueilla yleisemmin kielteisiä kuin suotuisia muutoksia. Oppilaat nukkuivat keskimäärin enemmän ja kiusaamista ilmeni vähemmän kuin normaalin koulunkäynnin yhteydessä, mutta muissa hyvinvoinnin osatekijöissä muutos ei ollut suotuisaa. Noin kolmannes vastanneista oppilaista arvioi hyvinvointinsa heikentyneen etäopetuksen seurauksena. Monet hyvinvointia heikentäneet piirteet olivat yhteydessä toisiinsa ja kasautuivat samoille nuorille. Arjen rutiinit ja niiden hallinta auttavat hyvinvoinnin säilyttämisessä. Asiasanat: etäopetus, hyvinvointi, pandemiat, nuoret *** Student well-being during distance learning during the COVID-19 emergency In the spring of 2020, people’s daily lives changed suddenly and unpredictably due to COVID-19. This study examines the well-being of primary and secondary school students during the state of emergency from the perspectives of sleep, eating habits, physical activity, interaction, inclusion, loneliness, and bullying. In addition, the study explores how these factors were related to changes in student well-being during the school lockdown. The empirical data were collected from students (n=970; primary and secondary school students) during spring and summer 2020 by means of questionnaires. The results show that during the distance-learning period, negative changes in different aspects of students’ well-being were more common than positive ones. Approximately one-third of the respondents estimated that their well-being had deteriorated as a result of distance. Many of the characteristics that had a negative impact on well-being were interlinked and clustered among the same young people. Keywords: distance learning, well-being, pandemic, youth

Artikkelissa kuvataan vuosiluokkien 1−3 oppilaiden kokemuksia etäopetuksesta. Tutkimus pohjaa Distant Learning -tutkimusryhmän keräämään aineistoon, johon on koottu eri-ikäisten oppilaiden, opettajien ja huoltajien kokemuksia kevään 2020 etäopiskelujaksosta. Tässä artikkelissa tutkimusaineistona käytetään perusopetuksen alimpien luokkien oppilaiden (n=212) kyselyvastauksia. Tavoitteena on kuvata oppilaiden näkemyksiä siitä, miten he kokivat etäopetusajan ja miten koulutyö etäopetusjaksolla heidän kokemuksensa mukaansa järjestyi. Artikkelissa selvitetään myös, miten se, että oppilaalla oli käytettävissä opetuksen järjestäjän tarjoama päätelaite, oli yhteydessä kokemuksiin etäopetuksesta. Tulokset osoittavat, että alimpien luokkien oppilaat olivat pääsääntöisesti kokeneet etäopetusajan myönteisesti. Henkilökohtainen koulun tarjoama päätelaite lisäsi opiskelun koulumaisuutta ja vuorovaikutusta opettajan kanssa. Oppilaat, joilla ei ollut käytössään koulun tarjoamaa laitetta, kokivat tarvinneensa enemmän apua kodin aikuisilta. He myös opiskelivat yleisemmin joko kodin aikuisten tai lapsen itsensä päättämän aikataulun mukaisesti. Ne oppilaat, jotka eivät ajatelleet etäopetuksen sopivan itselleen, kokivat etäopetusaikana enemmän yksinäisyyttä ja muita harvemmin ilontunteita., This article describes students’ distance learning experiences in grades 1–3 at Finnish primary schools. The study is based on the data collected by the Distant Learning research group, which aims at studying the experiences of Finnish students, teachers and guardians about the distance learning period in spring 2020. The data of this article is collected from 212 lower primary school students with an online questionnaire and the aim is to investigate how these students experienced distance learning and how schoolwork in the distance learning period was organized according to their experience. Furthermore, the study explores how an IT-device (tablet or PC) provided by the school was related to student’s distance learning experiences. The results showed that students in the lower grades had experienced the distance learning period mainly positively. Devices provided by the school increased the school-like structure of distance learning and enhanced the interaction between the teacher and the student during the distance learning period. Without the school’s device pupils needed more help from their guardians and more generally studied according to a schedule decided by either the guardians or the children themselves. Those students who did not find distance learning suitable for themselves experienced more loneliness and less joy during the distance learning period.

In this study, we investigate Deep Talk, which is a method used in the context of early years education in Finland. The method is based on multisensory storytelling and clear phases. The method has received positive feedback from educators and children, but no prior research has been conducted on it. This data aims to determine the significant elements of the method for the individual child and the children in a group. The data consisted of 25 narrations of educators who participated in Deep Talk training and had been serving as Deep Talk instructors. The data were analyzed using a data- and theory-driven qualitative content analysis through the dialogical process of the research team. The results showed that Deep Talk consisted of several elements that had a positive effect on the sense of belonging, increasing the dialogue between children, getting children’s voices heard and reducing inner speech. These effects seemed to strengthen the benefits of the method beyond the Deep Talk sessions as the method is implemented more constantly among children. publishedVersion

This article aims to illustrate a 7-month trial of digital book subscription services in teacher education. Student teachers of the University of Turku in Finland were encouraged to implement the service as part of their free time reading. The experiences of the digital subscription service were investigated using a questionnaire, and data were analyzed through a combination of qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis. The aim of the study was to consider the value of digital book subscription services in terms of reading for pleasure and to describe the readership of teacher students as well as their assessment of digital book subscription services as a pedagogical approach for supporting the reading of primary school students. The results indicated that digital book subscription services might enhance the readership of occasional readers and that audiobook services should be implemented more frequently in education since they seem to connect reading to other free time activities. More effort should be placed in supporting the readership of teacher students in teacher education. Currently, the attitude and amount of reading rely primarily on childhood experiences.

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This study explores the characteristics of the teacher evaluation model in Finland. Highlighting the unique qualities of the Finnish case, we also compare these teacher evaluation practices with the increasingly applied value-added model (VAM) for teacher evaluation across the globe. Our analysis revealed that the Finnish Model prioritises teacher empowerment and professional development by carrying out bottom-up evaluation practices. With a clear focus on teacher empowerment and professional development, this framework substantially differs from accountability measures such as VAM, which emphasize rigid data collection procedures and the use of standardized test scores to hold teachers accountable based on their students' academic performance. This study also revealed that professional development endeavours of teachers are highlighted as the key elements in Finnish teacher evaluation. Ongoing needs analyses for professional development also form the basis for assessing teachers in Finland.

This chapter concerns a model of holistic, structured literature education, which has pedagogical value for social-emotional learning. Fiction supports children's personal growth in many ways. The special emphasis lies on the reading process, which aims at empathizing reading and sharing of text-based emotions and experiences. Further individual and common arts-based meaning-making is an intrinsic part of the reading process. The empathized reading process as well as supportive reading environment need to raise educators' consciousness. Creative, arts-based activities offer channels to make children's interpretations of fictional texts visible. There are several presented examples of arts-based methods for literature education and the family literacy practices that have an impact on social-emotional learning. The methods are individual story ending (ISE), kamishibai theater, silent books, and structured reading moments.

Using literature in multilingual and second language classes promotes literacy skills and helps children to adapt to second language instruction. This chapter presents the theoretical framework and practical implementations for enhancing the use of literature in multilingual environments employing Stories Make Readers (StoRe)–project as an example. StoRe concept helps to promote the use of fictional literature and to increase the reading materials and reading time at school and at home. An important aim is to offer, in multilingual groups, reading materials that correspond to the reading abilities and interest of the readers, and to connect different collaborative, child-centered, and multidisciplinary activities in reading. The multilingual line of the StoRe project, called Creating Innovative Approaches to Language Education (IKI), identifies and promotes innovative models for the use and development of language in education and creates research-based, pedagogical maps that help teachers develop and improve their pedagogical practices.

Good reading skills are an essential part of everyday life. This article presents two Finnish projects JEKKU (2010-2011) and LUKUINTO (2012-2015) that aim to enhance children’s engagement and success in reading. The research results of these studies are described in this article from three perspectives: reading skills, reading materials, and reading interventions. The main aim of this article is to highlight how helping children to read and enjoy reading is not complicated. Our studies show that children who are interested in what they read, and experience pleasure and success while reading, are provided with comfortable reading places and enough time to concentrate on reading, read more and become confident readers. The basics of reading skills and the attitudes towards reading are created in the early years, so it is important to concentrate on making these reading experiences more interesting and enjoyable for all young children. This article is not a traditional research article, but collects the results of the two projects together and strives to give concrete tools for reading enhancement to all educators.

Cultural heritage education promotes children's interest in society, especially their immediate surroundings and history. Traditionally in Finland, history is learned through visits to local historic house and city museums, where the learners' role might be quite passive and their only activity a worksheet. However, evidence indicates that visits and educational information are better enjoyed and remembered when they involve activities and children can analyze the experience through interactions and continued learning at school. We examined a preschool field trip to a local historic house museum with arts-based activities continued at school. We evaluated 14 students' follow-up stories and craft products as cultural heritage education and museum pedagogical tools. A detailed qualitative analysis showed that follow-up stories function similarly to worksheets; they were easy to implement and effectively collected information on children's experiences during museum visits. However, writing stories al...

This research explores the learning outcomes of preschool children produced through visits to an historic house museum environment. The new Finnish preschool curriculum identifies the importance of arts-based approaches for children and that these approaches should be closely aligned to experiential and holistic education. The aim of the research was to explore the significance of the museum environment to preschoolers and their creative activities as a result of experiences at the museum. The research data were collected across 4 days with 16 preschool children. The empirical data stemmed from tasks which included follow-up stories, drawings based on the stories, craft designs, craft products, and video recordings of the activities in the historic house museum environment and at school. The research data were supported by semi-structured interviews that illuminated children’s perspectives on the project. The qualitative data were analyzed using a framework that took account of the compulsory, optional, and free properties of the follow-up stories and craft products. The historic house museum environment was connected to children’s creative actions to give them ideas for their stories and craft products. The holistic learning process described in this study appeared to benefit the construction of learning in a child-centered way that grounded children’s understanding. The research contributes to greater understanding about how arts-based and creative learning activities can be implemented with preschool children in different environments.

Stories and mathematics are often seen as incompatible. This misconception is arguably caused by the way mathematics is perceived only as a collection of formulae, largely abstract and void of meaningful context. However, many previous studies provide evidence that connecting stories and mathematics together is beneficial to both literacy and mathematical development. This chapter will draw from relevant theories and research literature to highlight potential cognitive and emotive benefits of integrating stories in developing mathematical thinking and learning for young children. The chapter will also discuss some of the benefits of treating learners not only as consumers of mathematical stories, but also as their producers. Finally, the chapter will end with some interesting case studies of practitioners using stories in their mathematics teaching.

Narratives in diverse forms are strong forces in children’s lives. Children learn concepts and phrases closely connected to stories, consider moral dilemmas, and tell stories of their daily lives and significant events; they dance, play, dramatize, and develop fantasy worlds through stories while processing information and developing new skills. They learn, grow, and think through stories with other children, adults, and individually. Stories can exert positive and powerful influences in all contexts of children’s lives. This chapter explores what counts as story and the forms that narratives may take. We assert that stories are powerful and protective agents for children. At their best and fullest, stories create meaningful sites for supporting the whole child.

Arts-based approaches can enhance understanding among all children in the group as well as the educators and can further develop children’s thinking while making learning more child-centered. Incorporating arts-based tasks with stories is both enjoyable and effective for all children. In different arts-based and holistic learning processes, stories can be used in several phases and several purposes. In this chapter, we present a holistic learning intervention, where stories are told to children to visualize the learning contents and to support memorizing and connecting them to children’s prior experiences. In the intervention to a historic house museum environment, children also create their own stories for many purposes: to reflect and convey their learning experiences and to create ideas for arts-based products. The intervention described in the chapter is implemented with a group of Finnish preschoolers and the aim is to highlight how stories could be used effectively for learning different content areas and supporting the development of different skills. In the intervention, stories are used as an arts-based activity and in connection to making a craft. The analysis of this intervention shows how the stories created by the children contain information of the learning content, children’s everyday life and experiences arisen during the visit to the museum environment.

The Finnish school system will transfer to the new Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2014 in 2016. The new curriculum emphasizes integration of subjects. In Finland, mathematics and the mother tongue are the two subjects which are taught the most and therefore play a significant role in every primary teacher’s weekly routine. Unlike English-speaking countries, Finland lacks children’s literature aimed towards use in mathematics teaching. This study aimed to understand teachers’ and teacher-trainees’ points of view on the extent to which they use children’s literature in teaching mathematics in primary school and how to efficiently use children’s literature in teaching mathematics in primary school. This study was a part of an international study entitled ‘Teachers’ beliefs on the integration of children’s literature in primary mathematics learning and teaching: A comparative study’, including universities from England, Hong Kong, Australia, and Finland. The aim was to determine teachers’ beliefs concerning integration of children’s literature into mathematics teaching and to the extent to which this benefits learning. Data collection was conducted via web-based questionnaires translated into Finnish from spring to autumn 2015. Mixed methods data analysis showed that teachers/teacher-trainees do not use children’s literature in mathematics teaching, but they still recognize various ways to implement it into their teaching. Previous studies on the use of literature in mathematics teaching show that children’s literature may provide a meaningful context to develop mathematical skills and foster children’s positive attitudes towards mathematics, as the stories in the literature are presented in an engaging and approachable manner.Keywords: mathematics, children’s literature, teaching

This study reports on pre-school age children becoming familiar with their hometown’s cultural history through children’s literature, personal stories, and craft products. The aim of this study is to discuss the educational value of arts-based activities and authentic learning environments from the perspective of visualizing children’s experiences. In the learning process, children create stories and craft products based on a picture book of a home museum in their town and the experience of visiting the museum. The research is in line with the curriculum of Finnish pre-schools (valid from 2016), according to which children should be offered opportunities to empathize with their immediate environment using a variety of arts-based methods as support. The theoretical framework of this study is based on Kolb’s model of experiential learning, different approaches of arts-based learning and the theory of situated learning by Lave and Wenger. The data consist of children’s oral follow-up stories and craft products. The data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis, which is a valid replicable method for making specific inferences from text to other states or properties of a source. It appears that different learning environments and arts-based, experiential activities contribute to learning in a child-centered way and may vizualize children’s thoughts and experiences, for the teacher, for the children themselves, and for other learners. The different stages of the experiential learning process proved to be beneficial to each other: The materials the children produced during the experiment could be used to activate educational discussions in pre-schools and make them more child-centered. In addition, the literature element and the authentic experience gave the children ideas for their own products..

We have conducted several studies in Finland on primary school pupils’ reading skills and attitudes towards reading. Results show that girls have better reading skills and more positive attitudes than boys. However, boys’ confidence in their reading skills is high and they assess their skills better than they actually are. Boys have negative opinions, especially about the exercises during the literacy lessons and homework. Therefore, teachers should consider what kind of tasks and reading materials would interest boys as well as girls. In addition, it would be good to connect social interaction and conversations with peers to reading. Textbooks are today still a central source of information in content area classes. Reading comprehension tests in both history and natural sciences show that, in sixth grade, boys have especial difficulties in understanding these contents. It would also be necessary to use other types of reading materials and to teach reading comprehension strategies that help pupils understand the contents of the textbooks, to find the main ideas in the text, to combine different pieces of information, and to make inferences. There is a strong correlation between pupils’ self-esteem, reading attitudes, and reading comprehension skills. Pupils who have good self-esteem have a positive attitude towards reading and good reading comprehension skills. This is the case especially for boys. Consequently, it is essential that teachers support the positive development of pupils’ self-esteem as well as reading skills and attitudes.

Art-related learning should be the central way of doing and playing in preschool, because the high quality of art-related education has a positive effect on children’s well-being, identity development, and creative thinking. In our study we tested an integrated learning process where reading literature and telling stories is combined with the making of a craft product. In addition we created a framework of compulsory, optional and free elements to plan and evaluate the creative learning process. Our research material consists of anticipatory stories collected by storycrafting, characters made by children with craft materials/techniques, and character descriptions. The storycrafting method is implemented in this study as an anticipatory story based on a fragment of a fictional text. The character is made using the concept of a holistic craft, where the pupil designs, produces, and evaluates the whole process. The data were collected in a preschool group that consisted of 10 children, 7 boys and 3 girls. Based on the study results, it is possible to conclude that most children benefitted from the process. It seems that literature and storycrafting support designing craft products. Our study showed that integrated learning process could be an effective and a creative way of working in a preschool group.

This paper traces the presentation of these traditional minority groups in Finland and the emergence of literature incorporating the more recently arrived groups of immigrants in the history of Fin ...

Literature supports children's literacy growth in many ways. It helps children extend their understanding and clarify different situations in their lives, recognize and deal with feelings, and be more empathetic. Hands-on activities based on stories support children in giving shape to their thoughts. These creative activities not only empower the children but also help teachers understand children's interpretations of literature better and build further on themes for discussions of literature. This article describes an instructional approach with a series of activities (stories, drawing, crafts and discussions) integrated with picturebooks. The activating methods can be used in classrooms to revitalize literature discussions while engaging different senses of all learners. This article gives teachers ready-made materials for use in early childhood education.