Browsing by Author "Joutsen, Katja"

The aim of this study was to provide thoughts towards implementation of craft-specific cross-curricular themes in basic education. The starting point for integrated cross-curricular teaching in this study is in crafts, focusing especially on the Eura costume. Integrated curriculum is about making connections between different subjects. Consequently I studied the contents of teaching in the general guidelines of the Finnish national core curriculum 2014. My object was to analyse the core contents from the third through sixth grades and research the potential of the Eura costume to act as a link between different subjects in cross-curricular teaching. I applied qualitative content analysis as a method for finding connecting themes between core contents of subjects in The national core curriculum 2014 and between craft-specific features in The Eura costume. The research questions were: 1) What kind of craft-specific knowledge does the Eura costume contain? 2) What kind of craft-specific features in the Eura costume prove suitable for cross-curricular teaching? 3) Which subjects in The national core curriculum could be studied by exploring The Eura costume? The material of this study consisted of The Finnish national core curriculum for basic education and of archaelogical literature on the ancient Finnish costumes which involves a broad range of studies such as history, ethnology and craft science. In addition, material consisted of publications on cultural heritage and pedagogic. Apart from this I took pictures of two reconstructions of Eura costume with iPad. The pictures exemplify the features and details of the Ancient Eura costume. The main conclusion of this study was that the features and details of The Eura costume meet with many subjects of basic education. The analysis highlighted the following subjects: mathematics, environmental sciences, visual arts, Finnish literature and language, history, music and crafts. The Eura costume can act as a linking theme in cross-curricular teaching and as a starting point in co-operation between different subjects. As a result of this study came up some examples of craft-specific and cross curricular themes for teaching. Especially the necklace and the bronze spiral ornaments of the Eura costume turned out to be interesting themes for further research because of their international connections.