Browsing by Author "Ansa, Patrik"

Purpose: Studies show that Finnish children and youth are insufficiently physically active. The program Liikkuva koulu (author’s free translation from Finnish: ”A school in motion”) began as a pilot project in 2010, but has since grown to be a nationwide program. The aim of the program is to provide students with physically more active and pleasant schooldays, to support their learning and increase their well-being. The activity itself for Liikkuva koulu can in many ways be seen to require a student-focused approach to teaching. Thus the theoretical background for this study came to comprise of ”Approaches to Teaching” by Prosser & Trigwell (1999). The aim of this study is to examine teachers’ experiences of physical activity as a part of their teaching. Furthermore an objective for this study is to explore in what way a teacher’s approach to teaching may relate to those experiences and execution of physically active lessons. Methods: The research was conducted as a quantitative study. A survey was sent to five Swedish-speaking elementary schools within the Helsinki region. The survey included 30 multiple-choice questions/statements along with 4 open-ended questions. A total of N = 27 teachers participated in the study by responding to the survey. The data was mainly analyzed quantitatively (qualitative data analysis was applied to the open-ended questions). Results and conclusions: The teachers mainly implemented physically active lessons and their experiences of Liikkuva koulu were as well mainly positive. For many of these positive experiences, they correlated with each other. The teachers reported mainly a student-focused approach to teaching. The study found a correlation between higher teacher-focused approach to teaching and a stronger experience of Liikkuva koulu being experienced as an additional burden within teaching. There was also a dim correlation between the teacher’s (increased) age and less experience of Liikkuva koulu providing for increased students’ participation.