Browsing by Author "Räsänen, Elina"

The National Core Curriculum of Finnish comprehensive school's is a document that guides teachers and pupils on their actions. There is an interpretation that divides curriculum into three layers: planned, executed and realized layer. Every person in the school is an individual having their own individual needs and skills of learning. Focus of this research is to illustrate how each curriculum layer of individual learning is shown in the context of home economics education and how the teachers experience that they can support their pupils on their individual learning. The empirical part of this research was conducted as a theme interview for eight home economics teacher in the capital city area. The interviews were carried out as a face to face interview and they were audiorecorded. The research is a qualitative research. Analysis method chosen is a content analysis. The collected data were analysed more extensively with theming the data by research questions. The aim of the research is to familiarize the teachers to understand more about individual learning and its execution. The teachers' views on individual learning were diverse. Teachers had no problem on naming the parts of the curriculum text that emphasis the individuality and individual learning. Also the executed acts were easily reasoned with curriculum text. All in all, the curriculum was seen as a support when talking about individual learning. Significant to this research is to realize that acts that did not support the individual learning were found from the hidden curriculum. The reasoning for these kinds of acts was based on the models of behaviors that were adapted without any written pedagogic background. Instead they were adapted from the work community and are usually the things that have always been like that. They are the models of behavior that sometimes help the school community to work, but sometimes they also tie people and their freedom of development. It is important to evaluate these patterns of behavior and change the ones that do not help the school community to evolve.