Browsing by Subject "basic education"
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(2014)The Finnish national core curriculum for basic education is currently being renewed at the National Board of Education and the new curriculum will be implemented in August 2016. A curriculum defines the value basis and aims of teaching as well as the core contents to be taught. A curriculum is closely bound to its surrounding society reflecting its prevailing values, customs and traditions. Therefore, in order to renew the curriculum, it is essential to understand the societal changes and values recognized as important in the society. The drafts of the new curriculum were posted for the first time on the website of the National Board of Education for public commentary. This research examined what the feedback of the new curriculum draft was like; what themes did the commentators hold important concerning the curriculum and education in present and in the future? The research data consisted of 963 comments that were posted on the webpage of the National Board of Education regarding the draft of the general part of the new curriculum. The feedback form was open for 17 days in November and December 2012. The qualitative data analysis was done by coding with the help of Atlas.ti software. The comments discussed several issues regarding the Finnish school, its mission and the appreciations of the commentators. As a result, four major themes were found: 1) equality in education; 2) the use of authentic learning environments and multi-professional collaboration with surrounding community; 3) the role of Finnish cultural heritage and religious education and 4) sustainable development and global citizenship. These results reflect the values and topics the commentators held important for the future in terms of developing the Finnish school and society.
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(2022)In the spring of 2020, primary school students were transferred to distance education for health safety reasons. Distance education environments were set up from a wide variety of teachers’ and schools’ starting points at the expense of equality. The need for design-based research on IT-mediated teaching expanded from adult education environments to primary school, where the importance of self-determination was emphasized. The purpose of the study was to form recommendations for the primary school distance education provider by looking at the experiences of the guardians. For the description of distance education arrangements during the 2020 state of emergency this is a case study, and a design research for the development of distance education recommendations. The foundations for the thematic analysis was the theoretical distance education description by Simonson and Seepersaud (2019). The secondary data was received from an extensive national distance education and well-being project. 526 Helsinki-based guardians’ multi-perspective open text form responses were demarcated for examination. In the phenomenographic research method, experiences of the guardians were summarised using quantification. Recommendations for teachers, education organisers and guardians were formed through interpretation of the data. The perspective of guardians was well suited for the educational design research. According to the results, the most challenging situation in distance education was caused by weak selfdeter-mination of primary school aged children, which was best supported with the help of the teacher, if not the pupils’ own parent. Inequality was highlighted both in the quantity and quality of teaching provided by the teacher and in the home's ability to support the child. Surprisingly, the results described the normal conditions of modern school as a scene of noise, fears, bullying, stress and strain. About 10 % of guardians described distance education as a better learning environment for their child compared to normal conditions. As a guideline based on the design research, it is recommended that the primary school teacher provides daily support and assessment for the pupil, instructions available to the pupil, contact at home - but flexibly to case-by-case and depending on the teacher's competence, and continually developing one's own work.
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(2012)The research assignment of this development research is to design and develop useful 7th grade textile craft distance education course for distance school Kulkuri. Kulkuri provides distance education for Finnish children living abroad. The education follows Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education. Development process of the course was based on the ADDIE model. The course follows the curriculum for textile craft and the concept of learning outlined in the National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (2004). The course is based on the following pedagogical concepts: supporting human agency, engaged pedagogy, instructional scaffolding and game-based learning. The theory part discusses skill acquisition, distance education and textile craft as a basic school subject. Usefulness of the course was tested with usability evaluation methods. The design principles, structure, scope and objectives of the course were evaluated with heuristic evaluation in the early phases of the development process. Seven experts compared the first version of the course against heuristics created for the thesis. Evaluators were experts in distance education or textile craft or double experts in both fields. The feedback was given through electronic forms. The second, nearly completed version was tested with user testing by pupils of Kulkuri. Five abroad living Finnish pupils (aged 10 14) were given test tasks to perform in the course environment. Screen capture was used to follow the experimenters actions and their comments were recorded by Skype. The usability problems revealed by the evaluations were fixed and the usefulness of the course was further developed based on the evaluations. The usability evaluations indicated that the course was suitable for its purpose, its usability was good and the course implemented its design principles. 7th graders are able to learn craft skills through this course if they are motivated and enough teacher guidance is available. From the user point of view, the course was interesting and clear. The pedagogical concepts behind the course seemed to be functional and they could be applied broadly in designing craft education. In addition the development process with its evaluation methods could be used as an example for further studies in the fields of development and usability research. The course developed in this thesis is the first textile craft course for basic education implemented completely for distance education. It is mainly of benefit for the pupils of Kulkuri, but due to its openness it is also practical for independent studying or as a part of traditional classroom education.
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