Browsing by Subject "digitalisaatio"
Now showing items 1-7 of 7
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(2016)Objectives. The purpose of this Master's thesis is to study how the elementary school teachers of Koulumestari school in Espoo, Finland are making use of Fronter, a data based learning platform, as part of their work. This case study investigates how the users of Fronter, the Koulumestari school's teachers, make use of the platform and what problems they have encountered while using it. Methods. The data for this qualitative case study was collected using questionnaires and theme-centered interviews. During the interviews, teachers were also videotaped while demonstrating, on a computer screen, how they use Fronter learning platform in their work. A total of 18 elementary school teachers took part in the questionnaire, while 8 of them were chosen to be interviewed based on their use of Fronter in their work. The theme-centered interviews were transcribed, followed by their analysis using conventional content analysis. The goal was to find, within the content of the interviews, the answers to the following two questions: In which ways do teachers make use of Fronter data based learning platform? And, what problems are included in the use of Fronter data based learning platform? Results and conclusions. The study shows that the teachers of Koulumestari school make use of Fronter learning platform in three different ways: pedagogical use, communicating information and uses within the school. The problems that made the use of Fronter challenging were described as technical problems, administrative problems and problems related to motivation. In the discussion section, the pedagogical use of Fronter learning platform was mirrored to attributes of meaningful learning, which are presented in the theory section of this study. Attributes of meaningful learning are active, constructive, intentional, collaborative, contextualized, conversational, reflective and transfer. All eight of these attributes were linked to pedagogical use, which the teachers of Koulumestari school followed in their day to day activities. This Master's thesis could also be continued in order to study elementary school teachers, as information and communications technology users, more broadly.
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Asiantuntijaopettajien kokemuksia asiantuntijaopettajatoiminnasta koulujen digitalisaation tukijoina (2020)Target: The purpose of this study was to analyze the descriptions of the expert teachers in the role of expert teachers in the City of Helsinki and their experiences of the City of Helsinki digitalisation program. In addition, the aim of the study was to analyze the expert teachers’ experiences of the factors that support and hinder their professional development work. The study also analyzed the proposals of the expert teachers for the development of the activities of the expert teacher organization. The research is current in a context where digitalizing society, the changing roles of teachers and school reforms challenge the skills of teachers and other school staff. Method: Ten expert teachers from four different expert teacher teams in the City of Helsinki were interviewed. The research material consisted of ten theme interviews conducted during spring 2019. The material was analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The material was manually coded using Saldana’s (2016) coding methods and the research results were categorized on the basis of similarity. Findings and conclusions: The expert teachers experienced their roles in diverse ways; in the role of the educator, experimenter and developer, in the cross-border and in the unclear role. The role of the expert teachers was perceived to be relatively autonomous and the role could also be modified to some extent in the interest of the expert teacher. The expert teachers’ experiences of the city’s digitalisation program were both positive and negative. Professional skills related to digitalisation and teacher resistance to change were seen as barriers to development and improvements. The expert teachers’ development skills and enthusiasm for recognizing the pedagogical benefits of technology were regarded as assets for development resources. Hardware and software problems continued although improvements were seen. In contrast, intrinsic motivation factors; knowledge sharing and development, willingness to experiment and meaningfulness were perceived as factors supporting the expert teachers’ work. The expert teachers considered the social network important, especially the other expert teacher colleagues. They shared mutual trust that strengthened their collaboration. The use of time, the aforementioned ambiguity of the role and job description, and the experience of the actual impact of the activity all emerged as barriers to the work of expert teachers. Resources such as facilities, changes in teams and access to scientific research, as well as challenges in communication, also hindered professional development work. The obstacles to development work, of course, were linked to the expert teacher development proposals that emphasized hopes for the clarification of working hours and task descriptions, identification of synergies and scalability, and clarification of communication practices. Based on this study, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of the expert teacher organization, but there are clear indications of positive, albeit small, impacts on changes in school culture and support for the digitalisation program. Their role can be considered central as to the various professional learning communities and development networks, which promote school change.
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(2017)In the 1970s information technology started to become part of everyday life and as a result of this process, computer programming has become an important theme in the digital society both in the labor-market and on the educational field. In this study, I examine high school students' everyday conceptions of computer programming and technological development. I explore these conceptions relying on the theory of social representations which is focused on defining how people make foreign technical and scientific phenomena familiar. I interpreted the meanings produced by the high school students in relation to the cultural history of computer programming and especially in relation to the general meanings given to computer programming on the educational field. As a separate research question I examined computer programming in relation to meanings that are connected to technological development. The aim of this study is to offer more understanding about how computer programming is made familiar in an increasingly digital society where it has emerged as an important skill, especially through education. I produced my data by interviewing seven high school students who had attended a voluntary high school course combining electronics and programming. I analyzed the interviews discourse-analytically by defining oppositions that describe the social representation of programming. I also produced concepts that seemed to synthesize the oppositions and examined subject positions that were constructed in the speech. Besides, I analyzed how the representations of programming and technological development were connected in the speech. The representational field of programming was constructed by the oppositions of human-computer, material-virtual, technical-playfulness and proximity-remoteness. I defined the opposition human-computer to be the most fundamental themata of the social representation of computer programming. Programming was perceived as taking technological development to the next level. Technological development was seen as a partly autonomous process but humans were still given the most fundamental role in the definition and delimitation of technologies. On the basis of this study it can be summarized that high school students saw programming as an important phenomenon which at the same time was difficult to approach and define. This observation r a challenge for the establishment of programming both in education and in the wider society.
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(2023)Goals. The aim of this study was to investigate how problematic use of digital technology is associated with school well-being and general psychological well-being of middle school students. The data was collected as part of the Bridging the Gaps research project, which examines students' diverse learning habits, use of digital technology, and well-being. The study examined associations between problematic use of digital technology and three dimensions of well-being: school engagement, school burnout, and depressive symptoms. Previous research has shown that there is a link between school burnout and depressive symptoms, but no similar link has been found with school engagement. The purpose of this study is to complement and strengthen previous knowledge of the phenomenon and contribute to the ongoing discussion about the terminology and methods in this rapidly changing research field. Methods. The data for the study was collected from comprehensive schools in Helsinki in the autumn of 2019. The participants (N=674, 55.9 % girls, 41.5 % boys, 2.2 % other, 0.3 % missing) were seventh graders. Associations between problematic use of digital technology, school engagement and burnout, and depressive symptoms were examined using linear regression analysis. Gender differences were further investigated using variance analysis. Results and Conclusions. In this study, problematic use of digital technology was statistically significantly associated with all dimensions examined. The association to school-engagement was negative. There were no gender differences in academic motivation, however, the link between school burnout and depressive symptoms was stronger among girls compared to boys. The results support previous research concerning the associations between problematic use of digital technology and well-being of young people. In the future, more diverse and conceptually consistent research on this topic is needed.
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(2020)The objectives. The purpose of this study is to describe how home economic teachers experience the changes in their work as information and communication technologies become part of teaching. The research questions are: 1. How do home teachers experience that information and communication technologies are changing their jobs? 2. What factors influence the use of ICT in teaching? 3. What challenges and opportunities does ICT bring to teaching? Methods. This is a qualitative study carried out using an on-line questionnaire. The questionnaire was sent to members of the Finnish Home Economics Teachers´ Association all over Finland. The data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results and conclusions. Teachers felt that ICT facilitated their work on the one hand, and increased the amount of work on the other. Often working days were stretched and it was difficult to separate work and leisure time. Teachers also needed networking and further training. Teachers´own perceptions and experiences are relevant to the extent of using information and communication technology in their teaching. Challenges were perceived as mobile phones caused disruptions during lessons. Functionality of equipment: equipment availability and non-functioning network connections were also perceived as a challenge. It was seen as an opportunity to facilitate the documentation and demonstration of various outputs and activities. Information retrieval has also become easier with the help of information and communication technology.
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(2019)Target: This study examines school culture and its change in technology-intensive schools through principals' experiences. The aim of the study was to gain deeper understanding on three related themes: 1) How the principals have experienced the change in school culture and which factors they have perceived (2) to facilitate or (3) to hinder the change. Furthermore, the goal was to understand which factors related to technology-intensive schools' functions and leadership have improved the change processes and what kind of challenges the school and the management have experienced along the way. The theoretical framework of this study is based on the theories of organization culture and more specifically on school culture and related concepts. Method: The research data for this study was gathered from 13 schools across the Helsinki capital area and it consisted of semi-structured interview material from the principals of the targeted schools. The data was analyzed by qualitative content analysis. I grouped and thematized the interview data, coded and categorized meanings related to the themes identified, and, finally, analyzed the interdependencies between the categories and meanings. Findings and conclusions: The findings of this study indicated that the collaboration culture in schools has evolved. The principals reported that the teachers use more collaborative working methods and share knowledge more actively with others than before. The findings also revealed that the learning environments are more versatile than before and the working methods appear to be more innovative. The principals also de-scribed that the gap between the school and students as well as the gap between school and the society have narrowed. The most important factors supporting the cultural change were perceived to be leadership and the increasing collaboration between teachers. In addition, external support in its different forms as well as resources allocated to schools appeared important. Particular emphasis was given to the guidelines indicated by the newest national curriculum. On practical level, modern learning environments and learning tools were highlighted to be a pre-requisite for the development of digital school culture. The cultural transformation is hindered, according to the principals, by the resistance to change among teachers. Renewing old working methods and altering the professional identity is arduous and may generate negative attitudes towards change. Also, some external factors seemed to complicate the change process. Especially the limited working hours of teachers and principals seemed to decelerate the development. Furthermore, some principals experienced the negative public discussion concerning the digitalization of schools frustrating. The principals described that the role of technology in school culture change is to serve as an enabler for widening and renewing the ways of working and the environments for learning. The results of this study indicated that some change in school culture has occurred but the systemic change is still in process. The results together with former theory constituted a model of innovative and collaborative school culture. The model can be used for improving the school culture to better correspond to the challenges of the constantly changing world and knowledge society.
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(2022)The study analyzed the actors, contexts and technology used in the Innokas Network, which focuses on school development at the grassroots level, in the light of the blog posts pro-duced by the network in 2011–2019. Teachers and their expertise play an important role in the transformation of education, and networked development communities provide an oppor-tunity for the co-development of innovations and their widespread dissemination. The Innokas Network is such a school development network whose members are school, private and third sector actors as well as researchers. The Innokas Network maintains a thematic community blog where members of the network write about the network's activities. More information is needed on networked development activities, as research has found it to be an effective way to increase people’s knowledge and skills. The research questions were: 1) which technologies do the authors of the Innokas Network blog refer to in the blog posts written in 2011–2019, 2) what kind of social and pedagogical frameworks and actors are described in the blog posts and 3) how are the different actors, pedagogical frameworks and technologies present in different social frameworks? The research data consisted of a total of 401 blog posts from 2011–2019 on the Innokas network's public blog. Blog posts were analyzed using qualitative content analysis as well as cross-tabulation. The blog post mentioned a total of 275 different technologies. The technologies most featured in blog posts were programmable robotics, programmable microcontrollers, and programming platforms. Activities were described in five different social frameworks: micro-community, school community, local community, national level and international level. The most typical pedagogical frameworks were a lesson, training, and club activities. The most typical actors were the student, the teacher and the tutor. For each social frameworks, the typical pedagogical frameworks and actors involved in the activity were outlined. Networked development activities reaches a large number of different actors and networking activities take place on several different levels and in a wide variety of frameworks. A broad range of technologies are involved in the network's activities, but there is a clear emphasis on innovative technologies such as robotics and other technologies that require programming.
Now showing items 1-7 of 7