Browsing by Subject "ohjelmoinnillinen ajattelu"

In the most recent national core curriculum for basic education, which came into effect in 2016, the concept of programming is mentioned for first time – for instance, as a part of the objectives of crafts. The goal of this research is to find out which factors influence the way craft teachers in basic education use the tools and softwares of programming and robotics in their teaching. The goal of this research is also to find out how the teachers view their own competence in teaching the aforementioned devices and tools. Previous studies have shown that for instance the teacher’s age and gender have influenced teachers’ competence regarding technology. This multi-method research was conducted as a part of the Growing Mind project. The data consisted of the responses from two semi-structured surveys that were developed in the project. Considering the focus of this research, only the responses of teachers teaching crafts (n=27) were chosen for the present study. The qualitative data was acquired through focused theme interviews (n=4), three of which were conducted via remote video connection and one with email. The data was analyzed and categorizedinto themes in accordance with the research questions. Pearson’s correlation analysis was conducted for the quantitative data to detect possible correlations. The analyses of the data indicated that the teachers have various kinds of experiences of the tools of programming and robotics in their teaching because some of them used those tools all the time and some had never even tested them. However, the teachers who used these tools and programs used them in a versatile way. The craft teachers’ own competence to use these devices varied: some of the teachers thought they were very competent, while some thought they did not have any competence. This also influenced in how often the teacher taught these things for others. In addition to teacher’s competence, other factors such as the work community of the school, resources and the perceived lack of time could have effects on the teaching of programming. The correlation analysis showed that male craft teachers had more competence in programming and building robots and smart products than female craft teachers, and therefore male teachers guided pupils in these things more often.