Browsing by Subject "ympäristöoppi"

Objectives. The aim of this study was to examine class teachers' opinions and experiences of teaching health education in primary school level. The main purpose was to explore what kind of significant experiences do teachers have of teaching health education, in which kinds of situations do they teach contents of health education, and do they appreciate health education as a school subject in primary school. The health of children and youth has gotten worse during the last decades. It provides food for thought about the importance of coherent health education even for young kids. Methods. The study involved six class teachers, men and women, aged between 26 and 55. They worked as class teachers in the metropolitan area or in the North of Finland. They all had taken university degree of education in a Finnish university. Three of them worked as teachers for second graders, three of them taught pupils at 5th or 6th grade. Research material was collected by interviewing the teachers with structured theme-interview in April-May 2016. After interviews the recordings was transcribed and analyzed using the methods of content analysis. Results and conclusions. The results show that the class teachers give health education mainly without consciously considering that as health education. For the most part, the interviewees didn't consider the contents as a health education except for when they taught contents of puberty and sexuality at grades five and six. Overall, health education as a school subject is experienced challenging because of its common essence. The conclusions are that teachers teach health education according to their own values of health and when the topics come up in the daily life. The teachers aren't conscious enough about the contents of curriculum of health education and aren't that sure about the role of health education as a school subject in primary school level.

Objectives. Geomedia has been part of Finnish elementary school curriculum for five years in grades 3–6. Geomedia as a concept gathers old content with new one in the pursuit of devel-oping geography in school. Success of geomedia in teaching derives from perceptions of teachers, textbooks, and local curriculums. According to expectation value theory teachers perceived competence, task value of content and expectancies for its success in teaching ex-plain the motivation of how teachers invest in teaching of variable teaching contents. The re-search problem was to clarify the state of geomedia in 3rd to 6th grades. Methods. The study was conducted in the form of pragmatic exploratory mixed methods re-search using parallel convergent design. Design combined quantitative and qualitative data and methods. Data consisted 846 quantitative answers and 21 qualitative answers from open-ended question in the survey research conducted in the autumn 2020 by order of the Finnish National Agency for Education. Additional qualitative data was provided through the analysis of three textbook series and five local curricula. Quantitative data was presented though table and analysed using correlation. Qualitative data was analysed using content analysis. Results and conclusions. The concept of geomedia was not defined in any local curriculum and it was verbalized in one textbook only. Due to the broad formulation of the concept of ge-omedia, all textbooks included geomedia in its mainly older form and in such way, it was not consciously used by teachers and pupils in learning. The perceived expectancy value to teach geomedia was clearly lower compared to other main contents of geography in science teach-ing. This result was explained by the teachers lack of understanding about geomedia. Fur-thermore, teachers didn’t have the applicable teaching materials and had not received any additional training for the usage of geomedia in teaching. Since the poor competence of teachers leads to reliance on learning material, it can be stated that geomedia is not rooted as a conscious concept in teaching. If geomedia was defined and instructed from the pupil’s point of view of using technology in their daily lives, it could renew the teaching of geography. Developing the perceived competence of teachers through additional training and research based-learning materials would, based on expectation value theory and results, increase the importance of how the teachers perceive content in their teaching. In this way, it would be possible to redeem geomedia among the more entrenched teaching content of geography.

The first two school years are important time in children’s development. On that time children develop their basic skills in learning and conceptions of themselves as learners. According to previous studies, experiential and functional teaching methods are the most natural way to learn for the 1st and 2nd graders, and they best support children’s holistic development. In this study, holistic development is divided into cognitive, physical, and socio-emotional aspects of child development. The National Core Curriculum for Basic Educations defines contents and goals for environmental studies. These goals are connected to supporting children’s holistic development. The purpose of this study is to examine how teacher’s guides in environmental studies take into account children’s holistic development through various teaching methods. The research questions are: 1. What kinds of teaching methods the teacher’s guides provide the 1st and the 2nd grade teachers with. 2 Do these methods take into account all aspects of children’s holistic development. This is a qualitative study implemented with theory-based content analysis. The data of this study consists of teacher’s guides for the 1st and the 2nd graders that follow the new core curriculum. One book series, Tutkimusmatka (2016) by publishing company Otava, was found in the market for study material, and is used as a basis for the analysis. The analysis of the teacher’s guides shows that five types of teaching advice meet the characteristics for active teaching to a varying degree. It also indicates that the less the teaching advice includes text book or classroom work, the more it meets the characteristics for experiential and functional teaching methods. This study is based on a very limited data and these results cannot be generalised. This study, however, brings new approaches to study teacher’s guides, the area that has not really been studied in education. The results of this study can be elaborated in future studies.

Aims. The study examines what kind of discourses the sex education sections of primary school’s enviromental studies textbooks construct of gender and sexuality. Previous research has shown that textbooks do not align with the values of the school world, and that in sex education the concept of heteronuclear family has been emphasized while diversity has been overlooked. Among other research results the latest school health survey shows that students belonging to sexual and gender minorities fare worse than others. The National Core Curriculum for Basic Education states that learning materials should give visibility to the appreciation of human diversity. Methods. The study examined the sex education sections of digital textbooks 3–6 of the Pisara and Tutkimusmatka enviromental studies texbook series. Digital texbooks were observed during February and March 2022. Critical discourse analysis was utilized as a method. Results and Conclusions. The study found that the enviromental studies textbooks’ sex education sections construct a binary and developmental biology discourse of gender and a reproductive and heteronormative discourse of sexuality. The discourses in the environmental studies textbooks emphasized natural sciences and a normative view of society.

Environmental education takes place everywhere, not just in school. At school, environmental studies are the most natural way to implement environmental education, but in accordance with the principles of the basic education curriculum (POPS 2014), environmental education is implemented extensively in all school activities. The ideology of inquiry-based learning and field education as a way of working implement the basic principle of environmental education, ie commitment to nature. Previous research has shown that teachers are interested in implementing the principles of environmental education and field education, but there are also challenges in its practical implementation. The third sector implements environmental education outside the school and the digital material it produces is easily accessible via the Internet. The aim of my research is to find out teachers' perceptions of field education and its implementation in teaching. In addition, my aim is to find out how teachers view collaboration with the third sector or the digital material they produce. Finally, I will find out what kind of digital material the third sector provides to support field education in environmental studies. The research material was compiled by interviewing two teachers and examining digital materials provided by the third sector. Interviews were used to gain teachers’ views on field education and the co-operation with the third sector. Digital material was analyzed by a criteria based on the criteria created by the National Board of Education for e-learning materials The study confirms the results of previous studies that teachers appreciate the importance of field education in teaching environmental studies and would like to implement it more than at present. Co-operation with the third sector brought not only material and ideas but also concrete human resources to field education. A study of third sector digital material showed that the third sector produces a lot of diverse and high quality material for teaching environmental studies based on its own expertise and that its use is likely to lower the threshold for teachers to implement field education in their environmental studies teaching when they just have time to search for and find all this material.