Browsing by Author "Hörkkö, Sannamari"

The aim of this study was to find out teachers’ visions about citizenship and civic education and Yrityskylä’s role in it. Citizenship education was reformed in 2014 when new curriculum was introduced. The reform brought a new subject, social studies (yhteiskuntaoppi) to fourth and sixth graders. Active citizenship has been the ideal kind of citizenship education in the world, including Finland, for a quite long time and social studies aim to raise students to be “active, responsible and industrious citizens”. As part of citizenship education most of the sixth graders participate to Yrityskylä’s learning concept. Students will attend 10 lessons at school to study about working life, economy and society before visiting Yrityskylä’s learning environment for one day. Yrityskylä is a learning concept where students’ act as an employees, citizens and consumers in a simulated society. Data was collected by interviewing six teachers who participated with their students to Yrityskylä and one retired class teacher during spring 2018. One interview was a two persons’ group interview and the rest were individual interviews. All interviews were carried out as theme interviews. The data was transcribed and analysed by using theme analysis. Based on theme analysis altogether six themes were formed. According to the teachers the citizenship concept contained four themes: social skills, self-leadership, economic skills and critical thinking. In the teachers’ view Yrityskylä’s role as a part of citizenship education was to teach students generally about citizenship and produce citizenship education itself. Teachers’ visions about citizenship correspond to the ideal of active citizenship and is very similar to the curriculum’s aims and contents. Yrityskylä is seen as an important part of school’s citizenship education. That it also provides students with concrete understanding about citizenship. Furthermore, it is a place where students can practice citizenship skills and learn more about citizenship and being a citizen.