Browsing by Author "Hosio, Anna"

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.