Browsing by Author "Rossinen, Eveliina"

The complexity of our world today, the increasing information and rapid changes are affecting also our school systems and learning. The new national core curriculum in basic education introduced multidisciplinary modules, which are offering a solution for teaching 21st century skills to children. The multidisciplinary modules combine different subjects in a goal-directed and well-planned way. The multidisciplinary modules are one of the very similar concepts such as integrated learning and phenomenon-based learning. As previous releases have shown, there are many ways of executing multidisciplinary modules. The mission of this study is to clarify the views of primary school teachers in Helsinki on using multidisciplinary modules and how they have put those modules into practice. In addition, the mission is to clarify primary school teachers’ thoughts on the benefits and possible challenges and difficulties on using multidisciplinary modules. The study was conducted using qualitative approach interviewing six primary school teachers from four different schools in Helsinki. The interviews were held in February 2018 and all the interviews were semi-structured. The data was analysed following the principles of qualitative content analysis. In the content analysis, the material was categorized from small categories to larger ones using the help of the themes and questions used in the interview. The study showed that teachers execute multidisciplinary modules in many different ways, but still following the terms of the national core curriculum and Helsinki’s local core curriculum. The length of teachers’ views on multidisciplinary modules did vary, but the content of their answers was quite similar. As challenges and difficulties the teachers mentioned working environment, difficult students, students with special needs or Finnish as second language -students and surprising situations. According to the teachers’ answers, the benefits of using multidisciplinary modules are developing pupils’ social, thinking and 21st century skills, seeing the causation, bringing learning closer to pupils’ own experience and knowledge and creating a positive atmosphere in the classroom.