Browsing by Subject "monimenetelmällinen tutkimus"

Teachers’ job description changes along with the society, which creates pressure to update teacher knowledge and teaching. Indeed, teachership is a process that requires lifelong learning and not only systematic in-service training but also an understanding of teachers’ professional life cycles and meaningful learning. The purpose of this thesis was to survey the connection of in-service training in mathematics and work experience to the meaningful learning and teaching development of class teachers. The theoretical framework was based on models for teachers’ professional life cycles by Huberman, Leithwood, Lähteenmäki and Järvinen and theories of meaningful learning by Ausubel, Jonassen and Ruokamo and Pohjolainen. The aim was to increase the understanding of in-service training of teachers at different stages of their career cycles and to highlight the challenges associated with those cycles. Thus, this thesis seeks to support the need of the development- and evaluation work of educational continuum which became a topical issue at the beginning of the 21st century and has only become more and more relevant ever since. The data of this multi-method longitudinal study was gathered through surveys completed by classroom teachers who participated in the LUMATIKKA in-service training of mathematics teaching and learning in 2019 or 2020. Quantitative data, which measured meaningful learning consisted of preliminary and final surveys of classroom teachers (N=77). The connection of meaningful learning areas, formed on the basis of principal component analysis, and work experience was examined by using the Kruskal Wallis analysis of variance. The qualitative data, on the other hand, consisted of teachers’ open-ended responses (N=107) to the final survey’s questions on how they thought the in-service training experiences would influence teaching. Open-ended responses were analysed by means of content analysis and qualitative description. According to the results, the class teachers who completed the in-service training courses had the prior competence and expectations that supported learning well and learning during the courses was also found to be very meaningful. The most meaningful sections were the ones concretely related to the needs of working life, transfer of learning and the teaching of mathematics, although the training succeeded also in strengthening intentional learning. Experiences of reflectivity and cooperation, on the other hand, were slightly more moderately positive. Respondents’ work experience had a connection to their answers regarding learning, as teachers in the middle of their career cycles found their learning slightly less meaningful than teachers at the beginning or end of their career. Participants believed that their updated pedagogical con-tent, in particular, would change their own teaching. In addition, many of those more experienced than novice teachers pointed out the increase of specialized content knowledge, which is considered essential for teachers. Most teachers did not see obstacles to changing their teaching, although some novices regarded time as a problem. In the light of research, well-organized in-service training can be a very meaningful supporter of lifelong learning and a developer of teaching. However, the characteristics of various stages of career cycles and their typical challenges should be taken into consideration as an important factor in order to ensure the continuity of training for all teachers.