Browsing by Subject "opettajan opas"

In both national and international studies, a significant increase in skill differences between students has been noticed in the mathematics skills of Finnish primary school children. A way to respond to the needs of all learners is to differentiate the teaching, which means taking the student’s skills into account when teaching. Mathematics is one of the most important subjects in the Finnish school system, but studies have shown that the mathematical skills of the teachers can be weak. Because of that, it is important that the learning materials used support the teachers in differentiating and all of the students are offered tasks suitable for their skill level. The aim of this study was therefore to describe differentiation in the mathematics learning materials for the third grade of primary school and to find out what kind of support they offer for differentiation. This research was conducted as a qualitative content analysis and content classification and comparison was used to analyse the materials. Six series of mathematics learning materials currently used in Finnish primary schools from four different publishers were selected as research material. All learning materials and digital licenses from each series were requested, and the final research material consisted of all the third grade learning material used in autumn. The material was first divided according to the two research questions into materials for the student and the teacher. After this, the classification of the material continued and the results of the classifications were compared to each other. It was noticed from the research material that differentiation in mathematics is mainly the teacher’s responsibility and the students have few opportunities to choose tasks that suit their skill level. The solutions for downward differentiation were more systematic, because almost all of the series contained a separate work book with easier tasks, that can be used alongside the normal work book. The solutions to make the tasks easier were fairly uniform. The solutions for upward differentiation had more variation, but the most common type was problem-solving tasks. The teacher’s guides, which serve as the teacher’s support, mainly focused on specific tips to differentiate lessons and the included various handouts and additional tasks that the teacher can give out to students. In addition, assessment was supported with different skill level tests and materials to find out the skill levels of the students in the beginning of the third grade.

Objectives. The aim of this study was to investigate primary school 2nd grade math teacher's guides as well as class teachers, for the learning support features in multiplication. The related research problems are following: How the teacher's guides for the mathematics support students of 2nd grade in learning of the multiplication? How the selected 2nd grade class teachers support the learning features in their multiplication lessons? Methods. This study is divided into two parts. The first part is a qualitative study of 2nd grade math teacher's guides, where three different book series (Matikka 2, Open Kymppi 2 and Tuhattaituri 2) were studied based on the theory-driven content analysis. The exercises from the book series were divided into several studied features: the steps of the arithmetic concept formation, understanding the calculation procedure with whole numbers, sequence skills, Bruner's learning theory and Fuson's language of mathematics. All the features were analyzed with Bereday's comparative analysis. The second part is a case study, where three independent 2nd grade class teachers were studied with the method of stimulated recall. All the teachers were monitored and videotaped during one multiplication lesson and interviewed afterwards about the teaching of multiplication in general and based on the videotaped lecture. The interviews were analyzed with thematic analysis. The results and conclusions. The math teacher's guide Matikka 2 emphasizes the connection between addition and multiplication as well as the learning period during the stage of concrete strategies. Sequence skills were supported the most in the Open Kymppi 2 guide, which had many exercises emphasizing mechanical repetition. On the other hand, the three stages of representation and mathematic languages were less supported in Open Kymppi 2 than in the other guides. The exercises in the Tuhattaituri 2 supported the learning features of the multiplication fairly evenly, although some of the exercises repeated themselves. Numbers 0 and 1 were less supported in Tuhattaituri 2 than in the other guides. All guides supported mental strategies, enactive stage of representation and mathematic languages quite poorly. In the second part of the study, during the multiplication lessons the teachers took well into account the stages of concrete strategies and automated concept formation. On the other hand, the stage of mental strategies did not show up in the results, only when asked separately. In addition, the use of the teacher's guides in the planning of the multiplication lessons was not significant for the studied teachers. Although the lessons supported the learning experience of multiplication quite versatilely, the studied teachers mentioned only some of the supported features in the learning of multiplication.

The goal of this thesis is to find out how the readymade exercises in the teachers mathematical guide supports the different phases of concept formation in the learning of multiplication. In mathematics, the concept formation consists of three phases; concrete strategies, mental strategies and the automated concept mastery. The teacher's guide that was analyzed in this thesis is Tuhattaituri 2a by Otava publishing. In addition to the analysis of the teacher's guide, the research was conducted through interviews of teachers that had the Tuhattaituri teacher's guide in use. The interviews were conducted in order to find out how the teachers make use of the teacher's guide in the teaching of multiplication and if they are possibly using other materials in addition to the teacher's guide. Five female class teachers from the Helsinki metropolitan area were interviewed for the research. They all had over 10 years of experience as class teachers. The interviews were conducted as themed interviews. The themes were: the uses of the teacher's guide in the teachers own teaching, the student's exercises in the book and the use of other material in teaching. The teacher's guide and the interviews were analyzed through theory based content analysis. The exercises in the teacher's guide were classified based on what part of the concept formation they support. The analysis frame of the interviews was formed based on the themes of the theme interviews. The research found out that Tuhattaituri teacher's guide has many exercises that support the formation of concrete strategies. Also exercises supporting the automated concept mastery could be found in small extent. There were no exercises supporting mental strategies in the teacher's guide. The ways the teachers made use of the teacher's guide varied. Some of the teachers used more digital materials that they had used to replace the exercises in the teacher's guide. All teachers used other materials in their teachings in addition to Tuhattaituri. Two of the teachers did not use Tuhattaituri in their own teaching almost at all because they felt that Tuhattaituri doesn't teach multiplication in a logical order.

The concept of participation has gained attention in the discussion involving children and young people during the last decade. Children's and adolescents' participation relates to human rights and legislation. In education science, participation has been researched and modeled from kindergarten to university pedagogy. Also, the new national core curriculum for basic education emphasizes participation in many ways. In this study, participation is considered both from the perspectives of teaching materials and pedagogical strategies. The purpose of this study was to determine in which ways the teacher's guides for 3rd grade environmental studies lead teachers to promote pupil participation. The conceptual framework of this study is based on the principles of so called participatory pedagogy. The research was conducted using qualitative methods. The research material consisted of three 3rd grade teacher's guides for environmental studies. The analysis was conducted as a theory-based content analysis. Main concepts guiding the analysis were multidisciplinary learning modules, active construction of knowledge, pupil's own voice, assessment, democracy skills, social perspective and agency. Instructions to promote student participation could be found from the teacher's guides analyzed in this study. The new curriculum emphasizes the involvement of pupils in the planning, implementing and assessing of their own learning, school work and learning environment. The teacher's guides had mostly instructions relating to the planning and implementation of teaching, whereas very little tips on the assessment were found. In the light of this study, the teacher's guides could be further developed to enhance pupil participation in all the three phases, as is the aim in the new curriculum and participatory pedagogy. This could mean replacing the instructions in teacher's guides that allow mere attending with the instructions that promote real pupil participation.