Browsing by Author "Koskelin, Mirka"

The role of craft has changed over time due to the societal changes. The aim of this study was to find out how the function of textile handicraft teaching was seen in the 1950s, 1990s and 2010s in Finland, as well as how the contents of handicraft classes varied over the same period. As a starting point of teaching the curriculum has reflected the general educational goals of society at a current time. Until 1990 school textbooks were approved by an examination procedure which ensured their coherence with the curriculum. Therefore material presented in textbooks can be considered to have been relevant at that particular time, and to describe teaching at their time so well. Two textbooks were selected as research material for this study to get a picture of the implementation of the curriculum in practice. The importance of textbooks in teaching has declined significantly in recent decades, and no new textbooks in crafts have been published in recent years. That is why the research material was complemented with a school's craft blog. The studied textbooks appeared about every fifty years: in 1953 and 1996. A school’s handicraft blog was chosen to describe the craft teaching in 2010s. Content analysis was used as a study method to get an understanding of the task of craft teaching and teaching contents in the 50’s, 90’s and today’s school. This study shows that teaching crafts in 1950s was very product oriented, and the main aim was to produce products which had practical value in everyday life. In the 1990s the aim changed to teaching different techniques and focus was in the process which began by planning and proceeded to the final product. In the 2010s there has been progress towards the holistic craft process – complete craft. In complete craft the process begins from an idea which leads to visual and technical designing and ends in manufacturing and self-evaluating the product. The main content in textile craft classes has been sewing through all these studied periods. Yarn techniques have retained their position as an important part of the teaching as well, but especially the use of various other techniques has increased in the 2010s. In the recent years the sense of community in handicraft seems to be entering more to teaching, which is also one of the aims in the upcoming 2016 core curriculum.