How to design educational settings to promote collaborative inquiry: Pedagogical infrastructures for technology-enhanced progressive inquiry

Strategies of scientific, question-driven inquiry are stated to be important cultural practices that should be educated in schools and universities. The present study focuses on investigating multiple efforts to implement a model of Progressive Inquiry and related Web-based tools in primary, secondary and university level education, to develop guidelines for educators in promoting students collaborative inquiry practices with technology. The research consists of four studies. In Study I, the aims were to investigate how a human tutor contributed to the university students collaborative inquiry process through virtual forums, and how the influence of the tutoring activities is demonstrated in the students inquiry discourse. Study II examined an effort to implement technology-enhanced progressive inquiry as a distance working project in a middle school context. Study III examined multiple teachers' methods of organizing progressive inquiry projects in primary and secondary classrooms through a generic analysis framework. In Study IV, a design-based research effort consisting of four consecutive university courses, applying progressive inquiry pedagogy, was retrospectively re-analyzed in order to develop the generic design framework. The results indicate that appropriate teacher support for students collaborative inquiry efforts appears to include interplay between spontaneity and structure. Careful consideration should be given to content mastery, critical working strategies or essential knowledge practices that the inquiry approach is intended to promote. In particular, those elements in students activities should be structured and directed, which are central to the aim of Progressive Inquiry, but which the students do not recognize or demonstrate spontaneously, and which are usually not taken into account in existing pedagogical methods or educational conventions. Such elements are, e.g., productive co-construction activities; sustained engagement in improving produced ideas and explanations; critical reflection of the adopted inquiry practices, and sophisticated use of modern technology for knowledge work. Concerning the scaling-up of inquiry pedagogy, it was concluded that one individual teacher can also apply the principles of Progressive Inquiry in his or her own teaching in many innovative ways, even under various institutional constraints. The developed Pedagogical Infrastructure Framework enabled recognizing and examining some central features and their interplay in the designs of examined inquiry units. The framework may help to recognize and critically evaluate the invisible learning-cultural conventions in various educational settings and can mediate discussions about how to overcome or change them.

Principles of Pitch Organization in Béla Bartók's 'Duke Bluebeard's Castle'

The topic of my doctoral thesis is to demonstrate the usefulness of incorporating tonal and modal elements into a pitch-web square analysis of Béla Bartók's (1881-1945) opera, 'A kékszakállú herceg vára' ('Duke Bluebeard's Castle'). My specific goal is to demonstrate that different musical materials, which exist as foreground melodies or long-term key progressions, are unified by the unordered pitch set {0,1,4}, which becomes prominent in different sections of Bartók's opera. In Bluebeard's Castle, the set {0,1,4} is also found as a subset of several tetrachords: {0,1,4,7}, {0,1,4,8}, and {0,3,4,7}. My claim is that {0,1,4} serves to link music materials between themes, between sections, and also between scenes. This study develops an analytical method, drawn from various theoretical perspectives, for conceiving superposed diatonic spaces within a hybrid pitch-space comprised of diatonic and chromatic features. The integrity of diatonic melodic lines is retained, which allows for a non-reductive understanding of diatonic superposition, without appealing to pitch centers or specifying complete diatonic collections. Through combining various theoretical insights of the Hungarian scholar Ernő Lendvai, and the American theorists Elliott Antokoletz, Paul Wilson and Allen Forte, as well as the composer himself, this study gives a detailed analysis of the opera's pitch material in a way that combines, complements, and expands upon the studies of those scholars. The analyzed pitch sets are represented on Aarre Joutsenvirta's note-web square, which adds a new aspect to the field of Bartók analysis. Keywords: Bartók, Duke Bluebeard's Castle (Op. 11), Ernő Lendvai, axis system, Elliott Antokoletz, intervallic cycles, intervallic cells, Allen Forte, set theory, interval classes, interval vectors, Aarre Joutsenvirta, pitch-web square, pitch-web analysis.

Opettajan uskomukset opetustyön lähtökohtana : näkökulmia pedagogiseen ajatteluun

The purpose of this research was to examine teacher’s pedagogical thinking based on beliefs. It aimed to investigate and identify beliefs from teachers’ speech when they were reflecting their own teaching. Placement of beliefs in levels of pedagogical thinking was also examined. The second starting point for a study was the Instrumental Enrichment -intervention, which aims to enhance learning potential and cognitive functioning of students. The goal of this research was to investigate how five main principles of the intervention come forward in teachers’ thinking. Specifying research question was: how similar teachers’ beliefs are to the main principles of intervention. The teacher-thinking paradigm provided the framework for this study. The essential concepts of this study are determined exactly in the theoretical framework. Model of pedagogical thinking was important in the examination of teachers’ thinking. Beliefs were approached through the referencing of varied different theories. Feuerstein theory of Structural cognitive modifiability and Mediated learning experience completed the theory of teacher thinking. The research material was gathered in two parts. In the first part two mathematics lessons of three class teachers were videotaped. In second part the teachers were interviewed by using a stimulated recall method. Interviews were recorded and analysed by qualitative content analysis. Teachers’ beliefs were divided in themes and contents of these themes were described. This part of analysis was inductive. Second part was deductive and it was based on theories of pedagogical thinking levels and Instrumental Enrichment -intervention. According to the research results, three subcategories of teachers’ beliefs were found: beliefs about learning, beliefs about teaching and beliefs about students. When the teachers discussed learning, they emphasized the importance of understanding. In teaching related beliefs student-centrality was highlighted. The teachers also brought out some demands for good education. They were: clarity, diversity and planning. Beliefs about students were divided into two groups. The teachers believed that there are learning differences between students and that students have improved over the years. Because most of the beliefs were close to practice and related to concrete classroom situation, they were situated in Action level of pedagogical thinking. Some teaching and learning related beliefs of individual teachers were situated in Object theory level. Metatheory level beliefs were not found. Occurrence of main principles of intervention differed between teachers. They were much more consistent and transparent in the beliefs of one teacher than of the other two teachers. Differences also occurred between principles. For example reciprocity came up in every teacher’s beliefs, but modifiability was only found in the beliefs of one teacher. Results of this research were consistent with other research made in the field. Teachers’ beliefs about teaching were individual. Even though shared themes were found, the teachers emphasized different aspects of their work. Occurrence of beliefs that were in accordance with the intervention were teacher-specific. Inconsistencies were also found within teachers and their individual beliefs.

Tacit Pedagogical Knowing: At the Core of Teacher's Professionality

The purpose of this research was to examine class teachers' interactive pedagogical thinking and action, in other words their tacit pedagogical knowing. Tacit pedagogical knowing was defined as a process in interactive teaching situation, through which a teacher finds solutions to surprising and challenging situations, pedagogical moments, so that the lesson continues. Teachers are able to describe their tacit pedagogical knowing afterwards and also find some reasons for it as well. More specifically, the aim was to study, 1) how does a class teacher's tacit pedagogical knowing appear in teacher's actions, and 2) what kinds of contents include in class teacher's tacit pedagogical knowing. The research material was gathered from four class teachers by videotaping their lessons and by stimulated recall interviews. In addition to this, the researcher spent a relatively long time in the research participants' classrooms. She conducted initial interviews and orientating observations by means of participant observation in order to get to know the participants and their contexts better. A phenomenologically oriented approach, which proceeded by following abductive logic, was used in the analysis procedures of the videotaped and stimulated recall data. In addition to this, correlation examinations were used in the validation of stimulated recall data analyses. The appearance of the tacit pedagogical knowing was observed in the videotaped data. The contents of tacit pedagogical knowing were defined by the analyses of stimulated recall data. According to the research results, a class teacher's tacit pedagogical knowing appears in the maintenance of the pedagogical relation, the teacher's relation to content, and the didactical relation. The contents of class teacher's tacit pedagogical knowing were many sided. The maintenance of the pedagogical relation, the teacher's relation to content, and the didactical relation were elements of the contents as well. In addition to these, the maintenance of teacher's pedagogical authority, the maintenance of the student's role or pedagogical authority, and the awareness of the nature of the content of instruction are included in the contents of teacher's tacit pedagogical knowing. The phenomenon of tacit pedagogical knowing was observed to be clearly a process-like and relational phenomenon. Based on the research results, a model of teacher's tacit pedagogical knowing was developed. Using the model, it is possible to illustrate the factors that are at the core of teacher's professionality. This model could be used in the context of teacher education, supervision, or in-service training.

Kinnasneulatekniikan verkko-oppimateriaalin kehittäminen ja neulalla neulomisen taidon kehittyminen

The purpose of the study was to develop a functional web-based learning material for the learning of the nålbinding technique. The study of the research topic was already begun in my pedagogical thesis in 2008 by considering the demands on pedagogic material for the teaching of the technique. This study falls into the field of qualitative design research which was carried out through three stages. In the study three methods of usability testing, i.e. expert analysis, the informants’ thinking aloud and interviews, were used as research methods. At the first stage of the study the first version of the learning material was created. This was done on the basis of theoretical knowledge, the demands set on learning materials as clarified in previous studies, on the basis of previously created learning materials for the learning of the nålbinding technique as well as with the help of two experts on the technique. At the second stage, the learning material was developed on the basis of expert analysis and another version of the material was created. At the third stage, usability testing was carried out on the material. At this stage two informants used the material, practiced stitching with the nålbinding needle and thought aloud while doing so. In the usability testing the Morae –programme was used to record the events on the screen, the actions of the informants and their spoken out thoughts. The Morae –programme was also used when analysing the recordings. After the testing, the informants practised stitching independently and in a few weeks time they were interviewed. The interviews were aimed at finding out the informants’ opinions on the future development of the material. On the basis of the informants’ independent attempts at using the nålbinding technique, the development of their skills after the testing was also discussed at the interviews. The development of the learning material will continue after this study on the basis of the usability testing and the interviews. The web-based learning material was created for the website Käspaikka in the address www.kaspaikka.fi/kinnasneula. By creating a multimodal learning material the dual-coding theory by Paivio was taken into consideration. According to the theory, several methods of presentation help a learner to restore information in his/her memory. The independent construction of the learner’s knowledge, i.e. learning according to the principles of the constructivist learning theory, was also supported by creating a logical navigation system, by linking interrelated topics to one another and by presenting the topics in several different forms. In the test situations the learning material was judged to work well when practising stitching with the nålbinding needle. Both informants learned the basics of the nålbinding technique even though their respective learning strategies were quite different. In the usability testing illogicalities and shortcomings were still noticed in the learning material which will still be further developed in the future.

Kokonaisvaltainen fysiikanopetus peruskoulussa fysiikan valinnaiskurssilla

Holistic physics education in upper secondary level based on the optional course of physics Keywords: physics education, education, holistic, curriculum, world view, values A physics teacher s task is to put into practice all goals of the curriculum. Holistic physics education means in this research teaching, in which the school s common educational goals and the goals particular to the physics curriculum are taken into account. These involve knowledge, skills and personal value and attitude goals. Research task was to clarify how the educational goals involving student s values and attitudes can be carried out through the subject content of physics. How does the physics teacher communicate the modern world view through the content of the physics class? The goal of this research was to improve teaching, to find new points of view and to widen the perspective on how physics is taught. The teacher, who acted also as a researcher, planned and delivered an optional course where she could study the possibilities of holistic physics education. In 2001-2002 ten girls and two boys of the grade 9th class participated in that elective course. According to principles of action research the teacher-researcher reflected also on her own teaching action. Research method was content analysis that involved both analyzing student feedback, and relevant features of the teacher s knowledge, which are needed for planning and giving the physics lessons. In this research that means taking into account the subject matter knowledge, curriculum, didactic and the pedagogical content knowledge of the teacher. The didactic includes the knowledge of the learning process, students motivation, specific features of the physics didactics and the research of physics education. Among other things, the researcher constructed the contents of the curriculum and abstracted sentences as keywords, from which she drew a concept map. The concept maps, for instance, the map of educational goals and the mapping of the physics essence, were tools for studying contents which are included in the holistic physics education. Moreover, conclusions were reached concerning the contents of physics domains by which these can be achieved. According to this research, the contents employing the holistic physics education is as follows: perception, the essence of science, the development of science, new research topics and interactions in physics. The starting point of teaching should be connected with the student s life experiences and the approach to teaching should be broadly relevant to those experiences. The teacher-researcher observed and analyzed the effects of the experimental physics course, through the lens of a holistic physics education. The students reported that the goals of holistic physics education were achieved in the course. The discourses of the students indicated that in the experimental course they could express their opinions and feelings and make proposals and evaluations. The students had experiences about chances to affect the content of the course, and they considered the philosophical physics course interesting, it awakened questions, increased their self-esteem and helped them to become more aware of their world views. The students analytic skills developed in the interactive learning environment. The physics teacher needs broad knowledge for planning his or her teaching, which is evaluated in this research from contents maps made for the tools of the teaching. In the holistic physics education the teacher needs an open and curious mind and skills for interaction in teaching. This research indicates the importance of teaching physics in developing attitudes and values beside substance of the physics in class environment. The different points of view concerning human beings life make it possible to construct the modern world view of the students and to develop analytic skills and the self-esteem and thus help them in learning. Overall and wide points of view also help to transfer knowledge to practice. Since such contents is not employed by teaching the physics included in the standard curriculum, supplement relevant teaching material that includes such topics are needed.

Topeliaaninen usko : Kirjailija Sakari Topelius uskontokasvattajana

ABSTRACT The author Zacharias Topelius as a religious educator The present study concerns the author Zacharias Topelius (1818-98) as a religious educator. The study´s main questions are as follows: What is the theological and pedagogical content of Topelius books and how is his religious instruction linked with the history of his time. The primary sources are his educational books Naturens bok (The Book of the Nature, 1856), Boken om vårt land (The Book of our Land, 1875) and Evangelium för Barnen (Gospel for Children, 1893), as well as his storybooks Läsning för barn I-VIII (Reading for Children I-VIII, 1865-96). The dissertation concerns the his-tory of religious education. Its primary method is background-based systematic analy-sis. In Topelius children s books the view of God is characterised both as an omnipresent spirit and as Providence, who guides world history according to his plan. In addition to Lutheranism this view is also influenced by Nationalism and Romanticism. The theological content of the books emphasises instruction in Christian life that is natural to normative children s books. Topelius strongly expresses the importance of a personal relationship to God, an idealistic Christian view of one s fellow man and of one s own nation as well as the value of nature conservation. The books of Topelius were some of the first educational works on nature preservation in Finland. The didactic quality of Topelius children s books was high for 19th century Finland. Their main emphasis in terms of educational goals is on civilisation (Bildung), self-awareness, national solidarity and living idealism. The pedagogical argumentation is mostly based on theological, historical, social and rational reasoning. The primary principles in Topelius teaching are Christian nationalism, idealistic harmony and the agrarian bourgeois. Christian nationalism is the main element of Topelius religious education. He considers the fatherland as a God-given project and the taking care of it as a part of holy service. Idealistic harmony is seen as the comprehensive development of one s character in the sense of romantic idealism. The agrarian bourgeois principle combines the Finnish peasant tradition with the values of 19th century modern bourgeois culture. I have named Topelius vision of religious education the Christian national project of civilisation (Bildung). Its main theses are home, religion and fatherland. The author himself strongly believed in this vision and never questioned it despite its national chauvinism and theological inconsistency. The religious ideology represented in Topelius educational works and storybooks was popular among pedagogues during the whole era of the Finnish folk school. It fit per-fectly with the Christian national discourse stemming from 19th century ideological ten-dencies. Due to their appropriate content combined with their practical language and pedagogical methods, the books were popular both at school and in the home for a long period of time. Therefore the books of Topelius aptly symbolise the religious education of their time and manifest their author s pedagogical talent as a national religious educator and as a populariser of Christian nationalism. Topelius books have had a lasting influence on Finnish religiosity. Key words: Topelius, theology, religion, education, nationalism and national project

On the principles of Japanese forest policy since 1950.

XVIII IUFRO World Congress, Ljubljana 1986.