Multi-grade teaching practices in Austrian and Finnish primary schools

This article describes the teaching strategies used in multi-grade classes in five small rural primary schools in Austria and Finland on the basis of the content analysis of transcribed teacher interviews. Two main types of strategies were identified: practices that (1) aim to reduce or (2) capitalize on students’ heterogeneity. The results illustrate how differently multi-grade teaching can be realized and how it can effectively support individual student learning. The findings are discussed with regard to teacher education with the intention of increasing the awareness of the professional skills required in high-quality teaching practices in multi-grade teaching.

Multigrade teaching in primary education as a promising pedagogy for teacher education in Austria and Finland

This chapter focuses on teaching practices used in multigrade classes and the importance of them being incorporated in teacher education as promising pedagogies for future use. Multigrade classes - defined as classes in which two or more grades are taught together - are common worldwide. Hence, there is a need for teacher candidates to become familiar with how to teach in split grade classrooms. However, research on multigrade teaching as well as its development in teacher education studies has been neglected, even though multigrade teachers need special skills to organize instruction in their heterogeneous classrooms. We argue that in successful multigrade teaching practices, the heterogeneity of students is taken into account and cultivated. Based on content analysis of teacher interviews conducted in Austrian and Finnish primary schools, we recommend teaching practices such as spiral curricula, working plans, and peer learning as promising teacher education pedagogies for future multigrade class teaching. We also suggest that the professional skills required in high-quality teaching practices in multigrade teaching should be further studied by researchers and educators.

'Institutional Shopping' for Natural Resource Management in a Protected Area and Indigenous Territory in the Bolivian Amazon.

Focusing on an overlapping protected area and indigenous territory in the Bolivian Amazon, this article discusses how indigenous people continue to negotiate access to natural resources. Using the theoretical framework of New Institutionalism, ethnographic data from participatory observations, and interviews with Takana indigenous resource users and park management staff, we identified four phases of institutional change. We argue that under the current institutionally pluralistic setting in the overlapping area, indigenous users apply “institutional shopping” to choose, according to their power and knowledge, the most advantageous institutional framework in a situation. Indigenous users strategically employed arguments of conservation, indigeneity, or long-term occupation to legitimize their claims based on the chosen institution. Our results highlight the importance of ideologies and bargaining power in shaping the interaction of individuals and institutions. As a potential application of our research to practice, we suggest that rather than seeing institutional pluralism solely as a threat to successful resource management, the strengths of different frameworks may be combined to build robust institutions from the bottom up that are adapted to the local context. This requires taking into account local informal institutions, such as cultural values and beliefs, and integrating them with conservation priorities through cross-cultural participatory planning.