Search results for "Environment"

School achievement in adolescence and the risk of mental disorders in early adulthood: a Finnish nationwide register study

2023

AbstractSchool grades in adolescence have been linked to later psychiatric outcomes, but large-scale nationwide studies across the spectrum of mental disorders are scarce. In the present study, we examined the risk of a wide array of mental disorders in adulthood, as well as the risk of comorbidity, associated with school achievement in adolescence. We used population-based cohort data comprising all individuals born in Finland over the period 1980–2000 (N = 1,070,880) who were followed from age 15 or 16 until a diagnosis of mental disorder, emigration, death, or December 2017, whichever came first. Final grade average from comprehensive school was the exposure, and the first diagnosed ment…

Longitudinal associations between third‐grade teaching styles and sixth‐grade reading skills : a 3‐year follow‐up study

2022

Background Most previous studies of teaching styles and reading skills have been cross-sectional. Longitudinal research is needed to clarify the direction of effects. The present longitudinal study examined the degree to which differences in teaching styles in the third grade predict the sixth-grade reading performance. The consistency of the findings was addressed by comparing results across students in two countries (Finland and Estonia). Methods A total of 1,057 students (50.9% boys) were followed from the third to sixth grade. Teaching styles of third-grade teachers (N = 70) were examined as predictors of the development of reading (i.e., third-grade to sixth-grade reading fluency and c…

Twin-singleton differences among ESL students : a study of affective and cognitive factors at the age of 12

2001

Understanding Mentoring Within an Ecosystem of Practices

2020

The aim of this article is to introduce an ecosystemic approach to mentoring, inspired by the theory of ecologies of practices (Kemmis, Edwards-Groves, Wilkinson, & Hardy, 2012). It is suggested that relationships between practices and their environment resemble in many ways the relationships between natural organisms and ecosystems. From this perspective, mentoring is understood as a social practice that exists in the midst of other social practices and derives its essential qualities and its existence from its relation to other practices. The theory of ecologies of practices is based on the conception of practices as ‘living entities’. From the perspective of ecologies of practice, pr…

The effects of socio-scientific issue based inquiry learning on pupils’ representations of landscape

2016

AbstractResearch has demonstrated that socio-scientific issues based inquiry learning has significant advantages for learning outcomes and students’ motivation. Further, a successful understanding of landscapes in environmental and geographical education can be achieved by combining informal learning environments with school education. Therefore this case study focuses on how socio-scientific issues based inquiry learning carried out in school and in a Nature Park, influences primary school pupils’ (n = 36) representations of landscapes. The pupils were asked to draw and write about landscape both before and after intervention. The data was analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively to inves…

Critical Exploration of Flexible Delivery

2020

This work-in-progress research article presents an introductory qualitative study on students' perceptions of a flexibly delivered, modular computer science course. Many contemporary approaches to education rely in various ways on flexible delivery of course content. This is often done to capitalize on modern technology and the web, and to put the student ‘in the center.' However, it is becoming manifest that these approaches may challenge both the students and the equity between them, making it important to understand the effects of flexible delivery in terms of the students. In the voice of our students, flexible delivery was seen as a largely positive approach, reducing stress, promoting…

Designing and Implementing a CSCL-based Course on the Data Security of a Wireless Learning Environment

2012

This article reports on a design-based research (DBR) process for designing and implementing a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) course on the data security of wireless learning environments. The study focuses on examining how university students practice data security when learning on a wireless campus, how data security aspects appear in this study and how students perceive the role of data security in CSCL. The research subjects included six pilot students and eight students enrolled in the course. To promote the reliability of the findings, various kinds of data were used. The data was analysed following the grounded theory approach. The results suggest that data security…

‘The best guess for the future?’ Teachers’ adaptation to open and flexible learning environments in Finland

2021

Finnish education has recently experienced reforms with respect to guidelines forming the curriculum framework for basic education and school architecture. Since 2016, all new schools incorporate open and flexible design, at least to some extent. The more open school design challenges the conventional organisation of space and pre-defined structures and interaction practices. This study investigates how teachers both adapt and are affected by new demands for pedagogy, team teaching and teacher-student relationships. Interview data of 21 teachers of six modern schools are reviewed through thematic analysis. The new school layouts provided some incongruence with the teachers’ aims and their p…

Developing a Method for Measuring Science and Technology Oriented Creativity (STOC)

2021

Abstract The article contains the results of a research within the STIMEY (Science, Technology, Innovation, Mathematics, Engineering for the Young) project funded by the European Union’s Horizon-2020 research and innovation program (2016-2021). In the project, a hybrid learning environment (LE) was developed for both on-site and online learning suitable for the learning conditions in the COVID-19 era and beyond. The purpose of the research segment presented in this paper was to develop an instrument for assessment of the learner’s progress in creativity as one of the key targets of STIMEY. COVID-19 has shown that creativity is also needed to allow education systems the flexibility for unexp…

Brain-Related Research as a Support Mechanism to Help Learners to Acquire Full Literacy

2023

Possibly some of the most important skills that one can have are those needed to become fully literate. We all wish our children to reach such a goal. Unfortunately, the focus of attention in reading research has been on acquiring readiness to sound out written language, i.e., the basic reading skills. Full literacy is the readiness to learn knowledge by reading. Thus, one has to be able to take two steps to reach full literacy. Indications related to both of these steps can be observe in the brain. This may be easiest when we observe the brain activity of a learner who faces difficulties in taking these steps. In fact, the serious difficulty of taking the first step can be observed soon af…