Search results for "ta516"

Human-Technology Choreographies : Body, Movement, and Space in Expressive Interactions

2017

Becoming agentic teachers : Experiences of the home group approach as a resource for supporting teacher students' agency

2018

Abstract This study focuses on the experiences of first-year teacher students in a Finnish teacher education department regarding ways in which studying in stable “home groups” supported or restricted their agency. The findings of the interviews with 22 teacher students suggest that perception of home groups as emotionally safe and offering opportunities to break traditional authority relationship supported teacher students' agency, which was manifested in identity negotiations and active participation. Perception of inequality and tensions within home groups restricted students' agency. The findings underline the need for keen awareness of factors affecting teacher students' agency when ap…

Children’s Social Participation in Virtual Worlds

2013

Virtual worlds provide an arena for children to express themselves and to interact with others. They are a natural and frequent part of children's life today. However, there is not much research on what actually happens in the online worlds and what kind of opportunities those worlds could offer to children and thereby enhance their social participation. The aim in this study is to explore the potential of virtual worlds for children's social participation. The empirical part of the study consists of interviews with 21 Finnish children, aged 11-15 years. By interviewing children, the authors examined their social practices in virtual worlds. In the study, the authors found seven types of so…

The newly qualified teacher in the working community

2014

Focusing on the working community, this article concentrates on the newly qualified foreign language teachers’ (NQT) experiences and on factors that promoted or prevented the development of professional expertise at the outset of their working life. It draws on a qualitative longitudinal study conducted at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland, between 2003 and 2008. All the study participants were female and they were about 24 years old at the time. The data consisted of the NQTs’ essays and journal entries which they wrote on events that had a significant impact on their teaching during their first three to four years of work. The study suggests that by listening to the NQTs’ voices in the…

Outcomes of primary teacher education in Finland : an exit survey

2016

Seven final year cohorts of Finnish pre-service primary teachers (N = 384) were given an exit survey, which measured their estimated attainment of knowledge and experience in the 10 domains of professional activity considered critical for new teachers in the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) standards. The results indicated that the profile of the graduates was uneven, showing low levels of satisfaction in the fields of special education and cooperation but high levels of satisfaction in the fields of reflective practice and planning. The satisfaction with the estimated knowledge and experience achieved was divided into three components of pedagogic, instruct…

How to measure students’ innovation competences in higher education : Evaluation of an assessment tool in authentic learning environments

2018

Abstract In all sectors of the economy, the importance of innovation is underlined. Although education plays a central role in the development of human innovation skills, several studies suggest that higher education institutions cannot fulfill these demands. In such, there is a need to update pedagogical practices and develop assessment tools to measure and develop a person’s innovation capacity. The aim of this study is to test and evaluate the functioning of the earlier developed assessment tool to measure students’ innovation competences in the authentic learning environments of Finnish higher education institutions. The electronic self-assessment questionnaire was distributed to studen…

Tracing discursive processes of shared knowledge construction in a technology-enhanced higher education setting

2013

This study focused on combining both the group- and individual-level analyses in studying a collaborative activity in technology-enhanced interactions in a higher education setting. The aim was to make visible, with empirical examples, the quality of the students' web-based discussions and trace the route for shared understanding. By quantifying various communicative functions, the analysis provided general knowledge on the quality and purpose of the discussion in the group and highlighted the different functional positions each student had within the group. However, only a detailed interpretative analysis of the relationships between specific thematic contents, communicative functions, and…

Why Do Teachers Use Game-Based Learning Technologies? The Role of Individual and Institutional ICT Readiness

2015

This paper investigates how different individual and institutional factors pertaining to ICT readiness influence teachers’ adoption of game-based learning technologies. The data were gathered from Finnish primary, lower secondary and upper secondary school teachers (N=1668) with an online survey. The results indicate that openness towards ICT, ICT attitude and the ICT compatibility with teaching positively influence the perceived value whereas openness towards ICT, supportive organizational ICT culture, ICT selfefficacy and ICT compatibility with teaching positively influenced the actual use of game-based learning technologies. However, the structural model could explain only little of the …

How to Raise Different Game Collaboration Activities : The Association Between Game Mechanics, Players' Roles and Collaboration Processes

2018

Background. Designing collaborative three-dimensional (3D) learning games is one way to enhance the quality of learning and respond to the needs of working life. However, there is little research on how to apply different game mechanics to support different educational aims.Aim. This study determines how game mechanics implemented within computer-supported collaboration roles (scripted vs. emergent) are associated with the emergence of collaboration.Method. The research at hand applies both qualitative and quantitative content analysis. The target group consisted of 15 vocational school students. The data were gathered by recording the groups’ discussions and saving the game logs. A total o…

Physics education research: A research subfield of physics with gender parity

2015

Women currently outnumber men in obtaining undergraduate degrees but are underrepresented within STEM fields. However, women’s representation varies by STEM field, and even further by STEM subfield. One field that has held a persistent low representation of women is physics. This paper seeks to uncover the truth behind an anecdotal claim that the subfield of physics education research (PER) has a higher representation of women than physics as a whole. Graduate students in PER completed an online survey to assess their demographics, trajectory in PER, climate experiences, and goals for their research. The response rate for the survey was 68%, yielding 125 total respondents. This paper will f…