Search results for "ta516"

CONSIDERING VARIOUS STAKEHOLDERS’ VIEWS IN THE DESIGN OF A HYBRID STEM LEARNING ENVIRONMENT - PERCEPTIONS FROM FINLAND AND GREECE

2017

Raising young people’s interest in studies and careers related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (i.e., STEM) is an important societal concern both at European and global level. We argue that the creation of attractive and engaging STEM learning environments necessitates involvement of learners, educators, parents, and STEM professionals in their design. In this paper, we will present a study in which primary, lower and upper secondary school students, teachers, school directors, parents, and STEM professionals in Finland (n = 27) and Greece (n = 24) were invited in the participatory co-design of a hybrid (virtual, physical, formal, and informal) STEM learning environment…

Bridging authentic learning task into technology supported transformative pedagogy in Finnish teacher training

2018

The goal of the Finnish teacher training is to educate autonomous teachers, who have pedagogical competence and theoretical understanding about using ICT in teaching and learning. In this study, we describe teacher students’ pedagogical ICT competence as designers of technology supported learning tasks. The study is based on Hughes’ RAT model, which is a framework for assessing technology integration. The theoretical definition of RAT model is technology as a) replacement, b) amplification or c) transformation. To define this there are three systematical dimensions to analyze a particular technology use: Instructional Methods, Student learning processes and Curriculum Goals. The data consis…

Visual understanding of divergence and curl: Visual cues promote better learning

2019

Prior research has shown that students struggle to indicate whether vector field plots have zero or non-zero curl or divergence. In an instruction-based eye-tracking study, we investigated whether visual cues (VC) provided in the vector field plot can foster students’ understanding of these concepts. The VC were only present during instruction and highlighted conceptual information about vector decomposition and partial derivatives. Thirty-two physics majors were assigned to two groups, one was instructed with VC about the problemsolving strategy, and one without. The results show that students in VC-condition performed better, responded with higher confidence, experienced less mental effor…

Unwanted literal translation: An underdiscussed problem in international achievement studies

2012

More educated, more mobile? Evidence from post-secondary education reform

2016

More educated, more mobile? Evidence from post-secondary education reform. Spatial Economic Analysis. This paper examines the causal impact of the level of education on within-country migration. To account for biases resulting from selection into post-secondary education, it uses a large-scale reform within the higher education system that gradually transformed former vocational colleges into polytechnics in Finland in the 1990s. This reform created quasi-exogenous variation in the supply of higher education over time and across regions. The results based on multinomial treatment effects models and population register data show that, overall, polytechnic graduates have a significantly highe…

Reciprocal commitment in academic careers? : Finnish implications and international trends

2016

This study explores the nature of reciprocal commitment in academic careers. The article is based on a survey conducted in autumn 2013 among fixed-term employees at eight major universities in Finland (N = 810). The analysis is focusing on researchers who have a doctoral degree and who are working on a fixed-term contract at their university (n = 308). According to our study, researchers experience their working conditions are insecure and many of them have considered leaving their universities. Despite the fact that they find their work meaningful their uncertain and poor working conditions are related to their thoughts of leaving the university. In addition in many of the cases leaving th…

The construction of academic identity in the changes of Finnish higher education

2013

This article sets out to explore how academics make sense of the current transformations of higher education and what kinds of academic identities are thereby constructed. Based on a narrative analysis of 42 interviews with Finnish academics, nine narratives are discerned, each providing a different answer as to what it means to be an academic in the present-day university. Narratives of resistance, loss, administrative work overload and job insecurity are embedded in a regressive storyline, describing deterioration of academic work and one's standing. In a sharp contrast, narratives of success, mobility and change agency rely on a progressive storyline which sees the current changes in a p…

University Autonomy, Agenda Setting and the Construction of Agency : the case of the European University Association in the European Higher Education…

2014

This article analyses the ways in which a policy actor constructs its agency through the production of knowledge. Taking the example of the concept of ‘autonomy’ as constructed in the discourse of the European University Association (EUA), the article draws on the theory of discursive framing and agenda setting, as well as on Meyer and Jepperson's heuristic of agentic actors, to show how the practice of knowledge production can shape the European higher education policy. The article offers a contribution to the debate aiming to develop a more critical perspective on the development of the European Higher Education Area, which sees the process as constituted through the activities of, and t…

Agentic perspective on fostering work-related learning

2017

Despite the increased recognition of the role that professional agency plays in work-related learning, little is known about what supports it. Based on current theoretical notions, the first purpose of this paper is to show that professional agency is closely intertwined with work-related learning. The second purpose is to introduce some main principles that promote professional agency and describe three work-related training settings that are aimed at fostering learning by taking into account agentic perspectives. These complementary settings include an identity coaching programme, a leadership coaching programme, and a work conference. Based on the qualitative meta-synthesis, the paper fu…

Equal access to the top? Measuring selection into finnish academia

2019

In this article, we draw a parallel between equality of opportunity in educational transitions and equality of opportunity in academic careers. In both cases, many methodological problems can be ameliorated by the use of longitudinal rather than cross-sectional data. We illustrate this point by using Finnish full-population register data to follow the educational and academic careers of the 1964–1966 birth cohorts from birth to the present day. We show how the Finnish professoriate is highly selected both in terms of parental background and in terms of gender. Individuals of different backgrounds differ greatly in the likelihood of completing different educational and academic transitions, …