The screenshots in this post are stills from videos that were recorded on the day dedicated to closing-of-term teaching and learning activities in Home Economics. The videos were shot with two different wide lens live action cameras.
The special feature here is that these are 360-degree videos. A 360-degree video is also called periscopic or spherical, as its views are recorded in every direction at the same time. The video is shot using an omnidirectional camera or a collection of cameras. The spherical video has been acclaimed for the immersive experience it can offer, especially when a VR format is applied.
Our use of live action cameras and spherical videos for teaching and learning purposes aims to allow us to better understand the dimensions of immersive experience. What stories, scenes and angles support the element of immersiveness and what direction immersiveness can take, are some of the questions we will be seeking responses to, in the Home4Action virtual space.
When we integrate audio-visual technologies in teaching, editing the videos is part of the immersive experience. The purpose, therefore, of this post is to offer insights into what the editing process is like and, in this way, bring forward some of the details of post-production. The screenshot (1) below, for instance, shows an instance from the closing-of-term event.
screenshot 1
As the shooting included scenes that we were not always meaningful (e.g., long silence gaps, irrelevant footage etc.) we decided to edit into shorter clips that would be shared online at a later stage. However, as becomes evident from screenshot (2) below, the panoramic/spherical effect was no longer available after editing.
screenshot 2
In order to improve the visual effect in the still, the image was cropped in screenshot 3 below. Although the cropping technique does not apply with video, it does help widen the scope of the still image by bringing forward the characters and shrinking the overwhelmingly wide frame.
screenshot 3
As periscopic/spherical video technology is largely unexplored at this moment, lessons learnt, and insights gained from this initial experience show that for true immersiveness, the totality of the experience should be taken into account.
Such totality includes, in addition to the story, scenes and angles recorded, the post-production and the possible multimodal uses of the footage. Multimodal use of audio-visual material can also be about written text, like this one, and still images, like the screenshots of this post are. Multimodal content can lead audiences, teachers and students into the greater detail of an event, and, in this way, to a better understanding of a phenomenon.
So, stay tuned for more about what lies behind the multimodal scenes and video storytelling!
Aino Antas, Susanna Lukkari, Vilja Lukkarinen & Noora Nikitin
The purpose of our development work was to design an intervention using distance learning methods related to handicrafts and aesthetics during the pandemic. The aim of the teaching experiment was to organize distance learning in real time using communication technology tools and applications. The subject of the lessons was to recap of what yeast dough is, to make cinnamon rolls and set up a creative food picture. The teaching was organized through co-teaching. In addition, the aim of the course was to implement gender-conscious teaching.
Premises of the teaching experiment
According to the Finnish National Core Curriculum for basic education (2014), one of the aims of Home Economics is to promote handicrafts and creativity (POPS, 2014, 437). The promotion of handicrafts and creativity is relevant to aesthetics and its training in terms of teaching experimentation. T2 guides students to practice their handicrafts needed to manage the household and encourages creativity and attention to aesthetics. (POPS, 2014, 438–439.) More information about aesthetics can be found here.
The pedagogical intervention (or, experiment) was based on a behaviorist approach to learning with elements from the socio-constructivist approach. In schools, the teaching of arts and skills often focuses on the behaviorist concept, as students imitate the models given by the teacher (Räsänen, 2009, 20). Especially distance learning can highlight the characteristics of behaviorism, as the teacher plays a major role in this. On the other hand, according to Rantanen and Palojoki (2015, 89), it is possible to create a framework for learning according to the socio-constructivist approach to online teaching.
In particular, co-operation and interactivity have been seen as good motivational aspects in teaching.
The course of the teaching experiment, technological implementation and learning materials
We chose a school in Northern Finland for the teaching experiment. The teaching was carried out by video connections via Teams between the University of Helsinki and a school in Northern Finland. Two of uswere filming the firstlesson with a mobile phone for a school in Northern Finland and two of us were teaching.
In the next lesson later that week, we changed roles. We held the lessons through Teams. The lesson was live-streamed on the school board while we were in Helsinki at the university´s classroom. One week before the lessons, we had asked each pupil group to send us a video greeting in which they shared their favorite delicacies and their strength as a group, among other things. We made our own video, where we told about ourselves, for example who we are, why we are teaching the subject and what our favorite delicacies are. We presented the video right at the beginning of the lesson, because, in addition to introducing ourselves, we talked about the goals of the lesson and the technological implementation.
At the beginning of the lesson, we prepared yeast dough together with the pupils. During the lesson, one of our group members used a phone to film how we created our own bun dough. The pupils made bun dough at school at the same time as we did, or slightly behind. We tried to look at their work via video and asked about their working steps so that we could make the dough at the same time.
Aino Antas: Filming instances of making buns for pupils
When the dough was rising, we advised the pupils to do the dishesand we taught about the design of cinnamon rolls with the help of our Canva presentation. We showed our Canva presentation by sharing our laptop’s screen in Teams. In addition to Canva, we showed an illustrative video in which of one of our group member’s brother showed the design of the cinnamon rolls.
All of our group members are females, so we wondered how we could pass the message to the pupils that creating an aesthetic food picture or handicrafts are not gender dependent. The purpose of the video was to break stereotypes and follow a gender-neutral mindset. In this way, the goal of gender-conscious teaching was implemented during the lesson. In addition, during the rise of the dough, we also taught the perspectives related to taking a food picture with the help of a Canva presentation. When taking a food picture, we pointed out the need to select a fitting background, lighting, layout and angle. In addition, we suggested that pupils use, for example, a plate or basket, a napkin and something else in the Home Economics class.
Aino Antas: Instructions for the food picture
After rising the dough, it was time to shape the buns and put them in the oven. While the buns were baking, we advised pupils to finish their dishes, set the table and prepare the filming location. When we took the buns out of the oven, we reminded pupils to take a great food picture before the moment of delicacy.
We asked if we could use the food pictures that they took in our report anonymously. The pupils gave us permission to use their pictures, when they sent the food picture directly to one of our team member’s email. During the delicacy, we asked the pupils to answer a quick feedback questionnaire about the course of the lesson. This gave us immediate feedback on the process. We finished the lesson while pupils sat peacefully at their tables, because we wanted to give them a peaceful ending of the lesson. We finished the lesson about five minutes before the estimated time.
Assessment of the teaching situation and feedback
The lesson enabled us to give pupils immediate feedback about their work. We experienced this as an important factor in encouraging pupils to enjoy the learning, which strengthens the conditions for creative thinking. At a certain level, providing feedback is about the person’s actions and the different parts related to the work, which therefore affects the recipient’s self-esteem (Syrjäläinen, Jyrhämä & Haverinen, 2008). As a result, we experienced a positive and encouraging touch that motivates students.
The interaction on the pupils’ behalf was limited due to technical reasons, so we wanted to encourage pupils to give feedback anonymously. We used Google Forms to create a feedback form that we could share with the Teams platform.
Reflection on the lesson
The teaching experiment provided us many insights and opportunities for learning new things. The most significant thing we learned as a group was distance learning skills and how we managed to teach the pupils new skills in real time without being physically present. The success of co-operation and interaction remotely was a positive experience, as we were not sure in advance how we would make it work. In addition, the gender-conscious bun design video had greater meaning than we had expected. It also motivated pupils, since the person shown in the video was closer to their age group than us.
Although our teaching experiment included great insights and successes, unpredictable challenges also emerged which we were not prepared for. The biggest challenges for the lessons were the functionality of remote connections and the rise of the bun dough. That’s why we modified the lesson plan for Friday’s lesson. We made starter dough and set more time for potential technological challenges.
Tolerating uncertainty and moving out of our comfort zone played a big role in our teaching experiment. This point highlighted the power of co-teaching when we were able to seek support from members of our group when facing problems. Co-teaching allows equal co-operation between teachers, in which they are responsible for planning, implementing and evaluating learning together. The co-teaching often includes more versatile work and learning content than if the teacher arranges the class alone.
Rantanen, M. & Palojoki, P. (2015). Kotitalous verkko-opetuksena. Teoksessa: Janhonen-Abruquah, H. & Palojoki, P. (toim.) Luova ja vastuullinen kotitalousopetus. Helsingin yliopisto. Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta.
Räsänen, M. (2009). Taide, taito, tieto – ei kahta ilman kolmatta. Teoksessa Opetushallituksen taide- ja taitokasvatuksen asiantuntijatyöryhmä (toim.) Taide ja taito – kiinni elämässä! (ss. 28–39). Helsinki: Edita Prima Oy.
Co-authored by Susanna Hakkarainen, Miliza Paloviita & Iiris Wilenius
A Narrative Teaching Experiment in a Home Economics Class
In our blog post, we open the content of Opettaja työnsä tutkijana (Experimental teaching) course teaching experiment. The course is part of the home economics teacher ‘s field of study and is usually completed at Master’s stage. The aim of this development project was for us to deepen our own pedagogical thinking and to develop a research approach in the study of pedagogical phenomena. Another aim was also to examine pedagogical phenomena with an analytical scientific approach and to outline the work of the teacher and the development of teaching in a community and societal context. As a part of this course project, we focused as well on teaching methods that are different, practiced remote teaching and paid attention to gender sensitivity. These starting points were constantly present in the development of our work.
Presentation day prezi
This teaching experiment was conducted at Northern Satakunta, in a secondary school for ninth graders in the spring of 2021. The school is in an area where students usually move elsewhere after primary school to study. That is why moving on your own was chosen as a topic. The teaching experiment was one 60-minute-long sessions for two different groups. The experiment was conducted remotely on Zoom platform so that we were visible on the whiteboard and the teacher’s laptop was turned toward the classroom with visual and auditory connectivity. The technical solutions worked partly but we felt it WASN’T as good as it could be.
According to Rantanen & Palojoki (2015, 74), learning does not happen automatically with mobile devices and tablets, but successful learning requires harnessing these techniques into pedagogically meaningful teaching methods. This was reflected when we were planning our lessons. The structure of the lesson was modified after the first lesson, this was required as part of the experimental project. Prior to the actual lessons, we filmed short welcome videos designed to make us more familiar to the students. These videos included an introduction as well as a small personal story about moving away from home. The videos were available to watch via link on YouTube.
Our teaching was guided by the socio-constructivist conception of learning that is about doing, thinking, and researching with others. The use of language, body and different senses are essential to learning and thinking. In addition to learning new things, the student learns to reflect on their learning, experiences, and feelings (POPS, 2014, 17, 29). The aims of the teaching experiment were that students would understand the concepts and events associated with moving on your own and find information from the right place at the right time in the future. The objectives according to the curriculum were, L3 everyday skills, L4 multilingual skills, L5 information and communications technology skills. And from Home Economics objectives were, T5 guide students to act ergonomically, T7 to identify everyday construction, and T10 to acquire and evaluate reliable information.
Home Economics is usually a functional subject with the possibility to utilize different means of learning. This teaching experiment experimented with a narrative, body and rhythms, and functionality as a method for remote learning. Narrative or other linguistic expression appropriate to student’s age group allows them to view the object being studied through their own living environment and culture (Niemi, 2013, 69, 71). Our narrative story featured gender neutral character named Valo, who was moving away from home after secondary school. Gender conscious teaching identifies and dismantles the gendered structures of society and culture (Salmela, 2018, 10–11). The story contained topics associated with moving on your own. It included applying for an apartment, acquiring an electricity contract, changing address, obtaining insurance and budget planning. These different tasks varied depending on the topic as they emerged from the story. The purpose of the story and assignments was to introduce students to the concepts and events involved in moving from home. The challenges of remote teaching in terms of interaction, functionality, and inclusion, were addressed through a variety of pedagogical and didactic means.
Short version of Valo’s story at the presentation
We used Google’s Jamboard, where the students collected some of the answers from the exercise, and Flinga, to which the students transferred the answers from Alias’s type game task. In Alias, students speculated what items Valo needs for the new apartment. During the story, we also practiced folding a shirt under the guidance of a teaching trainee. This task related to packing. We also practiced ergonomic lifting, which is a part of moving itself. And in the second lesson, instead of ergonomically lifting, we tried rhythm and clapping to dismantle one task. We also maintained interaction with the class by asking students what they had answered for each task. At the end of the lesson, students received a link to a Google Forms survey asking about their experiences of the lesson.
Folding a hoodie with students via zoom
The teaching experiment was an educational experience and provided new ideas for implementing pedagogical and didactical methods in Home Economics teaching. But there is still room for the experiment to be developed.
We considered that it would have been worthwhile to hold more than two lessons, to allow for a more functionalstructure. Functionality and interaction in remote teaching also requires practice. According to Rantanen & Palojoki (2015, 83), meaningful involvement has a positive effect on the joy of learning and fun experiences in teaching situations. Teaching remotely to an unfamiliar class is already an experience that helps to understand how important student knowledge, interaction, and close contact are in teaching. Teaching remotely can often turn into behaviorist or individual work. Despite the difficulties due to the situation, we felt that it was worthwhile to try new and different pedagogical and didactic methods in Home Economics teaching.
Niemi, R. (2013). Kolmiäänisiä kokemuksia narratiivisesta opetusmenetelmästä ohjatussa opetusharjoittelussa. Teoksessa Eero Ropo & Maiju Huttunen (toim.) Puheenvuoroja narratiivisuudesta opetuksessa ja oppimisessa. Tampere: Tampere University Press 2013, 85–104.
OTT. (2021). Opettaja työnsä tutkijana. Helsingin yliopisto.
Rantanen, M., Palojoki, P. (2015). Kotitalous verkko-opetuksena. Teoksessa: Janhonen-Abruquah, H. & Palojoki, P. (toim.). (2015). Luova ja vastuullinen kotitalousopetus – Creative and responsible home economics education. Kotitalous- ja käsityötieteiden julkaisuja, nr. 38. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press.
Salmela, R. (2018). Sukupuolitietoisen opetuksen konkretisoituminen perusopetuksessa -Perusopetuksen opettajien tulkintoja sukupuolitietoisen opetuksen toteutumisesta heidän omassa opetuksessaan. Saatavilla: https://erepo.uef.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/20702/urn_nbn_fi_uef-20181274.pdf
Digital applications, social media and continuously developing technological solutions have changed permanently our daily life and therefore children need to develop important transferable skills, especially via Home Economics teaching. Media education is part of this skill teaching process, and it can be utilized in Home Economics and all other school subjects. Media literacy and competences for using media and digital applications are essential knowledge in modern world.
Picture 1. Padlet has a quite user-friendly and accessible interface. In this task students were asked to write down five different useful tips on how to use and manage money. Common advice related to saving money and sustainable consuming, like buying used products.
Home Economics is a crucial school subject, which provides a great set of different knowledge and skill sets that are necessary when it comes to society and mundane life. In other words, the aim of Home Economics and its curriculum is to adjust to a rapidly changing world and to grasp current societal phenomena. The Finnish teaching curriculum emphasizes the framework of 21-century skills, which are illustrated by OECD. Core themes of this framework, such as different social and cultural skills, co-operation, problem solving, and different forms of literacy are connected to Home Economics.
Since the Coronavirus pandemic, society and its functions have transformed, and people have had to adjust to changes that the pandemic caused. Many organizations and other units of society have deployed digital ways to operate. People must interact with each other online via different applications, which makes communication, co-operative working and interaction complicated. Unfortunately, not everybody have the same skill set to cope in a complex, digitalized world. Their agency, possibilities to learn and obtain important skills are endangered significantly. We need to set our focus on the factors that support unequal learning environments and structure both distance and traditional school teaching.
Picture 2. Teachers and students can compose simple and interactive charts from scratch with Flinga.
Our purpose was to integrate media education in our Home Economics teaching experiment and interact with students online. The aim was to tackle with various obstacles, which relate to distance learning and interaction. Arranging the online teaching experiment required scheduled and dense teamwork with numerous meetings and conversations. We carefully planned both lessons and practiced them through beforehand as well.
Distance learning makes demonstration and interaction more challenging. It is important for the teacher to have courage to try new methods and teaching tools. A creative mindset, team-oriented work and will to break boundaries makes successful online classes possible. Yet, digital applications could make teaching and learning hard and frustrating sometimes. Therefore, it is useful for teachers to test different applications, evaluate different solutions for educational use and re-evaluate decisions.
This summary is part of the study module PED006 Opettaja työnsä tutkijana (Teacher as a researcher of her/his own work). This course is a part of Master’s studies in Home Economics. In this course, we had to distance-teach the upper level pupils in comprehensive school, because of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. At first, we had to teach pupils by distance so that they would have been in school. But the pupils were also at home, because due the corona restrictions, all schools were closed, and all teaching took place as distance teaching and learning. The main theme of this course was teaching differently – we also had to consider gender-sensitive and distance teaching issues.
Who? How? Where?
The teaching experiments took place over the network so that everyone used their own technical equipment – computer, tablet computer or smartphone. The baseline for distance learning is that pupils use technical equipment of the school (Opetushallitus, 2021). In our teaching experiment, we used Microsoft Teams and Padlet as joint platforms, which were already familiar to pupils. We ended up using Microsoft Teams because the school where we gave the distance learning experiment, uses it on a daily basis already. We chose to use Padlet because it is an easy-to-use, free platform on which a teacher can create a wall for assignments and pupils can complete it. Padlet does not require registration. You can create your own Padlet-platform here:https://fi.padlet.com/
We chose our own topic for the lessons. We chose to teach about the lifecycle of the clothes by using an adventure pedagogy. We kept lessons to pupil on 7th and 8th grade. First lessons were given to 8th grade pupils. Lessons were both 2 x 45 minutes long. We used Microsoft Teams’ breakout room -function to divide pupils into smaller groups with 4 to 5 pupils.
The main goal of the lessons was to teach pupils about the lifecycle of clothes including the price, how to take care of clothes (washing, folding etc.) and how to recycle clothes after use. The skill we chose to teach was how to fold a long-sleeve and a short-sleeve shirt and three different kinds of socks – ankle socks, short crew socks and crew socks – by Marie Kondo’s KonMari -style – (pictures 1 & 2). We taught this skill by showing teaching videos and showing in person how to fold shirts and socks.
Picture 1 KonMari-style folded socks (picture by Heli Orhala-Halminen)Picture 2 KonMari-style folded long-sleeved shirt (picture by Olga-Maaria Mattila)
Educational baselines
The pedagogical framework for our teaching experiment was based on the socio-constructivist approach to learning. In this approach, the pupil is an active agent who learns, sets goals, and solves problems in interaction with others. The socio-constructivist view of learning is also relevant to the subject of Home Economics, as it, for example, highlights the importance of cooperation and interaction skills. The role of the teacher is to be a constructive instructor as well as to guide the pupil’s learning in social interaction.
To organize the interaction, we used large groups, small groups and individual modes of work. In large group teaching, only the teacher is active while the pupils are in a passive role. Small group teaching supports active interaction between pupils, which helps them to understand the subject more extensively.The pupils play an active role as both researcher and producer of information. Individual work allows students to work at their own pace and is essential in practicing skills. Teaching a new skill – folding shirts and socks– included all these three forms.
In this teaching experiment, we utilized simultaneous co-teaching. Generally, co-teaching emphasizes the importance of collaboration and planning with another teacher. Central in the co-operation between teachers is the ability to discuss with a colleague, to give up one’s own preconceptions as a teacher and to find together the best way to implement the planning and implementation of teaching (Pruuki, 2008, 62).
Using an adventure pedagogy in teaching
Before the lessons, we instructed the pupils to take garments for distance learning such as long-sleeved shirt, T-shirt, and different kind of socks. The teaching session began with an introduction. After the presentation, the pupils were shown a video (picture 3).
Picture 3 Start of the teaching video (picture by Olga-Maaria Mattila)
After watching the video, we divided pupils into smaller groups, and they worked together in different kinds of game points. The game points were:
The first game point was to consider the formation of the price of clothing by first reading the article independently and answer to the questions given in the group.
The second game point was about teaching a new skill – folding clothes. On the second lesson, we left out the second game point and taught the folding of the clothes in a large group.
In the third game point, the pupils get acquainted with the care instructions for clothes included in the teaching session and taught the characters to each other in the group.
At the fourth game point, the pupils had to get information about the recycling of the clothes and tell about one recycling option of their choice.
In our teaching experiment, experience and adventure pedagogy appears through a converging continuum in teaching. Initially, pupils were shown a video that they could possibly identify with. The video challenged the pupils to consider buying and caring for clothes. The video presented students with a riddle (the so-called question of the day) in which pupils search for answers at game points. The game point tasks were designed to support the structure of the lesson continuum.
After working in small groups, we went through the students’ responses in Padlet together. At the end of the lesson, pupils could give anonymous feedback to us about the lesson.
How to modify this teaching experiment?
The teaching experiment could use an instructional video to teach the folding of the clothes, where learning would be supported by captions and recorded speech. The instructional video should also be slower so that videos don’t have to be paused or watched many times in-between teaching. It would have also been a good idea to make a pictorial instruction for the pupils in a separate file, including a written text.
References
Cantell, H. (2010). Ratkaiseva vuorovaikutus. Pedagogisia kohtaamisia lasten ja nuorten kanssa. Jyväskylä: PS-Kustannus.
Kondo, M. (2016). KonMari. Siivouksen elämänmullistava taika. Helsinki: Bazar Kustannus Oy.
Saara Pullinen, Sofia Engström , Vili Kinos & Maiju Mustonen
We took on a task to produce a fun and an inventive way of teaching teenage students about ecological cleaning methods. After some brainstorming and a little analytical thinking, we found ourselves scrolling through TikTok looking for cleaning life hacks. We wanted our project to be strongly rooted in the youth’s own world, rather than starting from our group’s own perspective. TikTok turned out to be a great fit for our needs. It’s widely used amongst teenagers, is free to use and with it one can produce a great variety of content with music, effects and all kinds of interesting little flavorings to make the videos stand out in a personal way. All these taken into account, we felt confident that TikTok was an appropriate tool for our project. We got valuable information about using social media as a pedagogical tool from the 2012 research Social media’s educational uses (original: sosiaalisen median opetuskäyttö) by Harto Pönkä, Niina Impiö and Venla Vallivaara.
Life hacks on the other hand, we weren’t so sure about. Our project would never fake flight amongst the internet-fluent millennials if our chosen topic of life hacks was “two-thousand-and-late”. Luckily, our hesitations turned out to be pointless, as the students were excited working with the project. This left us happy and smiling on two levels. Firstly, our project was a success, and secondly, we are still in touch with the fast-developing world of the millennials. That means we’re not boomers yet, which is a relieving realization, considering all of us in the group are still in our twenties!
We noticed that a lot of the content on the internet concerning ecological cleaning revolved around using everyday household products for cleaning purposes. Salt, baking soda, carbonated water and lemon amongst other citrus fruits are a few examples of common products that were used for a wide range of resourceful cleaning. We chose sodium bicarbonate, or in other words, regular baking soda, as our ecological cleaning agent. Baking soda is a cheap, widely available and a very versatile household pantry staple, that also happens to be environmentally friendly. All of these factors were important for our project, especially the availability of the cleaning agent, since all basic education with all of its materials has to be free of charge in Finland. We designed the cleaning tasks so that, if the students didn’t have baking soda at home, they could substitute it with salt instead.
After all the planning and researching was done, we started testing our project with three different upper comprehensive school classes ranging from the 7th to the 9th grade. As the teaching part of our project was in progress during the early part of 2021, we had to adjust to the mandatory restrictions set by the Finnish government to control effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. This meant our teaching was going to have to be provided remotely using Microsoft Teams as our platform. For the first two classes we were able to have one of us from the group in the actual classroom with the students while the rest of the group joined via Teams. By the third class, basic education was once again transferred to a remote setting, so the whole class was performed remotely.
How to clean a coffee cup using baking soda (Photo: Saara)
As mentioned in the first paragraph, in the core of our project was the youth’s own world and their ways, so we wanted our methods to be connected to that standpoint. The students worked together in small groups to come up with the best solution to a given baking soda cleaning task. The tasks were cleaning a stained kitchen sink, cleaning a burnt pot and removing unpleasant smells from a refrigerator. We used Classroomscreen as a tool to demonstrate the classes’ structure and contents. The tasks, a countdown timer, an instructional video, a QR-code for a feedback sheet and the classes’ main structure points were all shown on the screen. The screen could be seen throughout the class on the smart screen.
Screenshot from Classroomscreen (Photo: Saara)
Before the students started searching possible cleaning uses for baking soda, we showed an instructional baking soda cleaning video made by Martat (The Marthas), a Finnish Home Economics organization. After the video, the students were given ten minutes to complete the given task. Once the given time had passed, the students presented their chosen ways of completing the task. The conversation surrounding the cleaning methods was good and rich, despite the difficulties we had with sound while joining via Teams. Communication and interaction in a remote setting turned out to be the largest problem in our project for a few reasons. Firstly, online communications are not always completely reliable. A problem in the WiFi-network might be the downfall of an entire project. Luckily, we only had minor problems with internet connection. Secondly, an online introduction of three new teachers doesn’t exactly spark conversation. Without a face-to-face meeting with the students, we felt that the students couldn’t really connect with us, which resulted in very little interaction between us teaching from home and the students sitting in class. Between the first two classes we made some modifications to our project, so that we could create more interaction. We had minor success with increased interaction, but our limited connection with the students still kept the conversation level low. We started wondering possible fixes for the third class.
Unfortunately, our third class had to be performed in a completely remote setting, so we decided to take a slightly different approach. We started with a live demonstration on how to clean sneakers with baking soda, while the students participated from home. For the absent students, we had filmed similar videos for them to learn from. After the demonstration we showed three baking soda cleaning hack videos on TikTok that were made by our friends and family. The performers were of different ages and sexes, which we felt was an important factor to consider when showing students demo videos. Next, the students got to work. They could clean their sneakers during the class or later and make a video of the process. The students were truly excited when they saw that they were able to clean their sneakers so that they look like new again!
Life hack: using baking soda to clean your sneakers
As we concluded our project, we were happy for the results and experiences we got. Videos have become such a natural part of the youth’s own world, and platforms such as TikTok are present in their everyday life. Using this already existing interest and enthusiasm, we were able to produce an effective and compelling set of classes that needed little outside motivation. The biggest challenges for social media and video-based education projects seem to be the privacy protection and data safety aspects, as well as up to date knowledge of the school’s rules on the matter. Know-how of the platform and the equipment are also needed for a successful project. So, with good planning and preparing, a set of classes like ours can certainly be performed in upper comprehensive schools. It’s always refreshing to step out of one’s comfort zone, and we encourage teachers all around to take the step!
Pönkä, H., Impiö, N., & Vallivaara, V. (2012). Ohjeita sosiaalisen median käyttöönottoon ja pedagogisen käytön arviointiin. Teoksessa: Pönkä, H., Impiö, N., & Vallivaara, V. (toim.) Sosiaalisen median opetuskäyttö. ss. 109–118. Tampere: Juvenes print. Saatavilla: http://jultika.oulu.fi/files/isbn9789514298233.pdf
Well-being and food: what kind of connection is there between them?
Our didactic development project was all about the connection of comprehensive well-being and food. The topic of our teaching experiment was: Well-being and food – physical, mental and social point of view. As sources we used examples such as nutrition ABC from Martat (Martat, 2021). The comprehensive aim of this project was to develop ways of teaching home economics by internet connection in distance learning and also to develop our own and the pupils’ distance learning and technology skills. The development of distance learning is a topical subject, because the worldwide pandemic caused rapid changes in primary schools and distance learning had to be brought into use at short notice (Ilomäki & Lakkala, 2020). Our topic was given by the upper comprehensive school teacher. The topic was quite wide, so we needed different ideas to experiment with different kinds of teaching methods. Our intention was also to broaden the pupils’ conceptions about the connection of well-being and food so that they could recognize their own resources concerning overall well-being.
Developing hands-on skills
The main part of this didactic development project was to focus on developing the teaching of hands-on skills by distance learning. We wanted to focus on the basic hands-on skills that the pupils need in their everyday life. The hands-on skill was part of the physical well-being field. We wanted to teach the pupils how to handle different kinds of fruit and make a healthy smoothie, so they can take that skill to their everyday life and make healthy snacks. Our teaching method for this was to use a video. We filmed our own teaching video by using the Stop Motion Studio application. This application was free and it was easy to use. The idea is to make stop-motion movies, where the movie is made from photos. We think that it was a very good and simple way to make our own video and it could be used in many different ways, also by the pupils. Here is a link to Stop Motion Studio tutorial video.
Have you ever thought of meditation as a teaching method? Picture: Shahariar Lenin Pixabaystä.
Methods and digital applications
We implemented our didactic development project in a class of 7th graders in secondary school. Before teaching, we shared an introductory video with the pupils. In the video, we told who we are and what we are going to do with them. The lesson was 75 minutes long and we were only able to complete it once. The reason was the changing circumstances caused by the pandemic. In this project we utilized the socio-constructivist concept of learning, which focuses on the pupil’s own learning to learn (Kauppila, 2007, 37–39). As teaching methods of the didactic development project, we used group work, inquiry-based teaching, teacher-led teaching, video, and meditation. We also utilized different digital applications and tools which you can see below in Table 1.
Table 1. Our project subjects and the digital applications used.
Opetuskokeilun aihe 🡪
Hyvinvointi ja ruoka,tarkasteltuna henkisestä, sosiaalisesta ja fyysisestä näkökulmasta
Mistä löytää?
Digitaalinen sovellus/alusta:
Henkinen
Sosiaalinen
Fyysinen
Yhteenveto
Palaute
Zooom.us
Zoom
X
X
X
X
Prezi.com
Prezi
X
X
X
X
Flinga.fi
Flinga
X
Google Play, App Store
Stop Motion Studio
X
Canva.com
Canva
X
X
Google.com/forms
Googe Forms
X
Classroom.google.com
Google Classroom
X
Working in the classroom. Picture: Kotitalousopettajan sijainen
How did we do?
The teaching experiment was successful. The chocolate meditation at the beginning of the lesson calmed the pupils down and they liked it very much, probably because it had a sweet twist;) During the lesson the pupils participated actively and answered our questions and they focused on the Prezi presentation. There was a calm atmosphere in the classroom. The visual and animated Prezi presentation worked well in teaching. In the discussion task, the pupils discussed actively and added answers to Flinga very actively. We used the Stop Motion Studio application to teach the hands-on skill. In that video we demonstrated peeling and chopping of different fruits and the making of a smoothie. Finally, we summarized our subjects in the diagram made by the Canva application. This brought well together all the three aspects of well-being, namely the mental, the social and the physical. The interaction between the teacher and the student in the distance learning experiment remained quite limited because we did not see or hear the pupils very well. Home Economics is a subject that is characterized by an interactive learning environment, so we will need to further develop this area in the future.
References
Ilomäki, L. & Lakkala, M. (2020). Finnish upper secondary school students’ experiences with online courses. Education in the North, 72(2), 73-91.
Kauppila, R. A. (2007). Ihmisen tapa oppia. Johdatus sosiokonstruktiiviseen oppimiskäsitykseen. Jyväskylä: PS-kustannus.
We took part to the course “Opettaja työnsä tutkijana” (Teacher as researcher) at the University of Helsinki and were assigned to create a teaching experiment with a new approach to teaching Home Economics for secondary school students. The idea of this assignment was to teach differently from what we were used to and learn to use distance education as a teaching method. We were also encouraged to boldly try new ways of teaching and go out of our comfort zone. The theoretical framework for our lesson and teaching method was based on the socio-constructivist theory of learning. According to this theory, human development is socially situated and knowledge is constructed through interaction with other people. The student´s own activity to produce information is emphasized. The role of the teachers is to guide the students.
As a group of four Home Economics students, we decided to contact a Home Economics teacher who works in a school located in Helsinki metropolitan area. We got to teach two different groups of 8th grade students. The Home Economics teacher gave us the topic for the lesson: Harvest season thinking and how students could make use of it in their everyday life. We thought that by teaching about the harvest season we teach at the same time how to be a sustainable consumer and how to make choices in everyday life.
Harvest season and how to make use of it
Harvest season means the entire growing season of a product. Season is the time when a product’s harvest is at its best and by then the taste is usually at its best as well. The idea of harvest season–thinking is to favor products that are at their best in the harvest season. Usually, the price of the product is cheaper than those that are not on harvest season at that moment. Often the taste of a product is at its best during the best harvest season. It is also better for the environment and more energy efficient to grow and to favor products that are in harvest season. The Finnish nutrition recommendation is to eat half a kilogram of vegetables every day as a part of a diverse diet. This half a kilogram recommendation means that one should eat a variety of fruits and vegetables. Harvest season thinking does not only mean favoring vegetables and fruits but also favoring domestic fish and game meat. Our harvest season in Finland is quite short but we grow many root vegetables. Many of these keep well in root cellars and last for several months. This way we can eat domestic vegetables during wintertime when there is very little or no domestic harvesting in Finland. We recommend people to favor these root vegetables and domestic berries during wintertime.
Lesson plan
We wanted to do something at first to get the students interested in the topic. We decided to make a short video to be shown at the beginning of the class. We recorded the video at the local supermarket´s vegetable department by using a mobile phone. The voice-over was recorded separately. The recordings were combined and edited by using Apple´s Final Cut Pro-program (paid program). In order to teach students differently, we chose to use gaming as our main teaching method. We created a quiz about the harvest season and why we favor it.
The video was filmed at a local supermarket. Photo by: Mona Jäppinen
The quiz was made with Google Forms Quiz. There were questions in the quiz about vegetables and harvest season thinking. We also used Google Jamboard, an interactive whiteboard where we could work together with the students by writing, adding notes and images for all to see. The students had to follow the instructions, find information and pictures of the fruits on season and add them to the Jamboard. We asked the students to be critical of the sources they used. Afterwards, we went through the writings together and discussed the topics.
Screenshot of the Jamboard platform we were using in our teaching. Photo by: Terhi Tepponen
The lessons were held at the school´s Google Meet platform. We held two different lessons for the 8 th graders. One lesson lasted 75 minutes. We taught the lessons foursome and shared the tasks.
Our distance education experiment went very well, and the students participated in the lesson and did the assigned tasks nicely. We made some changes to the lesson plan for the second lesson because we noticed that some of the students did not participate in the lesson as much as hoped for. For the second teaching lesson, we advised the students to use the chat for communicating if it felt more comfortable. That was a good advice and that way the communication was lively. We also noticed that the instructions given to the students must not be too long. It was better to give only one or two instructions at a time.
Feedback and some thoughts
The feedback we received from the students and the teacher was encouraging. Most of the students liked our lesson because it was different from their normal lessons. Specially they liked the harvest season quiz game and the video we made for them. The teacher praised our lesson and she thought it was diverse and active. She only reminded us to note the students who were late for class. For the future distance education, we need to pay attention to interaction and activating the students. Our plans were made to teach distant but so that the students were supposed to be in their classroom together with their own teacher. Because of the current Covid-19 situation, the secondary school switched to distance education, and we had to teach the class totally remotely. We had to make some changes to our plan to be able to hold the lessons. Distance education requires practice for both teachers and students and special attention should be paid to interaction, materials used, working methods and tools.
Here are some references we recommend:
Vainikainen, M-P., Oinas, S., Ahtiainen, R., Rimpelä, A., Lindfors, P., Lintuvuori, M., Hienonen, N., Heikonen, L., Asikainen, M., Lindgren, E., & Hotulainen, R. (preprint). (2020). School-level variation in distance learning practices during the COVID-19 pandemic in Finland. 21.9.2020. https://www.researchreal.fi/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2020-09-21- Distance_learning_practices_SUBMISSION.pdf KARVI. (2020). Poikkeuksellisten opetusjärjestelyjen vaikutukset tasa-arvon ja yhdenvertaisuuden toteutumiseen Osa I: Kansallisen arvioinnin taustaraportti, synteesi ja tilannearvio valmiiden aineistojen pohjalta [The effects of exceptional teaching arrangements in realized equality. Part I: The background report of national assessment, synthesis and estimation based on existing data]. Kansallinen arviointikeskus. 7.5.2020. https://karvi.fi/app/uploads/2020/05/Poikkeuksellisten-opetusj%C3%A4rjestelyjen-vaikutukset-osaI-Karvi-7.5.2020-1.pdf
Korhonen Mirka, Leskelä Elina, Piispanen Lotta, Tikkanen Anna
Basis of the teaching experiment
The idea behind this teaching development project was to “teach differently”. We set out to design something that would go out of our own comfort zone and thus open up new perspectives and ways to teach. We work within the curriculum, but with an experimental and explorative approach. Our design for the teaching experiment was guided by the socioconstructive notion of learning. Socio-constructive learning sees knowledge formation and learning as a social phenomenon. (Kauppila. 2007, p. 114).
In Home Economics interactivity is a basic principle, because learning happens when working together.
Narrative pedagogy was a new concept for us, so we decided to apply it in our Home Economics project, where knowledge and skills needed for everyday life are learned on a daily basis (Palojoki, 2020, p. 31). In a plot learning environment, tasks for learning are wrapped up in a storyline, where the story serves as both a motivational tool and a teaching method. When the problem of the story is convincingly highlighted, it motivates students towards solving the problem. In this way, the students have the opportunity to influence the continuation of the story. (Hakkarainen, Vuorinen & Peppanen, 2010, p. 110–114). In addition to narrative pedagogy, the teaching experiment was guided by phenomenon-based learning and experimental pedagogy, because global and local phenomena are utilized naturally in Home Economics (POPS, 2014, p. 439).
This development project’s contents in class were food loss in everyday life, groceries journey from bananas point of view, sensory evaluation and date tags. Cooking in households has increased during the corona pandemic (Rytkönen, Mattila & Palomaa, 2020), thus we can assume thatmore food is lost than before pandemic. Food loss is a very common phenomenon in the global climate change crisis narrative. Preventing food loss helps decrease carbon dioxide emissions. Therefore, knowledge and skills about how to preventfood waste are needed now and in the future.
Food waste is a wide topic, and that’s why we chose to narrow the concept by teaching the topic from the point of view of the banana fruit. Banana cropping, transport and stocking created climate impact was discussed. As well, how to use maturing bananas in cooking and baking on a daily basis.
Banana. Copyrights: Mirka Korhonen.
Also, our aim was to adopt a gender conscious pedagogical approach. In a gender-sensitive pedagogy, gender-related norms and impacts are acknowledged in education both at the individual and the societal level (Seta, 2021b). What, then, a Home Economics teacher should know about gender? Video material created by the University of Helsinki (2020) points out that in gender-conscious Home Economics teaching, division of work and group allocation is performed in ways that support students’ learning beyond gender stereotypes.
This means that every student is seen as an individual able to make their own decisions. Therefore, diversity should be recognized and the whole school community should take action to prevent inequalities. Teachers, for example, should ask what name a student has chosen, rather than taken the already chosen name for granted (Heikkinen & Huuska, 2015).
The implementation of the teaching experiment
The teaching experiment was carried out at a secondary school in Vantaa, in April 2021. The upper schools were then in distance learning in the Helsinki metropolitan area, so the pupils participated in distance learning from home. We had an opportunity to design and implement a teaching experiment for an optional household course called “household here and elsewhere”. Two eighth grade groups participated in the teaching experiment, which we taught in pairs of teachers.
Flinga was used in our lesson as a return platform during students’ small group task. The platform enabled gathering each small group’s answers anonymously and also allowed others to see them in real time without having to register. Copyrights: Mirka Korhonen.
In our teaching experiment, the lesson was held through Microsoft Teams, which served as our classroom. At the beginning of the lesson, we used the statement-referencing task to activate students’ interest in the task and got to know with one another. This was followed by a review of the theory of date marking, sensory evaluation and food waste. In addition, a demonstration of sensory evaluation was held in a teacher-led manner. After the demonstration, the students practiced sensory evaluation and interpretation of date markings both independently and in groups using the Google Forms test and Microsoft Teams small group function. During the class, Flinga served as a class board and recovery folder where pupils were able to return the assignments they did in small groups. At the end of the lesson, the teacher read aloud the Banana Journey Story and a letter in which we invited students to join the work against food loss. This is how they became active participants in the story. Finally, we introduced our waste banana recipe bank and asked students to respond to a feedback survey.
Picture of the test of sensory evaluation in Google Forms. During the test the students evaluated the groceries by choosing whether it can be used, can be used with precaution or cannot be used. After finishing the test, the students are shown their points, right answers and reasoning for right answers. Meanwhile, the author of the test can monitor how many have already answered the test and distribution of the scores. In this case, Google Forms was used for anonymity. Copyrights: Mirka Korhonen.
Feedback
The learning material we designed for the lesson received praise from the school’s Home Economics teachers. In particular, the teachers liked the demonstration of sensory evaluation taught in teacher-pairs and the sensory evaluation task of Google Forms. We asked students for feedback using the Google Forms feedback form. The students’ answers to the question “What do you think was the best thing during the lesson?” were heartwarming: “All because I learned a lot”, “That test, and well, all” and “Breezy and positive teachers”. To the question “How the lesson could have been even better?” was answered as follows: “It was a good lesson, no need to add anything” and “The class could have started a little later, but otherwise it was good”. We felt that feedback was very important in reflecting on the teaching experiment.
Developing the teaching experiment
While developing our lecture we would have given more consideration to diverse needs of students.Especially when applying a narrative pedagogy, it would be important to pay attention to students who have troubles in listening comprehension, or for whom the language spoken is not their native language. For students like these we could have given the whole story or some vocabulary beforehand, which would help them to keep up with the storyline. Inadequate understanding of structure of the text might be a cause of low comprehension of text which could affect understanding the thread of the text in chronological stories by making it harder (Lehto, 2006, p. 133).
The Home Economics teachers gave us a couple of suggestions for developing our lesson. They proposed that we could have started the lesson by telling and visualizing to students the structure and timetable of the lesson which would have helped the students to keep up with the lesson. In addition, while distance schooling, the meaning of breaks is highlighted, which is why we could have had a break on our lesson.
If we could have implemented the teaching development experiment at a Home Economics classroom, we would have wanted narrative pedagogy to have a bigger role in our lesson and have it as a teaching method, which defines the whole lesson. After listening to the story, the students would have become part of the story as active consumers to prevent food loss with preparing food from bananas, which would have gone to waste in other case.
References
Hakkarainen, P., Vuorinen, M. L. & Peppanen T. (2010). Opettajakompetenssit juonellisessa osallistavassa ympäristössä. Teoksessa Juuso, H., Kielinen, M., Kuure, L. ja Lindh, A. (toim.), Koulun kehittämisen haaste. Näkökulmia harjoituskouluissa tapahtuvaan tutkimukseen (s. 110–124). Oulun yliopiston opetuksen kehittämisyksikön julkaisuja. Dialogeja 13. Oulu: Oulun yliopistopaino. Saatavilla: https://www.oamk.fi/c5/files/2815/5436/7031/dialogeja_13.pdf. Viitattu 26.3.2021.
Heikkinen, L. & Huuska, M. (2015). Sateenkaari koulutien päässä. Sukupuolen moninaisuuden osaamiskeskus. Saatavilla: https://seta.fi/2015/08/14/sateenkaari- koulutien-paassa/. Viitattu 28.4.2021.
Kauppila, R.A. (2007). Ihmisen tapa oppia: johdatus sosiokonstruktiiviseen oppimiskäsitykseen. Jyväskylä: PS-Kustannus.
Lehto, J. E. (2006). Tekstinymmärtäminen ja sen vaikeus. Teoksessa: Takala, M. ja Kontu, E. (toim.), Luki-vaikeudesta luki-taitoon. Palmenia-sarja 8. Yliopistopaino.
Palojoki, P. (2020). Tästä tulevaisuuteen – 2020-luvun kotitalousopetus: Kommenttipuheenvuoro. Ravitsemuskatsaus, 2020(2), s. 31–33.
POPS (2014). Perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteet 2014. Opetushallitus. Helsinki: Next Print Oy.
Rytkönen, A.-P., Mattila, M., Ojanperä, S. & Palomaa, A. (2020). Korona on lisännyt kotimaisen ruoan kysyntää jopa kymmeniä prosentteja – elintarvikeala lupaa, että tavaraa riittää ja lisää tehdään koko ajan. Ylen uutisartikkeli 19.3.2020. Saatavilla: https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11265467. Viitattu 30.3.2021.
This blog entry is about a teaching experiment conducted as part of a university course for home economics teachers in the University of Helsinki in collaboration with a local elementary school. The central theme of the course was to plan an interactional home economics lesson for elementary school students, and to execute it remotely, with teacher trainees operating from outside of the classroom. Our group of three teacher trainees ended up teaching students how to cook with the help of cooking videos found on social media, while their own teachers supervised.
The starting point of our experiment was the notion outlined in the Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education that students are active agents, who set goals and solve problems independently and together with other students (POPS, 2014, s. 17). Initially, when we found out we were supposed to teach ninth-graders how to make fresh homemade pasta — and to teach it remotely — we weren’t sure how we would do it. Luckily one member in our group had prior experience of watching and utilizing cooking videos found on social media, and that became the central idea of our remote teaching experiment.
According to the National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (2014, s. 39), methods of teaching should not only be influenced by the objectives of teaching but also by the needs and interests of the students themselves. Therefore, social media was an obvious resource to be utilized in an experiment based on remote learning, information management, and communication, since ninth-graders are most likely active on social media. We wanted to show students how easy it is to cook using instructional cooking videos in order to encourage them to try cooking the dishes they will inevitably see in their own social media feeds. Eventually we chose to make such instructional cooking videos ourselves, using a popular social media platform we weren’t familiar with at all — TikTok.
Making the videos
In many home kitchens smart phones, tablets, and social media platforms are already challenging traditional cookbooks. Most of the instructional cooking videos are, however, directed at an audience who already have the resources, experience, and confidence to try them. Not only was the experience of cooking with such videos new to most of the students, making such videos was also new to us. So, we wanted to make them very simple and easy to follow. The videos were shot in a training kitchen provided by the University of Helsinki, using a regular smart phone and user interface of TikTok. The videos were also edited and published on TikTok, and after that transferred to YouTube and Google Classroom in case of any technical difficulties that might arise later. We wanted to be sure the videos would be accessible on multiple platforms at all times.
Because the videos were very simple and straightforward, we did not write a script for them. Before shooting each “scene”, we quickly negotiated who would do what during the scene. The user interface of TikTok made it very easy to cut from one scene to another, which is in fact the main attribute of the platform in question. This made shooting very easy, because we had time to think about the next scene between every shot.
Mixing the pesto with the pasta. Photograph by: Tiina Munck
While shooting the footage was not that challenging, it was time consuming. Originally we reserved three hours for the production, but ended up using almost six. This was mostly because we did not have much prior experience of using TikTok, aside from shooting a few practice videos at home. Having little knowledge of the editing features and limitations of the user interface ended up costing us time. We were not entirely sure how much we would be able to edit the videos afterwards, so we decided to finish the editing of all videos individually before saving them. This turned out to be a good decision, since TikTok does indeed limit how much you can edit already saved videos.
We ended up with six videos, all about one minute long. They were mostly filmed over a wooden countertop, with only the hands of the cook and food itself visible on screen. All stages of the cooking were subtitled with the quantities and the names of the ingredients.
Screenshot from a video. From: opetatoisin — TikTok
Planning and executing the experiment
The whole teaching experiment took about four weeks to complete, with two different teachers and their three classes of ninth-graders. All the meetings with the teachers and their students before, during, and after the experiment were conducted remotely. In the first week we focused on researching and learning the production of cooking videos and then introduced our ideas to the teachers, while discussing the practical arrangements of the experiment. In the second week we introduced ourselves to the students and let them know about what we were going to do with them in the following week. We asked them what kind of sauce they wanted to eat with their pasta. Including students in the planning is pedagogically motivating, and also committing (Jyrhämä et al., 2016, s. 111). The videos were shot during this week and we also wrote some written instructions for the students on where to find the cooking videos and what ingredients to buy for the lesson. In this school students did the grocery shopping for home economics classes.
During the third week we conducted the first two lessons with two different student groups. The students’ own teachers had initially estimated that making fresh homemade pasta would be very challenging timewise, so we crafted a very detailed lesson plan for the first attempt. The teacher in the classroom was instructed to help students find different utensils and tools for practical purposes and to supervise the students for obvious safety reasons. All questions regarding the actual contents of the lesson were to be directed at us, the teacher trainees, who were monitoring the class through a webcam connection on a laptop located in the classroom. During the first two lessons we did not encounter any problems regarding time and scheduling. Based on our own observations and the feedback we got from the students and their teacher, some small changes were made before the second and the third lesson.
Illustration of remote teaching environment
In the fourth and final week, we worked with a new teacher and a new student group. In this third and last lesson, we had updated our lesson with regards to gathering feedback. This time we instructed the teacher to carry the laptop around the classroom while the students were eating their food, so we could ask them directly what they thought about the lesson. We also encouraged the students to comment on the TikTok videos using the comment section of TikTok. Both the teacher and the students gave us positive feedback about the experiment. They thought cooking with our videos was practical and that rewinding the videos was an easy way to go back to the critical parts of preparing the meal without having to ask for help.
Jalkanen, Iiro
Munck, Tiina
Pihkala, Ulla
References
Jyrhämä, R., Hellström, M., Uusikylä, K. & Kansanen, P. (2016) Opettajan didaktiikka. Jyväskylä: PS-kustannus
The COVID-19 pandemic pushed forward not only distance learning but also e-learning, where teaching happens on digital platforms. Nevertheless, building learning environments online is still somewhat new and unfamiliar ground, especially in home economics. This was the starting point on the course teacher as a researcher. In the course we worked on a development project that we will summarize here. The theme of the development project was “teach differently” and the goal was to bring alternative teaching methods to home economics classrooms in the form of active and interactive distance education.
We designed a lesson around the subject of choosing the right laundry detergent. The lesson was designed and taught for seventh graders in a school in the Helsinki metropolitan area. The pedagogical objective was for students to learn how to choose the right laundry detergent based on the qualities of the textiles and detergents. According to the “teach differently” theme, our goals were to try something creative and new to us that would take us out of our comfort zones. Our idea was to implement videos into home economics teaching and learning.
Our development project was based on social constructivism according to which learning is based on collaboration between the learners, the teacher, the tools, and the environment (Malin & Palojoki, 2015, p. 61). Building on social constructivism we took an approach close to exploratory learning, where learners take part in a collaborative knowledge creation process that starts from learners’ questions based on their own preconceptions and prior knowledge related to the subject. In this approach the students work together, share ideas, and learn to build on the shared knowledge and support each other’s thinking. (Lakkala, 2012, pp. 93–94.)
When we were designing the lesson, we explored the pedagogy of camera pen that was created by Ismo Kiesiläinen. The name refers to the potential to use a camera and video as means of expression in the same way as one would use a pen and text. In the process students are guided to think, act, and work together in photography assignments. It emphasizes students’ activity, creativity, curiosity, and collaborative learning. The teacher’s role is to guide and encourage learners and focus on positive interaction. In this method video is a tool for learning and we as well used it as such. (Kiesiläinen, 2017, pp. 7–8, 19, 28.)
The teaching project in practice
In our project we taught the same lesson three times. Each time we taught two classes simultaneously. The classes were on their separate classrooms, and each had one teacher present in person. We were physically in the facilities of the university and taught the lessons on Zoom-videocall. The videocall allowed the students and teachers in the classrooms to see and hear us in real time, but we were only connected to the teachers’ computers. In this remote setting the students were hesitant to approach us. Because of these aspects the communication relied heavily on the teachers that were present in the classroom.
Picture 1. The physical-virtual learning environment of the lessons
During the lessons we presented our materials in the form of a PowerPoint-presentation including text, pictures, and videos. Other tools and platforms we used were Google forms and Padlet. In our approach students had very active roles and we the “teacher-researchers” and the present teachers acted as facilitators. On the lesson the students worked on an assignment that was to plan and shoot a video about choosing the right laundry detergent. The students formed groups of 2-4 people and each group was given instructions, short story-like description that presented a problem, and a piece of clothing related to the problem. To solve the problem the students used their previous knowledge and searched for information in the home economics textbooks. Each group wrote a script based on their idea and presented it to us. After the scripts were ready and accepted, the student groups shot their videos on their mobile phones. The videos were then sent to Padlet and watched together. At the end of the lesson the students gave us feedback and evaluated their own learning on Google forms.
Picture 2. The students’ videos on Padlet
Part of the experiment was to develop and improve the teaching. Originally, we had planned to use document cameras for watching the students’ videos, but the document cameras in the classrooms didn’t work. That is why we choose to use Padlet in the next lessons. After the first lesson, we also made the feedback questionnaire clearer and emphasized the intended content of the videos. We also made it clear that the students could and should ask us for help if needed. These changes were done based on our observations and the feedback we were given.
Reflection and conclusions
This project gave us a chance to reflect and analyze teaching and learning in a way that was new to us. We have developed our skills, acquired knowledge, and above all gained courage to try new and different things in the classroom. The goals we set for our project and lessons were mainly met. Video making in the classroom was something creative and different we had not tried before, and it was new for the students too. Teaching two classes simultaneously and remotely was also new to us and took us out of our comfort zones in a good way. The lesson activities were in accordance with social constructivism as the students were active learners and worked together creatively. Based on our observations video works well as a tool for teaching and learning because it presents information in a diverse way and making videos activates the students to search, process, and present information collaboratively. The weaker area of our lessons was the interaction between us and the students. In the remote setting we could not observe and control what was happening in the classroom in the regular way. Another challenge we faced was the individuality of the students and the groups. We think that these problems could have been fixed with better communication between us and the students.
Sonja Haapala, Mari Kolmonen & Lotta Tapanainen
References
Malin, A. & Palojoki, P. (2015). Flexible learning environments in home economics education. Teoksessa H. Janhonen-Abruquah & P. Palojoki (toim.), Luova ja vastuullinen kotitalousopetus – Creative and responsible home economics education (pp. 61–72). Kotitalous- ja käsityötieteiden julkaisuja, nr. 38. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/157591/luovajav.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.
Elli Pölhö, Katja Sula, Ida Volotin ja Anne Yli-Karhu
Our teaching experiment is part of the course Opettaja työnsä tutkijana (teacher as a Researcher) which is one of the master’s degree studies. The starting point of the course was to develop and thereby develop our own research approach and increase our digital pedagogical competence (OTT, 2022). In this course, we had to plan, implement and further develop a lesson which was implemented for three different home economics study groups. The second and third teaching groups received a more developed version of the lesson.
Starting points and backgrounds of the teaching experiment
The main theme in our teaching experiment was to teach in another way – we also had to consider hands-on approach and interactivity home economics distance teaching. As we were focusing on hands-on approach, we wanted to look for variation and diversity in work methods and to bring out different ways of learning. Through hands-on approach, we also wanted to increase the interaction between students, because in distance education the interaction between teacher and student is often incomplete (Rantanen & Palojoki, 2015, p. 85.) As distance teachers we strive to be encouraging and activate students despite the distance. In addition to our own goals, the goal of the teaching experiment was to guide pupils to evaluate their own consumption behavior and the development of responsibility for clothing-related choices. Responsibility, both as a value and a goal, is considered important in home economics and is also considered a basic goal of education (POPS, 2014; Wennonen & Palojoki, 2015, p. 18).
Description of the teaching experiment
Our pupils were on the 7th grade. The teaching experiment consisted of three lessons which were each 1 x 60 minutes long. The actual distance learning took place as follows: We teachers taught everyone from home and the students were at school with their own teacher. The learning environments consisted of the classroom and e-learning environments. We held the same lesson for three different classes and developed our teaching even better after each lesson.
Our teaching experiment was built on learning approaches such as behaviorism and constructivism. In the lessons, we aimed for an interactive and hands-on distance learning environment through a variety of tasks. In our teaching, we utilized the technological applications Mentimeter and Flinga.
Picture 2. View of Mentimeter. Picture is a screenshot.Picture 3. View of Flinga. Picture is a screenshot.
The purpose was to awaken pupils to our actual subject. In the mentimeter, pupils had to think about what they think of the word “responsible clothing”. They were allowed to share their thoughts on responsible clothing anonymously. Flinga was utilized as a stimulus for discussion about the clothing industry. In this way, we were able to get information about the pupils’ current information as well as look at the countries where their own clothes were made. Both tasks sparked a lot of discussion in the groups, and we got some great insights.
Picture 4. Awesome pupils on a hunting trip in functional task.
In the pair task, pupils memorized sentences they dictated to each other. The sentences dealt with responsible clothing and were in the kitchens. Students searched the sentences in pairs from the kitchens. The purpose of this section was to add interactivity among the students and functionality in the lesson. As students try to memorize relatively challenging and new topics, they must focus on the movement to tune the brain in a different way than when it done statically. This also increases focus, as the thing to remember is the whole sentence. In addition, this section supports the objectives recorded in the curriculum (POPS, 2014).
The other hands-on task was interactive group task. In the task, pupils consider together the final disposal of different textiles (torn and dirty). Before that we showed video made by us which dealt with extending the life cycle of clothing. Overall, the lessons were a great success, except for a few remarks we made during the reflection. We believe lessons were succeeded since we had prepared for the lessons by carefully planning and practicing. The lessons were very interesting to implement, and they concretized the whole development tasks well.
References
OTT. (2022). Opettaja työnsä tutkijana. Helsingin yliopisto.
Rantanen, M. & Palojoki, P. (2015). Kotitalous verkko-opetuksena. Teoksessa H, Janhonen-Abruquah & P, Palojoki (toim.), Luova ja vastuullinen kotitalousopetus. Creative and responsible home economics education (s. 73–94). Kotitalous- ja käsityötieteiden julkaisuja 38. Helsingin yliopisto. Helsinki: Unigrafia.
Wennonen, S. & Palojoki, P. (2015). Vastuullisuus ja vastuullisuuskasvatus kotitalousopetuksessa. Teoksessa H, Janhonen-Abruquah & P, Palojoki (toim.), Luova ja vastuullinen kotitalousopetus. Creative and responsible home economics education (s. 6–28). Kotitalous- ja käsityötieteiden julkaisuja 38. Helsingin yliopisto. Helsinki: Unigrafia.
We participated to the course “Opettaja työnsä tutkijana” (Teacher as a researcher), where we, as home economics teacher students started experimenting with new ways of teaching. In addition to teaching new skills to students, we were able to develop our own teacher identity. Leaving our comfort zone paid off: we learned a tremendous amount of new things of ourselves. Remote teaching brought new perspectives, challenges and experiences of success to the planning, implementation and evaluation. We had a chance to apply hybrid teaching in our experiment: one member of our group was present in the classroom with a group of pupils and the other two were involved remotely via Zoom and Microsoft Teams applications (picture below).
Positioning in class. (Photo: A. Väliahde)
The topic of our teaching experiment was budgeting and practice of grocery shopping. As the importance of consumerism skills is on the grow, wise and responsible use of money is now being considered as an essential part of life management. These themes are also reflected in the curricula of basic education (POPS, 2014). The importance of financial management increases considerably when a young person moves away from home on the threshold of adulthood. Last years of basic education is an important phase between childhood and adulthood because in that period of time, pupils start to take more responsibility gradually about their lives, including financial responsibility. In order to ensure the success of the teaching of consumer education and financial literacy in schools, it is worthwhile to develop teaching methods that are linked to the lives of young people. Examples and stories that reflect real life, make young people identify and think about decisions and their consequences. (Lonka, 2020, s. 24; Oph, n.d.; Peura-Kapanen, 2012, s. 2-3, 6, 9.)
We conducted our teaching experiments for seventh-grade students. We set our own objectives for the smooth implementation of the whole experimentation, in which all three of us would play a concrete role. The teaching experiment put us all in front of something new. From the point of view of teaching and learning, our goal was that through concrete experimenting, students would understand and perceive the value of money and how to spend it wisely. This was the idea we cherished, as creating a platform that would enable students to learn and experiment themselves. The aim was to work together building a learning space that encourages experimentation and to provide a safe environment for “money fails” as well.
We designed our teaching experiments on the basis of a socioconstructive concept of learning. The socioconstructivist concept of learning is based on involving learners in the learning process as active agents in the task at hand and as knowledge editors (POPS, 2014).
The Game
We created a virtual budgeting game on Seppo.io platform. The main character of the game was a fictional young student, Nuppu-Petteri, who had just moved into their own apartment. We wanted to bring the game closer to the students’ own lives and potential future perspectives, which is why we chose a young student as the character.
Game world in Seppo.io gaming platform (Photo: M. Uuksulainen)
In the actual game, Nuppu-Petteri needed help from students to do their monthly budgeting and grocery shopping. The purpose of the budgeting tasks was to guide students to understand where the costs of everyday life come from and how much it might be smart to budget money for food, hygiene supplies and hobbies, for example, just to mention few. The students were also able to consider, whether it would be possible to save money. Once the groups had drawn up the budget that they thought was appropriate, the budget was reflectively discussed, the successful choices made were justified and, if necessary, corrections were made together.
In one of the tasks, the groups were able to distribute the sums of money from their food budget over four weeks of the month and also form a daily food budget. The task allowed us to wonder together, whether the amount felt large, appropriate or small.
One of the tasks combined themes of spending money and grocery shopping. Nuppu-Petteri asked for the students’ help in purchasing the ingredients for their favorite food, chicken soup. The food in question, had been selected for the game based on what the students would prepare later in the lesson. In the assignment, the students had to search the home economics textbook for an instruction on chicken soup and based on it, shop for groceries in the online food store (s-kaupat.fi). The purchases were made fictitiously by taking the products to the shopping cart of the online store. Different student groups made their grocery shopping based on different instructions that we as teachers gave them. Their shopping was supposed to be based either on price (choose the most expensive or the cheapest), favoring domestic products or favoring organic products. This exercise brought more insight to the students about what the price of groceries consist of and what are some of the reasons and behind one’s choices when choosing groceries.
At the end of the game students were asked to respond to self-evaluation questions and give us some feedback on the game. After the game we held a joint discussion of the topics and tasks of the game.
A Pedagogical perspective: a high-quality digital learning platform
Pedagogically high-quality digital learning platform and environment supports community and personalized learning. Learning should enable the experiences of creativity and success. Problem-solving skills can be developed with a functional and exploratory approach that guarantees the role of an active agent for students. (Opetushallitus, 2021.) These were the principles we strived to uphold when we created a learning platform and entity. We wanted to give students space to explore, apply, experiment, misstep and succeed.
Lähteet:
Lonka, K. 2020. Oivaltava oppiminen. 1. verkkoaineisto.
Helsinki: Otava.
Opetushallitus. N.d. S3: Kuluttaja- ja talousosaaminen kodissa.
Hoffren Noora, Huhtala Sinna, Laukkanen Silja & Myyryläinen Roope
Introduction
This blogpost is part of our home economics master’s degree course “Teacher as a researcher of one’s job” in which we did a small teaching experiment by using modern digital tools. Our groups teaching experiment took part in Finnish junior high school on total of three classes of which two where 8th grades and one of 9th grade. Our experiments topic was sanitation and hygiene which is part of home economicsFinnish national core curriculum (S2) (POPS, 2014). Teaching experiment was put into practice by using distance learning methods in a way where the classes were in their own classroom with their own teacher but we as teachers of this experiment communicated with them from a distance by using Google Meets. The main aspect of our teaching experiment was to teach by using digitality and gamification. We made our own game about sanitation and hygiene by using game designing platform called Seppo. Sadly we made our game with 30 days try out license, so we are not able to share a link to the actual game. Besides Seppo we also used two different digital tools, Classroomscreen and Google Forms, as part of our experiment. Classroomscreen worked out as an app which we used to show the students different QR-codes to the game, the source of information about hygiene and the Google Forms which we used for getting feedback from the students. Through Classroomscreen we also showed our faces to the students to improve interaction.
General view of our sanitation and hygiene game inside Seppo platform By Laukkanen Silja
Background
Background for our teaching experiment and planning of it based on conception of learning called sociocultural constructivism which is considered to be developed by Lev Vygotski. In sociocultural constructivism learning is seen as social and cultural as well as communal processes and phenomena. Which means that knowledge can’t just be given to students, they must understand and build it themselves and it is their responsibility to learn. Sociocultural constructivism also emphasizes on students deeper understanding of things and phenomena rather than just memorizing facts. As the base of our ideas about sociocultural constructivism we used Siljanders (2014) book “Systematic leading to education theory”. When teaching in sociocultural constructive way teachers’ responsibility is to provide learning environment, help with the right information acquisition and to assist with independent studying. In this teaching experiment we used method called flipped learning. In this case it was done by giving the students homework in advance to study our experiments topic. Studying topic in advance makes it possible for our experiment to rehearse already learned knowledge and build new on it. This way responsibility of learning is given to students themselves and studying is focusing on students to become more independent of their learning.
In addition to sociocultural constructivism and flipped learning our teaching experiment also based strongly on digitality and gamification. Teaching and learning took part mostly on digital learning environment. Which was combination of four different digital applications, Seppo, Classroomscreen, Google Forms and Google Meets. Besides digital learning environment students also took part in physical learning environment in their own classroom with their own home economics teacher who helped them from closer contact. Combination of physical and digital learning environments made it possible for the students to have better interaction with the teachers and between themselves. When teaching in digital environment from a distance it is important to make interaction possible, separate learning from totally independent learning and have different kinds of assignments that consist written data, pictures, and voice to allow different kind of learners to understand and create learning experiences. (Rantanen & Palojoki, 2015.) Main reason for our teaching with gamification was to see how it motivates and inspires students to learn new things. Through gamification it is possible to provide learning in interesting and fun form and it works as good motivational base for learning. One motivational element of games is getting points and instant positive feedback which keeps students’ motivation high while playing. When using gamification in teaching it is important to pay attention to difficulty of the game. If the game is too easy or too hard it may extinguish students’ motivation towards the game on learning.
Teaching experiment
Our goals in our teaching experiment were aimed towards both the students and for ourselves. During this course we wanted to improve our skills working and teaching in group. We also wanted to learn about new ways and platforms of distance teaching and try some of them in practice because this was first time of distance teaching for most of us. Our goal for our teaching experiment was to create motivational and inspirational learning task and lesson for highly theoretical topic. We also wanted to focus on achieving good interaction with the students’ even though we were not physically in the same place with them. What we wanted the students’ get from this experience were to improve their interaction skills, learn how to find and build new knowledge and to learn about the sanitation and hygiene which was the main topic of the lesson. (POPS, 2014.)
Teaching experiment started with 8th graders on Monday morning. First, we introduced ourselves to the students and then gave them instructions about the lesson. After instructions we gave students permission to start playing Seppo game. Our Seppo game consisted of eight different little tasks and missions about sanitation and hygiene. For example, we had tasks about dishwashing, cleaning tools and identifying pests. During gaming students got instant feedback and points from the games alongside feedback from us through chat and some of the tasks. After first lesson we were pretty happy about how it went although we noticed some little things that we should improve for our next lesson. For next lesson modified our Classroomscreen to be easier to understand and we decided to emphasize chat more for the next group so we can interact better with the students. We also decided to make ninth task to the game because their teacher told us that they are really capable group. We also changed the size of groups, where students play the game, to pairs from previous groups of four. This way we managed to get students to take part in the game better. During the second lesson we had better interaction with the students through chat and we also noticed that the pairs work better than little groups. After second lesson we took the extra task away from the game because last lesson was going to be on Friday evening and the students would be little bit tired already. We also added picture of Seppo Taalasmaa from Salatut Elämät television series to Classroomscreen as we thought we would motivate the students to study with little bit humour.
Task about dishwashing By Laukkanen Silja
After getting feedback about the experiment from students and their teacher together with our own feelings we felt that our experiment was success. Based on feedback from the students’ 83 percent of them thought that the lesson was either interesting, okay or they learned something new. Only 17% percent of the students’ thoughts that the experiment was boring. We also thought that our teaching with gamification and flipped learning really worked because most of the students did very well in different tasks and were really self-oriented towards looking for knowledge. In our opinion important factor for our experiment to be successful was that the students were in their classroom together with their teacher and that made learning and interaction work a lot better. If the experiment would have been done totally distantly we think that it would not have worked so well because it would have lacked great amount of students interaction among each other.
Classroomscreen view. By Laukkanen Silja
References
Peruskoulun opetussuunnitelman perusteet [POPS] (2014). Helsinki: Opetushallitus.
Rantanen, M. & Palojoki, P. (2015). Kotitalous verkko-opetuksena. Teoksessa H. Janhonen-Abruquah & P. Palojoki (toim.), Luova ja vastuullinen kotitalousopetus. Creative and responsible home economics education (s. 73–94). Helsinki: Unigrafia.
Siljander, P. (2014). Systemaattinen johdatus kasvatustieteeseen. Peruskäsitteet ja pääsuuntaukset. Tampere: Vastapaino.
The Finnish national core curriculum (FNCC, 2014, p. 17) is based on a concept of learning in which the student is an active operator who learns to solve problems and sets goals both individually and in collaboration with others. Like the FNCC, our learning experiment was built on a constructive concept of learning, where students operate as active members of the group and interact with each other to solve the questions presented during the classes. As Siljander says (2015, p. 216), the constructive concept of learning can be divided into either individual or social approaches. According to Kauppila (2007, p. 48) the social approach enhances the construction of learning in collaboration with others and (2007, p. 76) gives the teacher a possibility to improve students´ meaningful learning and helps developing their inner motivation.
In our teaching experiment we utilized problem-based learning which, according to Ilomäki (2012, p. 106), is a pedagogical model where students develop their learning by discussing among themselves pre-arranged problems. Before the lessons we compiled the problems into video format, and during the lessons the students searched for the solutions in small groups. Ilomäki (2012, p. 109) says that the teacher´s role in problem-based teaching is to plan the content of the problematic situation and be the expert from whom students can seek advice. Another expert in our teaching was the shoemaker, who specializes in shoe care. We also used reverse teaching, which means that students get acquainted with the theory at home and do assignments at school (Toivola, Peura & Humaloja, 2017, p. 20).
Development of the teaching experiment
Traditionally, shoe care teaches that students should take care of either their own shoes as well as school shoes and, at the same time, learn to use various materials and tools for shoe care. We decided to come up with something new and different for our shoe care teaching. Since we wanted to use problem-based learning as the background theory for our lessons, we started to develop shoe care problems. We created problem situations that the students might face in their daily lives because, according to Perry (2020, p. 139), in home economics lessons it is good to focus on the care of the kind of shoes that the students themselves wear.
We ended up filming video material for the lessons. The videos acted as “sensitive material” of people who have different kinds of problems with shoe care. The topics of the videos were: dirty sneakers, broken heel, protection of new shoes and leather shoe care. We also wanted to bring a bit of humour to the problems; this was achieved by dramatizing the problems and editing the videos so that the voices and pictures of the people were blurred and names changed. In addition, the actual shoes seen in the videos were available in the classroom so that the students could examine them while solving the problems presented in the videos. The shoes had been treated in such a way that they corresponded to the stories and the emerged problems seen in the videos.
Picture 1. Shoemaker introducing sneaker care
For our learning experiment, we created a shoemaker´s helpline where an actual shoemaker gave answers to the people with shoe problems. The aim of our lesson was that the students would learn how to properly take care of different kinds of shoes. The shoemaker acted as an expert of shoe care, who gave his solutions to the problems seen in the videos. Bringing the shoemaker to the teaching experiment created credibility to the stories and opened the profession of shoemaker to the students.
Carrying out the teaching experiment
We carried out our teaching experiment in an Uusimaa school of over 400 students. We taught four classes of seventh graders during a week. We decided to use Google Meet as the platform for our teaching because it was known to the students. The duration of each lesson was 45 minutes.
All the lessons had a similar, clear structure. Before the lessons we had sent to the students a video greeting of ourselves including the pre-assignment to read from their own book the chapter about shoe care and find out what the shoemaker´s job is like. In the beginning of each lesson, we explained the topic, goals and structure of the lesson and we got acquainted with the shoemaker by showing a video greeting from him. After this, we went through the shoe problems one by one: first we watched a video, then we gave the students time to answer the problem in Google Meet chat and, at the end, we watched a pre-recorded answer from the shoemaker and discussed it a little bit together with the students. After having watched, answered and discussed all the problems, the students gave us feedback by filling a Google Forms –questionnaire that we had designed for them beforehand. In the feedback questionnaire we asked “what did you learn about shoe care” and “did you like the lesson”; in addition, it was possible to write an open feedback. At the end of each lesson we gave the students a homework in which they had to ponder why shoe care is important and examine their own favorite shoes and think about how they could be treated.
Figure 1. Virtual learning environment
Realization of the objectives of the teaching sessions
In our teaching experiment we wanted to create as motivating and developing a way as possible for students to learn how to take care of shoes. Our goal was also to get out of our own comfort zone and try a new way for all of us to implement online co-education with the students in their classroom and us teachers at our homes.
We managed to reach all the goals we had set for our teaching experiment. We were able to plan and implement a brave teaching experiment where we utilized our self-made teaching videos as the heart of the lessons. We are satisfied with the fact that we dared to enact our own vision of shoe care in practice. We feel that the teaching experiment developed us as teachers and co-teachers. Based on the feedback, we believe that the purpose of our teaching experiment (learning the correct way of shoe care, developing teamwork skills and improving problem solving skills) were all realized by the students.
We are especially happy about the way we made progress throughout the four teaching sessions. The first session went all wrong because of technical difficulties but we were able to fix the issues before the second one. The teaching that went wrong was very instructive and we understood how important it is in distant teaching to make alternative plans in case of technical problems. The second lesson went already better than the first one but we were perhaps rushing it a bit too much because we weren’t sure about how much time each group discussion would take. Our third and fourth lessons went significantly better and we didn’t really have any technical issues. Throughout the teaching sessions we as teachers became more natural and improved our interaction with the students. We all agree that four teaching sessions were just the right amount for this experiment because we developed after every single lesson and after the fourth one everything went wonderfully and we were very pleased with our teaching.
Kaisa Häyrinen
Minna Lempinen
Saara Miikkulainen
References:
FNCC. (2014). The Finnish national core curriculum 2014. Helsinki: Opetushallitus.
Ilomäki, L. (2012). Ongelmakeskeinen oppiminen. In L. Ilomäki (ed.) Laatua e-oppimateriaaleihin – E-oppimateriaalit opetuksessa ja oppimisessa. (s. 106–110). Tampere: Yliopistopaino.
Kauppila, R. A. (2007). Ihmisen tapa oppia. Jyväskylä: PS-kustannus.
Perry, T. (2020). Vuosisuunnitelma kotitalousopetukseen – kestävän kehityksen mukaista kotitalousopetusta. Kotitalousopettajien liitto ry ja WWF Suomi.
Siljander, P. (2015). Systemaattinen johdatus kasvatustieteeseen. Tampere: Vastapaino.
Toivola, M., Peura, P. & Humaloja, M. (2017). Flipped Learning – Käänteinen oppiminen. (1. edition). Helsinki: Edita.
The teaching experiment was done for the course “Teacher as a researcher of one’s job”. The goal of the course was to design, implement and develop a virtual teaching session. We wanted to try and develop a new kind of virtual and applied teaching method as well as strengthen our pedagogical skills. In addition, we were able to familiarize ourself with various opportunities that distance learning has to offer, and at the same time we were able to develop ourselves while operating outside our comfort zones.
The teaching experiment was carried out in a middle school in Helsinki for three different groups of 8th graders in March 2022. The duration of a teaching session was 60 minutes and the lessons were held during one week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The lessons were held remotely: students were at their own classroom with their own teacher. We, the teachers, were projected on the screen in the classroom. Students and the classroom were projected to us through the teachers’ computer. Communication happened over Teams. The students were encouraged to come and ask us for help over the computer if they needed it.
Our distance teaching point. Picture by Tea Tarvainen.
Our topic was nutrition. The lesson was built on the basis that the students had already worked with the topic earlier; the aim of our lesson was to repeat and deepen the topic. Additional goals for the teaching experiment were to develop listening and conversational skills, to consider time usage, and to utilize information and communication technology in learning. We built the lesson around a YouTube video we had filmed. Our “What I eat in a day” YouTube video featured YouTubers Mirkku and Pirkku. The video consisted of clips of the youtuber’s meals throughout the day. After each clip, students carried out tasks related to the clip in groups. They answered questions using Google Forms. Links to these forms were placed on the Flinga platform, where students were instructed to go in the beginning of the lesson.
View of Flinga. Picture by Tea Tarvainen.
Concepts of learning behind our teaching experiment
Constructivist and socioconstructivist concepts of learning formed the basis of our teaching. In constructivism, learning is considered as an active processing of knowledge, where learning is related to action. The learner interprets new information through their previous knowledge and expectations. Learning is always situation-dependent and a result of interaction. (Tynjälä, 1999, p. 37–38.) In socioconstructivism, important things, such as asking for and receiving help, are learned together. Information is not born out of nowhere and it’s not created alone, but shaped together with others, based on existing information. (Jyrhämä, Hellström, Uusikylä & Kansanen, 2016.)
The Finnish national core curriculum (POPS, 2014, p. 17) is also based on the concept of learning, where student is an active agent, who learns to set goals and strives for problem solving independently and in interaction with others. Learning is both about doing things together and alone as well as planning, thinking, researching, and evaluating these processes. The students are instructed to integrate what they have learned with what they have learned in the past, allowing them to learn new things and to deepen their understanding of what they have learned. Learning of knowledge and skill requires long-term practice and it is cumulative. (POPS, 2014, p. 17.) We wanted to teach with positive pedagogy by praising and encouraging students. A communal, positive culture and social relationships support the inclusion, learning and well-being of children and young people (Kumpulainen, Mikkola, Rajala, Hilppö & Lipponen, 2014, p. 228).
Development of teaching experiment based on feedback
Teaching was developed based on reflection and feedback from students and teachers. After the first lesson, we changed Flinga’s editing features so that students could not edit the view. The students had added their own comments to the Flinga wall and removed links from it while the editing rights were enabled. We also edited Flinga so that links can be opened only after watching the video, because the teachers had told us that some of the students had already opened the links and started the assignments while watching the video. Before the first lesson, we assumed that the time might run out. To our surprise, we realized that 60 minutes was just enough time to process the subject. We even had time to complete the homework assignment during the lesson. This increased the interaction with the students, as they had to present their answers to us in front of the camera.
One area of development was also to make the Kahoot quiz more difficult and to come up with additional questions. The students had pointed out in the feedback that the quiz was too easy, which we had also thought about earlier. In addition, we received feedback from teachers that it is important for the beginning of the lesson to be clear. This way students will better focus on the teachers and the teaching through Teams.
The changes made after the first teaching clarified and improved the teaching. After the second lesson, we got feedback from the teachers to show the answers related to the YouTube video. Answers were added to every question on the PowerPoint slides. This resulted in students to focus better on reviewing of answers. After the third lesson, we received feedback about stuttering audio in the videos. Some parts were not properly audible. At that moment, we could not impact the audio quality, but that’s something to consider when designing a virtual lesson.
The teachers found our lessons a refreshing variation. We also received positive feedback from students stating that the lesson had been fun and that they learned something new during the lesson. In our opinion, this development of the teaching experiment was successful, and we are satisfied with the implementation of the development work.
References
Jyrhämä, R., Hellström, M., Uusikylä, K. & Kansanen, P. (2016). Opettajan didaktiikka. Jyväskylä: PS-kustannus.
Kumpulainen, K., Mikkola, A., Rajala, A., Hilppö, J. & Lipponen, L. (2014). Positiivisen pedagogiikan jäljillä. Teoksessa L. Uusitalo (toim.) Positiivisen psykologian voima. Jyväskylä: PS-kustannus. 224–242.
Opetushallitus. (2014). Perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteet 2014. Määräykset ja ohjeet: 96. Helsinki: Next Print.
Tynjälä, P. (1999). Oppiminen tiedon rakentamisena – Konstruktivistisen oppimiskäsityksen perusteita. Helsinki: Kirjayhtymä.
Reetta Niemi, FT, dosentti, on toiminut luokanopettajana vuodesta 1998 alkaen. Terveystiedon aineenopettajaopintojen myötä hän oivalsi, miten terveystietoa voi opettaa monialaisina oppimiskokonaisuuksina. Tämä innostus johti väitöskirjaprojektiin, jossa hän pohti, mitä on osallistava pedagogiikka, pedagogiikan kehittäminen ja miten tätä prosessia voi tutkia toimintatutkimuksen viitekehyksessä. Viime vuosina hän on kehittänyt osallistavaa pedagogiikkaa ja osallistavia tutkimusmenetelmiä sekä perehtynyt erityisesti visuaalisten ja digitaalisten menetelmien käyttöön oppilaiden koulukokemusten tutkimisessa. Tutkiva opettaja -liikkeen hengessä tehty pedagoginen toimintatutkimus on metodologisesti lähellä hänen sydäntään.
Niemi, R. (2019). A teacher performing action research: capturing pupils’ perspectives of didactic relations. Eesti Haridusteaduste Ajakiri , 7(2), 58-75.
Reetta Niemi kertoo kiehtovasti omien kokemustensa kautta pedagogisesta toimintatutkimuksesta ja omasta opettajan työstään tutkijana. Hän kertoo, miten kasvatetaan kriittisiä ajattelijoita sekä pohtii, kuinka tärkeää onkaan omien uskomustensa refelktointi teoreettisesti. Kuuntele ja innostu:https://soundcloud.com/user-605728474/reetta_niemi?si=a947b715bb634a0da05b59a7405b36f3
