Category: consumer thinking

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Choosing laundry detergent – a teaching experiment on using video in home economics teaching and learning

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.

Lakkala, M. (2012). Tutkiva oppiminen. Teoksessa L. Ilomäki (toim.), Laatua E-Oppimateriaaleihin. E-oppimateriaalit opetuksessa ja oppimisessa, pp. 93–99. Opetushallitus.  www.oph.fi/fi/tilastot-ja-julkaisut/julkaisut/laatua-e-oppimateriaaleihin-e-oppimateriaalit-opetuksessa-ja.

Kiesiläinen, I. (2017). Kamerakynän pedagogiikka. www.kamerakyna.fi/kamerakynan_pedagogiikka_-_opettajan_kasikirja_(2017)_web.pdf.

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Functional & interactive distance teaching on responsible consumption of clothing

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. 

Picture 1. Awesome distance teachers at work. Picture by: Fiia Lujasmaa

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.

POPS. (2014). Perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteet 2014. Opetushallituksen verkkosivut. Saatavilla: www.oph.fi/sites/default/files/documents/perusopetuksen_opetussuunnitelman_perusteet_2014.pdf#page=437&zoom=100,0,0

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.

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On the verge of something new: consumer’s skills through a virtual game 

Sini Jylhälehto, Jan-Kristian Kurkola & Mikaela Uuksulainen 

Planning and tackling new challenges 

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.  

Saatavilla: https://www.oph.fi/fi/koulutus-ja-tutkinnot/s3-kuluttaja-ja-talousosaaminen-kodissa  

Opetushallitus. 2014. Perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteet. Helsinki: Opetushallitus 

Saatavilla:https://www.oph.fi/sites/default/files/documents/perusopetuksen_opetussuunnitelman_perusteet_2014.pdf 

Opetushallitus. 2021. Pedagogisesti laadukas digitaalinen ympäristö – Laatumäärittely 2021.  

Saatavilla: https://uudetlukutaidot.fi/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Pedagogisesti-laadukas-digitaalinen-ymparisto.pdf  

Peura-Kapanen, L. 2012. Nuorten talousosaamisen edistäminen – Opas toimijoille. Kuluttajatutkimuskeskus: Helsinki.  

Saatavilla: https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/152342/Nuorten_talousosaamisen_edistaminen.pdf?sequence=1 

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Consumer and media education in distance learning

Milla Erola, Anniina Haaranen, Alpo Kivijärvi & Tessy Tillander

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.

Consumer education is one main theme of the Home Economics educational content. Consumer education is a process where a person learns how to develop knowledge and skills which are useful, when it comes to consumer choices and decision making. Anticipation and future thinking along with other practical skills, such as buying and using products and services sustainably. Teaching methods that are used in consumer education should be based on students’ experiences and their world. We wanted to plan a creative and practical teaching experiment, where students can solve different problems which are related to their everyday life.


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.

References

OECD. (2008). 21st Century Skills: How can you prepare students for the new Global Economy? Viitattu: 23.3.2021. Saatavissa: https://www.oecd.org/site/educeri21st/40756908.pdf 

Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority. (2021). Consumer education. Päivitetty: 1.3.2021. Saatavissa: https://www.kkv.fi/en/consumer-education/