The Lifecycle of Clothes – An Adventure Pedagogical Part of Distance Teaching

Olga-Maaria Mattila & Heli Orhala-Halminen

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)

You can  watch the teaching video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6Bbk-uJtrM.

After watching the video, we divided pupils into smaller groups, and they worked together in different kinds of game points. The game points were:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.

Opetushallitus. (2021). Perusopetuksen järjestäminen 1.1.2021 alkaen. Verkkodokumentti: https://www.oph.fi/fi/koulutus-ja-tutkinnot/perusopetuksen-jarjestaminen-112021-alkaen  Viitattu 27.4.2021

Pruuki, L. (2008). Ilo opettaa. Tietoa, taitoa ja työkaluja. Helsinki: Edita.

Starting with the youth’s own world – TikTok and life hacks as a pedagogical tool

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

Kilpi Laura, Liikanen Anne & Tiainen Karoliina

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:HenkinenSosiaalinenFyysinenYhteenvetoPalaute
Zooom.usZoomXXXX 
Prezi.comPreziXXXX 
Flinga.fiFlinga X   
Google Play, App StoreStop Motion Studio   X  
Canva.comCanva  XX 
Google.com/formsGooge Forms    X
Classroom.google.comGoogle Classroom     X
Working in the classroom. Picture: Kotitalousopettajan sijainen
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.

Martat (2021). Ravitsemuksen ABC. Ravitsemus.

(https://www.martat.fi/marttakoulu/ravitsemus/ravitsemuksen-abc)

Stop Motion Studio tutorial video

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kdg_071B9A

Getting familiar with harvest season and reasons to favor it – gaming as teaching method

Mona Jäppinen, Janette Järvinen, Linnea Lamminen, Terhi Tepponen

Teach differently – distance education

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

All about banana – Food waste in everyday life

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 that more 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 prevent food 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.

Sukupuolen moninaisuuden osaamiskeskus (2021). Sateenkaarisanasto. Saatavilla: https://seta.fi/sateenkaaritieto/sateenkaarisanasto/. Viitattu 20.4.2021.