Professor Cui‘s areas of research interests include:
Adolescent and young adult development (e.g., emotional and behavioral problems), The influence of family of origin (e.g., parenting) on adolescents and young adults, Cultural diversity in family and child studies, Research methodology
Cui, M., Hong, P., A. Darling, C., & Janhonen-Abruquah, H. (2019). A Cross-Cultural Perspective on the Role of Parents in University Students’ Mental Health. teoksessa D. Esteves , D. Scarf, P. Pinheiro, H. Arahanga-Doyle, & J. A. Hunter (Toimittajat), Global Perspectives on University Students (Education in a Competitive and Globalizing World, University Teaching and Faculty Development). Nova Science Publishers.
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.
