Session Information
Contribution
Description: In Finland, all academic degree programs are following the two-tier system based on the new legislation and on the Bologna Declaration for European higher education area. The main topics in the Finnish higher education policy are the following: a) promoting new working life orientation and research based professional praxis in academic studies, b) promoting mobility of students and university teachers, and c) providing comparability of European degrees. The reform process of all academic curriculum design is based on the module structure and in the use of the ECTS. Several national coordination projects have supported the faculties and departments to develop their curricula.
This research is part of the research conducted at the Vokke Project (i.e. the National-Level Coordination Project of Degree Programme Development in Teacher Training and the Sciences of Education). At the Vokke Project the faculties of education and their departments have been co-operating in order to develop general structures and aims for the curricula. As a result of the cooperation, the Vokke Project has published the recommendations (see examples: http://www.helsinki.fi/vokke/english/redommendations). The faculties of education decide whether they follow the recommendations or not.
The purpose of this research is to analyze the planned curricula (Kelly 2004, 6) of the pedagogical studies for subject teachers in the Finnish universities. The main objective is to compare the structures and the aims/objectives (Davies 1976, 11-16; March 2004, 27-28) of the planned curricula of the subject teacher education. In this presentation, the structures and core components of the curricula will be compared to the reflections represented at the Tuning Project (González & Wagenaar 2003).
In this presentation, I am reporting some of the results to the following research questions: 1. How do the structures of the pedagogical studies for subject teachers differ from each other in Finland? 2. How do the aims/objectives expressed in the planned curricula of the pedagogical studies for subject teachers differ from each other? 3. How do the structures and core components of the planned curricula differ from the reflections represented by the Tuning Project?
Methodology: The research is qualitative. The planned curricula of the pedagogical studies for subject teachers are analyzed by using content analysis. The data consist of the curricula from those Finnish universities in which pedagogical studies for subject teachers are taught. The structures of the planned curricula are analyzed based on the disciplinary understanding of the science of education following the tradition in Finland (namely: subject-related didactics, didactics, psychology of education, philosophy of education, sociology of education, history of education, comparative education, research methods, and teaching practice).
Conclusions: The research is expected to contribute to the evaluation of the development of the curricula. The research provides information on the similarities and differences of the curricula of the pedagogical studies for subject teachers. This information can be used while evaluating relevance of the teachers' pedagogical studies for subject teachers and while evaluating the effects of the Bologna process to the curricula.
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