Riitta-Liisa Korkeamäki

Early Literacy Practices and the Finnish National Core Curriculum.

In 2004 the Finnish National Board of Education launched a new curriculum framework that includes principles, instructional aims, and a brief list of content by subject areas. The intent of this framework is that teachers should interpret the core curriculum at the local level and apply it in their own schools and classrooms. This approach encourages teachers to use their professional knowledge and take into account their students and the learning environment in applying and implementing the curriculum. This case study sought to understand how this core curriculum has been implemented by way of observations of language and literacy lessons in 8 grade 1 and grade 2 classrooms during a 2‐month period. The observations and the analysis were guided by earlier research conducted in classroom identified as ‘excellent’ in the US. The resulting data, in turn, were compared with the core curriculum. The findings show that, although some of the principles and the content of the core curriculum were reflected in practice, there were inconsistencies between the instructional methods used in the classrooms and the principles set in the core curriculum. Although some areas of the core curriculum were well represented in classroom language and literacy practices, others were covered only in part or not at all during the observation period.

Touching Nametags with NFC Phones: A Playful Approach to Learning to Read

Near Field Communication (NFC) technology was developed for mobile devices from RFID technology. It enables new kinds of learning applications that are based on touching objects with phones. When an object is touched, a phone reads data from the object’s NFC tag. An application interprets the data and acts consequently. We report our first pilot study of an NFC-based learning application that supports children in their efforts in learning to read. We tested the application in one kindergarten with 23 three-to-five-year-old children with their two teachers. The results suggest that NFC is a suitable technology for learning applications and that the tested application had an effect on the children’s emergent letter knowledge although the activity period lasted only for two weeks.

Engaging Students in the “Joy of Reading” Programme in Finland

The Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture funded the Lukuinto (Joy of Reading) literacy programme which aims to increase students’ desire to read and create a range of print and digital texts. Such an aim aligns directly with the Finnish core curriculum which places a strong emphasis on multiliteracies and new literacies. This study investigated effects of the programme on students’ literacy attitudes, activities in and out of school as well as differences between boys’ and girls’ attitudes. The data for the study were collected from students (N = 270) from third to sixth grade using electronic questionnaires during the pilot phase of the programme. Our findings showed that the effect of the programme was small and that attitudes were strongly related to three activities during lessons: silent reading, self-selected reading material and recommending books to each other. Overall, girls’ attitudes were more positive than those held by the boys. There were differences between the activities that correlated with boys’ and girls’ attitudes. In addition, according to our study, it seemed that students yearn for more time to read for pleasure.

What can be Learned about Reading Acquisition in the Finnish Language

Three case studies investigated the process of learning to read and write in the Finnish language when emergent literacy principles were applied to literacy instruction in a first grade classroom and two kindergarten classrooms. The subjects were nine first graders (age 7) and 16 and 17 kindergarten children (ages 5–6). In contrast to typical beginning reading instruction which is characterized by synthetic drill instruction, letters and their sounds were introduced in the context of meaningful words. Also invented spelling was emphasized. The children were assessed prior to each intervention and after it. But observational notes, video and audio tapes were the main data source. The results revealed that children’s strategies gradually changed from memory based strategies to alphabetic strategies. All the first graders and most of the kindergarten children learned to read by recoding. But some children used partial alphabetic strategies and one child recognized only a few familiar words. The findings suggest that the regular phonetic spelling of the Finnish language may allow children to acquire literacy without phonic drills.

Trying Something New: Meaning-Based Reading Instruction in a Finnish First-Grade Classroom

This study investigated childrens reading strategies and progress when a meaning-based approach to reading instruction was implemented in a Finnish 1st-grade classroom. A reading program was designed in which the teacher introduced predictable books, literacy-related centers, and minilessons in context on selected letter-sound correspondences. Field notes and videotapes of individual reading sessions were analyzed to describe the strategies the students used while reading both familiar and unfamiliar books. In the fall, in a familiar context, the students read mostly based on their memory. In an unfamiliar context, the students used graphemic information and sounded out and elongated the words and named some letters. Later, they used their phonological recoding skills in both familiar and unfamiliar contexts. All the students progressed toward conventional reading, demonstrating that they had reached at least the alphabetic phase of reading development.

School-context videos in Janus-faced online publicity : Learner-generated digital video production going online

This article reports a case study on sChOOLtv, an online television for primary and secondary schools that aims to bridge the media gap between in-school and out-of-school learning environments. Contrary to its creators’ expectations, the number of published videos has not increased since its establishment. Furthermore, the videos were mostly produced by primary-level students, with few videos released by secondary-level students. The article describes online publishing of learner-generated videos by exploring the views of the students, parents, teachers, and principals. Sixty-seven informants were interviewed, and video production activities and discussions in classrooms were observed. The article discusses the factors hindering adolescents from making and publishing videos. It suggests media encouragement practices to enhance publishing-oriented digital video production in schools.

Changing literacy practices according to the Finnish core curriculum

We investigated how a teacher implemented principles of literacy teaching and learning set forth in the Finnish core curriculum in a first-grade classroom, focusing on two aspects of the curriculum: (1) a community-oriented view of language, which can be understood from a socio-cultural perspective; and (2) a broad conception of text, which involves diversified literacy practices including both digital and printed environments. We understood the classroom as a place where the teacher deployed her pedagogic habitus (Bourdieu 1977; Pahl 2012), which in turn shaped the practices. Our analysis of videotapes of classroom literacy events and the teachers diary during one school year showed that change in practices turned the classroom habitus (Bourdieu 1977) into a communicational entity where the pupils worked collaboratively with meaningful literacy activities with oral and print texts, including old and new technologies.

Finnish Kindergartners' Literacy Development in Contextualized Literacy Episodes: A Focus on Spelling

This study focused on childrens spelling development in a Finnish kindergarten. We examined how and when spelling begins when children are provided guided and meaningful literacy opportunities. Field notes, childrens writing samples, and four dictations, as well as pre- and postinstruction assessment of literacy-related tasks were analyzed to describe childrens progress and strategies. At the start of the study, some children did not know any letters, while others who knew some letters did not necessarily use them in the first dictation, drawing instead. Classroom activities offered children opportunities to increase letter knowledge and demonstrated how to apply that knowledge. The assessment at the end of the study in Phase 1 demonstrated a substantial growth in childrens spelling: some children spelled almost all the dictated words correctly, most of the children used invented spelling, and only one child used random letter strings for a few words. In addition, childrens reading developedso that several children were alphabetic-phase readers. In Phase 2, all the children used alphabetic strategies.

Implementing the Finnish Literacy Curriculum in a First-Grade Classroom.

This study investigated the first author’s process of implementing new literacy practices as a teacher in a Finnish first-grade classroom from a poststructuralist perspective by using nexus analysis (NA). We concentrated on two essential concepts in NA, Bourdieu’s habitus and Goffman’s interaction order, which we linked to Grundy’s curriculum theory. This set of concepts gave us the tools with which to understand how and what kinds of teacher’s actions play a role in curriculum implementation, and offered us a perspective on the complex development of interaction order in the classroom community. The first-grade teacher’s one-year-long curriculum implementation was structured by reproduction of the teacher’s habitus. In this reproduction, the development of the interaction order of the teacher and her pupils played a central role. The move from traditional practices into new ones required the teacher’s constant attention and a reflective attitude. During the school year, implementation of the literacy curriculum formed a cyclical process in which the curriculum interests alternated. Although this study was limited to Finnish school culture and the cultural heritage of learning and teaching literacy in Finland, the study offers also an internationally valid example for developing and researching the processes of literacy curriculum implementation.

Becoming Reflective Practitioners: A Case Study of Three Beginning Pre-service Teachers

ABSTRACT This case study examined three pre-service teachers’ reflection processes during their first teaching practicum. During the six-week practicum, the pre-service teachers reflected on their own as well as their peers’ teaching in group mentoring meetings several times a week. Unstructured stimulated recall facilitated pre-service teacher-initiated reflection on their teaching. As a result, they were able to frame and reframe their understanding and implement that understanding in their next lessons. Each pre-service teacher, however, went through an individual developmental process in learning to reflect. In their developmental path, turning points were identified that were important for transition into a deeper level of reflection. Our results show that it is important for teacher educators and mentors to recognize the process of development from the very first teaching practicum.