Auli Toom

University of Helsinki | HY · Centre for University Teaching and Learning, Faculty of Educational Sciences

Previous research has explored what competence qualified mentors need to possess. However, with the increasing advocacy that mentoring can be a professional learning experience for mentors, no studies have synthesized mentoring competence reflected in their mentoring practice. By using the framework of transformative learning theory, this study sys...

PhD candidates’ wellbeing has become a global concern over the past decade, and the topic has been addressed in several studies. At the same time, PhD supervisors’ wellbeing has remained largely unexplored. Also, most studies about supervisors’ and supervisees’ wellbeing have focused on negative aspects, such as stress and burnout, and they have ge...

The aim of this study was to clarify the relationships between personal values, truth-related values and emotions among Turkish teachers. The Schwartz’s Value Theory and Frenzel’s teacher emotion model were used as the theoretical framework. This study used a cross-sectional correlational research design. The data were collected from 279 teachers w...

The aim of the present study is to investigate early career teachers’ professional agency in the classroom. In addition, the association between early career teachers’ professional agency in the classroom and the burnout they experienced was examined. In this study, 779 early career teachers, teaching in primary and junior secondary schools in Chin...

Reforming curriculum is potentially a powerful tool for school development. Harnessing this potential calls for teacher engagement with colleagues for active professional learning, i.e., teachers’ professional agency. However, promoting teachers’ ownership and active involvement in curriculum-making provides a challenge for all levels of policy int...

This study examines early career teachers’ (ECT) professional agency in relation to socio-contextual burnout in four European countries: the UK, the Netherlands, Finland, and Sweden. Teachers’ professional agency has been shown to be related to their work-related well-being. However, we know little about the societal, cultural and contextual condit...

In multidisciplinary technology education, teachers work together to support pupils in designing with technology. The different forms of support are based on establishing pedagogical infrastructures for pupils’ learning of technology. Although previous studies have identified the main forms of pedagogical infrastructure, how they can be leveraged i...

Coherent research-based teacher education curriculum is of vital importance when educating student teachers for the teaching profession in the academic university context. It is essential that the characteristics and complexities of teachers’ work are comprehensively taken into account in the curriculum. At the same time, the curriculum needs to pr...

Student teachers have been found to be critical toward the research approaches they learned from their master's-based teacher education programmes. Our aim is to discuss how certain research approaches learnt during a 5-year academic master's level teacher education, may bring student teachers close to practice and provide them with conceptual and...

The authors of this paper explore Gert Biesta's theorization of three domains of purpose of education: socialization, qualification, and subjectification. The aim is to study the interrelations of the domains and to develop further the theoretical discussion concerning schools' purpose for both individuals and society. Outlining the relationships o...

Introduction This study investigates how seventh-grade students experience online collaborative writing, its support in writing poems, and how collaboratively and individually written poems differ. Methods The educational design research method was used in this mixed-methods study, which was conducted in natural classroom settings to investigate s...

This study explores the relationship between early career teachers’ sense of professional agency in the classroom, their perceptions of principals’ transformational leadership vision, and school size. The survey data were collected from 779 primary and junior secondary school teachers with a maximum of 5 years of teaching experience in China. The d...

International students are at risk of burnout during their studies and face challenges in their writing. This study explores the burnout and self-efficacy profiles of international students and how these profiles differ in writing conceptions. Participants were 162 international students at a research-intensive Finnish university. They completed th...

Teacher agency for research, which refers to teachers’ decision-making and initiative acts in the context of academic engagement, plays a pivotal role for teacher learning, teacher research, and thus teachers’ professional development. Despite the burgeoning number of studies that have examined teachers’ research and publishing experiences, it is u...

This paper investigates emergent bilingual students’ (Finnish and Swedish) use of language learning strategies (LLS). The focus is on the frequency of LLS use, the difference between Swedish and Finnish speaking students’ use of LLS and the effect on use of LLS to improve the students’ weaker language. The data consisted of students’ self-reports c...

While Finland has been considered a model for educational equity, the last decade has brought up concerns about educational segregation. This systematic literature review captures an overview of research on factors contributing to educational segregation and its consequences in Finland. A literature search of studies investigating various aspects o...

Identifying patterns in university students’ study-related expectancies, values, and costs offers valuable insights into the kinds of motivational mindsets students exhibit in a demanding educational context. By examining the antecedents and consequences of these patterns, we can better understand the qualitative differences in how students approac...

Korkeakoulupedagogiikan tila ja uudistaminen -arviointi toteutettiin vuosina 2022–2023 ja se koski kaikkia suomalaisia korkeakouluja. Arvioinnin keskeisenä tavoitteena oli muodostaa kansallinen kokonaiskuva korkeakoulupedagogiikan nykytilasta. Arviointi toteutettiin systeemisesti ja monimenetelmällisesti.

Teamwork and collaboration skills are regarded as essential proficiencies in the current worlds of work, study and everyday life. A relevant question is whether and how pre-service teachers have opportunities to begin acquiring professional collaboration skills during their studies. In the current study, Finnish pre- and in-service teachers partici...

This study reports on whether students have the opportunity to acquire generic competencies when they work with knowledge-related assignments at upper secondary school. We investigated 30 assignments. The data included lesson observations and interviews with teachers. The main categories of teaching practices were theory-based, and the subcategorie...

Unlabelled: Studies and policy reports worldwide argue that a modern employee must possess domain-general competencies to become employed. However, competency studies within upper-secondary initial vocational education and training are scarce. Therefore, this study aimed to scrutinise this topic and examined how the experienced learning environmen...

Being a teacher is an esteemed position in Finland. Finnish class teachers are academically educated professionals in five-year masters level programmes, where only a small percentage of applicants are accepted. However, in recent years, more teachers have reported having intentions to leave the profession, and there has been a slight decline in th...

Writing is challenging for international students, who often possess inadequate writing skills and are required to adapt to the new learning environment. Students’ approaches to learning have been shown to relate to some constructs of writing conceptions. Nevertheless, little research exists on the relationship between such conceptions and approach...

Teaching assistants (TAs) have a notable role in supporting individual students, groups, and classes in learning and in daily practices, both in mainstream and special education at the primary and secondary school levels. To enhance teaching assistants’ learning, they should be integrated members of schools’ professional learning communities. Despi...

Between 2020 and 2022, the U-Multirank team held discussions with a diverse group of higher education stakeholders to identify promising effective teaching and learning indicators for the following U-Multirank editions. As a result of these discussions, a clear need emerged to develop guidelines for effective teaching and learning indicators at the...

We examined university students’ experiences of remote teaching and learning, how the experiences are associated with well-being, and whether those associations differ according to motivation. Using latent variable modelling, we classified Finnish university students (N = 2686) based on their expectancy-value-cost profiles, compared latent means, a...

Sourcing - identifying, evaluating, and using information about the sources of information - assists readers in determining what to trust when seeking information on the Internet. To survive in the post-truth era, students should be equipped with sufficient sourcing skills. This study investigated the efficacy of a teacher-led intervention aimed at...

International students study in new, unfamiliar teaching-learning environments (TLEs) and may thus experience study-related burnout. However, little research exists on the relationship between perceptions of the TLE and such burnout, especially among international students. Nevertheless, one key factor is thought to be students’ approaches to learn...

Finnish initial vocational education and training aims for graduate employability by emphasising self-directed learning and workplace learning. However, little is known about what competencies teachers consider relevant for graduates, how teachers address competencies in their instruction and how they perceive the benefits of workplace learning. Th...

This study employs the term knowledge work competence to address generic aspects of higher education graduates’ expected learning outcomes. Twenty-eight higher education courses were investigated: 1069 students responded to the Collaborative Knowledge Practices (CKP) questionnaire to rate their self-evaluated competence development. From the same c...

In the present study, students' (n = 881) motives for attending university studies and study-related burnout were investigated in relation to their first-year academic achievement. The results showed that students' motives for attending university and study-related burnout at the outset of studies were connected to each other and to academic achiev...

A large and growing body of literature has investigated the role of teachers’ agency in their career trajectories. However, far too little attention has been paid to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’, especially female EFL teachers’, professional agency for their career development in the Chinese higher education setting. To address thi...

Professional agency is key for teachers’ professional development, for constructing their professional identity, and for promoting student learning. This longitudinal study explored the development of teachers’ (N = 201) sense of professional agency in the classroom in the professional transition from early career teachers to more experienced ones....

The research field on generic skills in higher education has expanded rapidly. In addition, the importance of generic skills has been highlighted both in educational policy discourses and in practice of higher education. The present study reviews theoretical, methodological, and empirical viewpoints on learning generic skills and synthesizes the em...

Critical thinking, a complex set of cognitive skills, and the ability to communicate one’s thoughts are vital in successful studying for new higher education students. The aim of this study was to explore the effect of socioeconomic background and prior academic performance on new students’ critical thinking and writing. The participants were 1006...

This qualitative study investigated the various linguistic, contextual, and experiential equivalence issues embedded in a performance-based instrument aimed at assessing generic skills in higher education. A rigorous translation and adaptation process (American English to Finnish) was conducted on one instrument, namely Collegiate Learning Assessme...

Argumentative writing is the central generic skill in higher education studies. However, students have difficulties in basic argumentation skills. Novice students do not necessarily receive adequate guidance, and their prior education may not have supported the requirements of higher education writing. Position-taking is at the core of argumentatio...

This chapter focuses on research into teacher identity in compulsory education to detail the existing research and includes recent contributions based on the Dialogical Self Theory (DST). Here we develop the main theory’s core concepts (I-position, We-position, core position, boundary experience, among others) and how they have been used in specifi...

The 21st century and its many challenges (invasion of digital technology, climate change, health crises, political crises, etc.) alert us that we need new educational responses, led by new education professionals. Research has shown that for these professionals to change in a substantial and profound way, they must change their identity, that is, t...

Despite poetry’s important role in improving linguistic skills and creative thinking, students often find poetry writing to be difficult and boring. This study is an investigation of how the digital Poetry Machine influences students’ poetry writing by applying AI techniques. It uses qualitative and quantitative analysis of the log data of poems th...

Our aim was to explore higher education students’ response and self-regulatory processes plus the relationship between these, as evidenced in two types of performance-based critical thinking tasks included in the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+) International instrument. The data collection consisted of 20 cognitive laboratories. The data were...

Although a number of policies tackling educational inequalities have been introduced in recent decades in Europe, educational inequalities exist to a varying extent both in different sub- and supranational contexts. In this article, we address the link between social and educational policies with respect to educational inequalities. Educational pol...

Students face several challenges when asked to locate relevant and credible information from the internet. This article introduces three principles for designing online inquiry lessons and documents what we learned from five language arts teachers from Finland who implemented and provided feedback on a learning unit framed in those design principle...

This chapter considers the evolution of Finnish teacher education since it was placed into universities according to a political decision over 40 years ago. While being a part of scholarly community and academic university education, it has both internally and also externally undergone several changes and developments. Finnish universities and facu...

Critical thinking is a combination of complex cognitive skills. It is important for the successful acquisition of disciplinary skills in higher education and thus, it is a valuable competency for a new student. The complex nature of critical thinking leads to challenges for its assessment even in performance assessments such as CLA + International...

Teacher’s professional competencies have been discussed extensively in the literature, often linked to educational policy discourses, teaching standards, student learning outcomes, or the intended outcomes of teacher education. Extensive, but fragmented and loosely theoretically or empirically based lists of teacher competencies are provided withou...

The increase in digitalization, software applications, and computing power has widened the variety of tools with which to collect and analyze sensory data. As these changes continue to take place, examining new skills required among sensory professionals is needed. The aim with this study was to answer the following questions: (a) How did sensory p...

We investigated university students’ remote teaching and learning experiences, how they predict psychological well-being, and whether the predictions vary depending on motivation. Self-reports were collected from Finnish university students (N = 2686). Within the latent variable modeling framework, we classified students according to their expectan...

A great deal of effort has been made in recent years to promote multilingual values in academia and society. This was one reason why the University of Helsinki introduced the Bilingual Bachelor’s programme (TvEx) in 2010 to guarantee a sufficient number of bilingual professionals in Finnish society. The aim of this study is to explore students’ ref...

Student engagement is essential in online language courses where the risk of suspending studies is higher than in face-to-face teaching. Furthermore, oral language rehearsal is challenging in such a course; therefore providing sufficient assignments to rehearse oral interaction is central. This study investigates how student engagement and oral lan...

Building professional learning communities (PLC) has become a widely recognized strategy for school development and for student achievement. Four Finnish comprehensive schools were identified as being ready to be PLCs in a previous quantitative study, and the purpose of this study was to investigate practices of PLCs in these schools. In this paper...

The study aims to clarify how Finnish teacher educators integrate research and teaching to support their approaches to teaching. Research questions cover teacher educators' forms of research-teaching integration, approaches to teaching, and the relationship between them. With a survey methodology, the study obtained 101 responses with a questionnai...

This chapter reports the study that explored challenges that early career teachers experienced in the classroom interaction and the mentoring dialogues linked to these challenges. Early career teachers’ experienced challenges in the classroom interaction served as vehicles for the dialogues and opened up possibilities for learning and development a...

Tervetuloa tutustumaan työelämäpedagogiikan moninaisuuteen! Tämä kirja on toteutettu opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriön tukeman Työelämäpedagogiikka korkeakoulutuksessa (Työpeda) -hankkeen lopputuotoksena. Tarkoituksena on jakaa hankkeessa pilotoituja toimintatapoja, välineitä ja malleja kaikkien korkeakoulujen käyttöön. Työelämäpedagogiikka on määrit...

Tänapäeva maailm eeldab, et kõik professionaalid pööravad järjepidevalt tähelepanu oma teadmiste ja oskuste arendamisele. Hariduse valdkonnas rõhutatakse, et õpetaja pidev professionaalne areng on ühtlasi ka jätkusuutliku ja nüüdisaegse haridussüsteemi alus. Samas ei ole piisavalt uurimusi, et seletada, millised meetodid on õpetajate toetamiseks kõ...

This study explores how English department teachers in a university in China exercise their agency in a climate of reforms when self-discrepancies emerge in their classroom instruction. A thematic analysis of data collected from semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and journal entries results in a scenario of dynamic interplay betwee...

This is NOT a technical report but there is no option for policy report. The authors are the Advisory Panel, APT. SSN: 1892-1604

This study investigates meaningful events that student teachers identified from video recordings of their teaching practice that were used to improve their knowledge base. Data were collected from 21 student teachers at an Estonian university using a guided reflection procedure. Deductive qualitative content analysis was performed on meaningful eve...

Teacher education needs to facilitate the development of student teachers' capacity for active and skilful learning in classroom interaction , referred to as sense of professional agency in the classroom. It consists of motivation to learn, self-efficacy beliefs about learning, and strategies promoting one's own and pupils' learning in the classroo...

The Collaborative Knowledge Practices Questionnaire (CKP) is an instrument designed to measure the learning of knowledge-work competence in education. The focus is on qualities of knowledge work which can be learned and taught in multiple educational settings and which may be especially important for courses with collaborative assignments. The orig...

Contemporary higher education is committed to enhancing students’ scientific thinking in part by improving their capacity to think critically, a competence that forms a foundation for scientific thinking. We introduce and evaluate the characteristic elements of critical thinking (i.e. cognitive skills, affective dispositions, knowledge), problemati...

This study investigated student teachers’ (N = 82) learning of action-oriented knowledge (AOK), triggering incidents in teaching practice, and the relationships between these two. Student teacher’s action-oriented knowledge is understood as core capability for the practice of teaching, and learning of action-oriented knowledge needs to be facilitat...

This paper compares three types of dialogues as reflective tools in placement learning: supervisory dialogues (mentor to student-teacher), peer dialogues (student teacher to student teacher) and self-dialogues (student teachers to themselves). Forty-four Dutch student teachers utilised the procedure of guided reflection to talk about their teaching...