Jari Lavonen

University of Helsinki | HY · Department of Teacher Education

This qualitative study examined factors that gifted Finnish upper secondary school physics students ( N = 24) identified as helping or hindering their talent development in physics. In-depth interviews captured students’ descriptions of critical incidents regarding their physics talent development at home, school, and in leisure time. The results s...

Tutkimuksessa selvitettiin, miten luonnontieteen oppitunneilla esiintyvät opetuksen ja opiskelun työtavat ovat yhteydessä opiskelijoiden kokemaan tilannekohtaiseen sitoutumiseen. Tilannekohtaisella sitoutumisella viitataan optimaalisen oppimisen hetkiin, joissa opiskelijoiden kokema kiinnostus, taito ja haaste ovat yhtä aikaa korkealla tasolla. Tut...

Three studies on the relationship between curiosity and interest were reported. The first study was a meta-analysis that examined the Pearson correlations between scales assessing curiosity and interest. Based on 24 studies (31 effect sizes), we found that the curiosity scales correlated with the interest scales at a moderate level (r = .53), but t...

Climate change and its mitigation represent a major global challenge, alongside biodiversity loss, global pandemics, and shortages of fresh water and food. It has the power to shape the environment and future; however, policymakers seek to prevent undesirable changes through environmental and education policies. Hinesjeffrey et al. (2013) consider...

Epistemic emotions (surprise, curiosity, enjoyment, confusion, anxiety, frustration and boredom) have an object focus on knowledge or knowledge construction and are thus hypothesized to affect learning outcomes. In the context of upper secondary school science, the present study clarifies this relation by examining the students' pre-and posttest pe...

Scientific literacy (SL) has been recognized as the main goal of science curricula documents around the world; however, comparative international curriculum research is limited, especially with Western and African countries. To fill this gap, this study aimed to compare the coverage of SL competencies with the components of knowledge, attitudes, an...

Emotions can either support or hinder learning. For a teacher, it is important to recognise students’ learning-related emotions to adjust support for learning and motivation appropriately. In this chapter, we employ video blogging in examining how Finnish fifth graders experienced thermal camera activities in a primary science lesson and what types...

Crafting Engaging Science Environments is a high school chemistry and physics project-based learning intervention that meets Next Generation Science Standards performance expectations. It was administered to a diverse group of over 4,000 students in a randomized control trial in California and Michigan. Results show that treatment students, on aver...

Science education research has long focused on scientific higher-order thinking (S-HOT) and observed that students’ HOT plays an important role in the science learning process. However, the existing research has tended to overlook the comprehensive nature of scientific higher-order thinking (S-HOT) and stopped short of defining its unique features....

Finland’s educational prowess, though tempered by recent international assessments, has remained intact. This report focused on lessons that could be learned regarding secondary-level science education from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015, science-focused assessment. That PISA iteration included not only science literac...

Soome põhikooli ülemise astme riiklikus õppekavas käsitletakse loodusaineid eraldi õppeainetena. Õppekava keskendub hoiakute kujundamisele, mis toetavad teaduslike teadmiste kasutamist erisugustes uurimuslikes olukordades ja kontekstides. Õppekava kohaselt on loodusainete õpetamise eesmärk anda õpilastele loodusteaduslik pädevus, mis võimaldab neil...

Science subjects are introduced as separate subjects in the Finnish national lower-secondary level science curriculum. The curriculum concentrates on attitudes, which support the use of scientific knowledge in different science inquiry situations and contexts. The competence aims, introduced in the curriculum, emphasise the use of scientific knowle...

This study examines how classroom activities, student gender and student personal interest in science studies and careers predict situational interest in physics learning. Teaching modules were designed based on the secondary physics curricula in Finland (Helsinki) and Chile (Santiago and Viña del Mar) emphasising students engagement in scientific...

The implementation of a teacher education strategy in a decentralised Finnish education system is analysed. Altogether, 31 pilot projects, involving teacher educators from all universities, were funded to support the implementation of the strategy and professional learning of autonomous teacher educators in the context of the strategy. In this mixe...

This study investigates how different instructional activities relate to epistemic emotions in science classes. Study data were collected during the implementation of a project-based learning unit in five Finnish upper secondary school classes using experience sampling, video observations and stimulated recall. From the videos, the excerpts prior t...

The study focuses on examining elementary pupils’ (N = 42, 11–13 years old) reflections on collaborative design processes, team collaboration and their co-inventions. Digital and traditional fabrication technologies were used in a 2-year co-invention project containing approximately 16 sessions during year 1 and 11 sessions in year 2. Between the t...

Situational engagement is a key element in promoting students’ maintained interest and focused attention in learning. Most research on students engagement has been variable-centered, and only few studies have examined situational patterns of student engagement. The present study used person-oriented approach (e.g., latent profile analysis with Mplu...

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, research teams in the United States and Finland were collaborating on a study to improve adolescent academic engagement in chemistry and physics and the impact remote teaching on academic, social, and emotional learning. The ongoing “Crafting Engaging Science Environments” (CESE) intervention afforded a rare data...

Research on the advantages and disadvantages of project-based learning (PBL) among gifted pupils studying physics is scarce. This mixed-methods study investigates engagement, experiences, and learning outcomes among gifted Finnish upper-secondary-level students learning physics through PBL. A six-lesson PBL module on basic Newtonian mechanics was d...

Understandings of the nature of scientific inquiry (NO) is included in science education reform documents around theworld. However, little is known about what students have learnedabout NOSI during their pre-college school years. The purpose of this large-scale follow-up international project (i.e. 32 countries and regions, spanning six continents...

The project ‘Schools Educating for Sustainability: Proposals for and from in- service teacher education’ aims to contribute to teacher education for sustainability (EduS) in different European countries, to reach the EU level goals for a more sustainable society (European Commission, 2019). The project’s goal is to develop new initiatives addressin...

Recent research and reform efforts in science education have consistently stressed the importance of coherent science instruction, in which learning opportunities are connected and contextualized by meaningful phenomena, focus on a small set of core ideas over time, and generate a need-to-know about new ideas through a set of connected lessons. Yet...

We present teacher–researcher partnership (TRP) as a way of fostering teachers’ professional learning. Teachers’ participation as research group members is an essential aspect of the partnership. Teachers and researchers share the same goal, which is to improve their understanding of and enhance students’ engagement in science. Project-based learni...

CITIE 2020, enfocado en Educación Digital Post COVID-19, debido al contexto de la La pandemia se ha desarrollado de forma virtual. CITIE promueve espacios de diálogo y reflexión entre profesores, gestores e investigadores relacionados con la educación. Esta edición de CITIE ha permitido la socialización de las tendencias e innovaciones que se están...

While expectancy-value-cost theory predicts that students' task values play an important part in academic engagement, these associations have rarely been tested in science education and are even less studied in authentic classroom situations. The present study examined to what extent momentary task-values, expectations and costs are associated with...

The relationships and differences between curiosity and interest have received considerable attention and discussions. Yet, most of the discussions so far draw from little direct empirical evidence. In this set of three studies, the relationship between curiosity and interest were examined. The first study was a meta-analysis that examined the Pear...

This chapter analyzes how learning twenty-first century competences has been implemented in the Finnish educational context through the enactment of national and local level curricula and the design of a teacher education development program in a decentralized education system, in which teachers, schools, municipalities, and universities have high...

Nuevas herramientas tecnológicas, servicios basados en tecnología y soporte se están introduciendo en nuestra vida diaria más rápido que nunca. Entre estos avances tecnológicos, la tecnología robótica ha aumentado dramáticamente en los últimos años, así como su inclusión en la educación. El propósito del trabajo es ofrecer una revisión compresiva s...

The idea of competency, which is widely disseminated through science curricula in various countries, has great potential for the professionalisation of science teachers. Moreover, teachers need competencies for introducing these competencies and for supporting students to develop them. In this chapter, we explore a characterisation of scientific co...

The notion of ‘competence’, very much cited in the current international science education research literature and policy documents, brings new opportunities and, at the same time, challenges.

This study seeks to understand how different scientific practices in high school science classrooms are associated with student situational engagement. In this study, situational engagement is conceptualized as the balance between skills, interest, and challenge when the reported experiences are all high. In this study, data on situational engageme...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Congress on Education and Technology in Sciences, CISETC 2019, held in Arequipa, Peru, in December 2019. The 12 full papers presented in the volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 96 submissions. The papers are focused on the two main topics: pedagogical practice...

Previous research has shown that dialogic teacher talk not only supports students’ understanding but also raises their interest. However, there is little, if any, research on the connection between dialogic talk and student interest in classroom situations. To investigate this connection, we collected video observations and experience sampling data...

Learning competencies for the twenty-first century has been an internationalized slogan in education reforms that has been framed into policy documents by various supranational organizations and thereafter adopted in national-level curricula by several nations. First, by comparing eight frameworks for the describing of competencies from both nation...

Una característica interesante de la política educativa finlandesa es el diseño colaborativo de estrategias nacionales y locales, programas de desarrollo y planes de estudio. La planificación de estrategias, programas y planes de estudio generalmente comienza con el reconocimiento de los desafíos y necesidades a nivel de aula, escuela y municipio....

The aim of this research was to examine if a set of three science and technology workshops would promote first-grade pupils’ science-related competence beliefs. The first workshop dealt with electric circuits and related handicraft tasks. The second workshop involved programming with Lego Mindstorms robots. The third workshop was related to compute...

A key goal of initial teacher education in all countries is to educate quality teachers through a quality post-secondary programme and then support them in their careers through professional learning. However, there are different definitions and interpretations of a quality teacher or a quality teacher education programme. Several terms are used to...

According to modern expectancy-value theory, students’ motivation in school subjectsbegins to vary at the very beginning of their school careers, showing a task-specificpattern of motivation. However, there is no clear evidence in the literature on howstudents’ value beliefs are formed and interact with each other in early elementaryschools. Using...

Supporting students’ active participation in maker-centered project-based learning (PBL) can be challenging in inclusive classes. The aim of this study was to support students’ active participation in cooperative team via teacher-directed reflective discussions during an inclusive, maker-centered PBL unit. The study was conducted during the student...

This research compared how the scientific literacy-related goals of the current Chinese and Finnish national science curricula at primary school level are actualised using a revised Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scientific literacy framework in the content analysis of the curricula. The content of the curricula focuses princ...

This paper examines how pupils with learning difficulties (LDs) used smartphones as supportive learning tools in an inclusive science class and how the usage developed over a two-year period. The case study was conducted in a Finnish primary school, where nine LD pupils’ smartphone usage was followed in three science learning practices that support...

CITIE 2018 Conference Proceedings preface

Although understandings of scientific inquiry (as opposed to conducting inquiry) are included in science education reform documents around the world, little is known about what stu- dents have learned about inquiry during their elementary school years. This is partially due to the lack of any assess- ment instrument to measure understandings about...

This study examines the association between student situational engagement and classroom activities in secondary school science classrooms in Finland and the U.S. Situational engagement is conceptualised as times when students feel that a task is interesting and challenging to them and that they have the skills to complete it (see Schneider et al.,...

In a comparative study of student teachers in Finland and South Africa, the researchers aimed to capture students’ views of how and what they had learned from practice in two university-affiliated primary schools. With data from survey questionnaires, we found that students in the two customized programmes accentuated different domains of teacher k...

This chapter describes inquiry-based science teaching and learning (IBST/L) pilots designed by teachers during a professional development programme. There is research-based evidence that IBSL/T may promote students’ learning and their motivation to learn science, and therefore it is beneficial to familiarise the teachers with this approach. Buildin...

Background There is a lack of students enrolling in upper secondary school physics courses. In addition, many students discontinue the physics track, causing a lack of applicants for university-level science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programmes. The aim of this research was to determine if it is possible to find a connection b...

In this study, we examined student teachers’ learning during their teaching placement period in Finland and South Africa. The setting of the inquiry in both countries was a ‘teaching’ school, affiliated to a university teacher education programme. The teaching school is also referred to as an educational innovation that was transferred from the Fin...

Incorporation of aims for learning 21st century competencies in subject-specific curricula and education has been an important issue worldwide. This study explored the integration of aims for learning such competencies into the National Primary Science Curricula in China and Finland. Both Curricula showed an emphasis on aims related to science educ...

Although understandings of scientific inquiry (as opposed to conducting inquiry) is included in science education reform documents around the world, little is known about what students have learned about inquiry during their primary school years. This is partially due to the lack of any assessment instrument to measure understandings about scientif...

Tiivistelmä Luonnontieteellisen tutkimuksen luonteen ymmärtämistä mittaavaa VASI-testiä (views about the scientific inquiry) sovellettiin 149:n seitsemäsluokkalaisen muodostamaan otokseen. Vastaukset luokiteltiin neljään ryhmään (vastaus puuttuu, vastaus ei ole mallitiedon mukainen, vastaus on osittain mallitiedon mukainen, vastaus on mallitiedon m...

This chapter describes the grass-roots nature of the Innokas Network and explores how networking can support teachers in adopting strategies for teaching twenty-first century competencies. The context for this study is the Innokas Network, a Finnish school development network. The goal of Innokas Network is to initiate educational reform for the le...

This chapter seeks to analyze the success factors, challenges, and renewal of Finnish education in the context of learning twenty-first century competency. We analyze the good performance and low variation in performance of Finnish students and suggest Finnish teachers and teacher education as well as the Finnish approaches to curriculum, assessmen...

ABSTRACT. In the present paper, we report on the idea of exchanging educational innovations across European countries aiming to shed light on the following question: how feasible and useful is it to transfer an innovation across different national educational settings? The innovation, in this case, Inquiry-Based Teaching Learning Sequences, is reco...

This paper outlines a seven-point strategy to devise a system of continuous improvement of teacher quality and, through it, the quality of education as a whole. Education is one of the single most important initiatives that can be undertaken to improve the quality of life, financial security and economic potential of a given population. There is n...

This book section consists of descriptions of science education research and practices in four different Asian countries, Singapore, Taiwan, Omen , and Thailand. Although the current state, the opportunities, and the challenges each country face are different, there are several commonalities and shared interests. Therefore, it will be valuable to l...

INTRODUCTION: Teacher professionalism is discussed in contexts of the international research literature and the Finnish education system. Important issues such as the PISA test are useful to analyse the Finnish education system from an education policy perspective. METHOD: A short general overview of teacher professionalism research is presented an...

This study contributes to the research on student engagement in three ways: 1) by combining questionnaire and situational measures of engagement using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), 2) by applying a demands-resources model to describe the positive and negative aspects of student engagement, and 3) by adopting a person-oriented approach to de...

Background: In developed countries, it is challenging for teachers to select pedagogical practices that encourage students to enrol in science and technology courses in upper secondary school.Purpose: Aiming to understand the enrolment dynamics, this study analyses sample-based data from Finland’s National Assessment in Science to determine whether...

Pupils’ interest has been one of the major concerns in science education research because it can be seen as a gateway to more personalised forms of interest and motivation. However, methods to investigate situational interest in science teaching and learning are not broadly examined. This study compares the pupils’ observed situational interest and...

This chapter is to present some reflections from international scholars who have been visiting Taiwan for the past few years. These scholars would like to share their insightful feedback of their interactions with scholars, teachers, and students during their stay in Taiwan.

Answering the problems arising from the school context, science education research engages in diminishing the gap between educational theory and practice. Design-based research aims to develop an educational innovation, i.e. a teaching-learning sequence (TLS) that helps teachers and students in science classes to reach the objectives indicated in a...

The case described in this chapter is the iterative design and development process of an inquiry-based industry site visit teaching-learning sequence (TLS) – materials around us. In order to enhance students’ motivation and interest towards their science studies and promote learning about materials science-related topics, the TLS encompasses an ind...

This chapter describes the implementation of the national level science education policy through national and local level curriculum and teacher education.

This study explores how often students are engaged in their science classes and their affective states during these times, using an innovative methodology that records these experiences in situ. Sampling a subset of high schools in the U.S. and Finland, we collected over 7,000 momentary responses from 344 students over the course of a week. We exam...