About
235
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Introduction
Kai Hakkarainen's background is in psychology and applied cognitive science. He has developed internationally recognized theoretical frameworks of knowledge-creating learning, investigated learning at different level of education as well studied professional expertise and expert networks in many domains. ORCID ID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3507-7537. Homepage: https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/kai-hakkarainen.
Additional affiliations
August 2010 - July 2014
Publications
Publications (235)
Introduction
This study uses a person-centered approach to explore Finnish lower-secondary school students’ (N = 1106) mindsets across intelligence, giftedness, and creativity. It further investigates the relationship between mindsets profiles, school achievement in various subjects, and gender differences, aiming to address the domain-specificity...
This study analyzed collaborative invention projects by teams of lower-secondary (13–14-year-old) Finnish students. In invention projects, student teams design and make materially embodied collaborative inventions using traditional and digital fabrication technologies. This investigation focused on the student teams’ knowledge creation processes by...
Sustaining change beyond individual teachers is challenging and understanding factors making educational change effective is needed. We aimed to identify the factors that educators and construction specialists considered influential to educational change of a general upper-secondary school that was under construction and was to meet the pedagogical...
Traditional educational research has been criticized for the gap between the research and practice communities, meaning that outcomes do not transfer to educational praxis. To meet this challenge, policymakers, funders, and researchers are developing research–practice partnerships (RPPs). The purpose of this research is to study the research–practi...
Digital fluency is a central 21st-century competence. Schools are responsible for ensuring that all students cultivate sophisticated sociodigital competences and mindsets needed for studying and collaborating through and around technology and overcoming digital challenges encountered. Although some schools have successfully integrated digital techn...
This study aimed to examine the challenges that adult participants experienced in immersive virtual reality (I-VR). Practitioners have indicated that some challenges persist from trainee to trainee and scholars have called for the design and development of virtual reality (VR) applications based on learning theories. Thus, we examined challenges im...
To implement educational transformations that prepare young people for the future society, it is valuable to deepen scientific understanding of socio-cultural, psychic, and physical aspects of learning environments. Towards that end, in this case study we examined educators’ and construction specialists’ perceptions of pedagogical activities and ho...
Teachers’ active role in school development has been recognized as important in school culture transformation. Leadership practices, such as distributed leadership and organizational support, aim to engage teachers and foster their participation and contribution opportunities. However, studies have shown that teachers’ earlier experiences and belie...
This study examined the factors shaping co-teaching within a Finnish primary school's community. The qualitative study was conducted by teacher and principal interviews and teacher surveys. Thematic content analysis revealed five factors establishing the co-teaching practices: providing collegial support, team building, continuous professional deve...
The study examines students’ disciplinary learning in physics and interdisciplinary science learning opportunities that students encounter during a collaborative invention project. Thirteen student teams (aged 11 to 12, N = 46) designed and constructed a prototype of a technology invention meant to solve one of the challenges students face in daily...
This investigation involved carrying out interventions that engaged teams of lower-secondary (13–14-year-old) Finnish students in using traditional and digital fabrication technologies to make materially embodied collaborative inventions. By relying on video data and ethnographic observations of the student teams' collaborative invention processes,...
The purpose of the present study was to examine primary school students’ learning experiences with immersive virtual reality (I-VR). Traditional education practices are failing to inspire new cohorts of young people who have grown up with digital culture based on active participation. Given this development, the pedagogic use of I-VR systems repres...
This research explores the use of a non-linear maker pedagogy for implementing a major change in the Finnish national core curriculum. The latest curriculum change (2014) introduced so-called transversal competences, but also a major change for the subject of crafts: ‘multi-material’ crafts that involve former separately taught textile and technica...
The purpose of this theoretical investigation was to examine critical thinking as a realization of human cooperation, affecting both mental health and social welfare. Although critical thinking contains a critical stance toward any asserted standpoint, such a critical stance appears, paradoxically, to have developed from cooperation and the shared...
This interview study examined the transformative professional agency of expert teachers selected to perform city-wide innovator and developer roles in the context of digital school transformations in Helsinki, Finland. Our analysis revealed that exploring and developing a novel digital pedagogy in one's own teaching was considered the core of their...
Advances in virtual reality (VR) technology afford creation of immersive virtual learning environments that simulate real-life learning contexts with increasing fidelity. When supported by sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence (AI)-based tutoring software, such environments may facilitate asynchronous, embodied learning approaches for learn...
School spaces, technologies, and educational activities shape each other reciprocally. This mixed-methods study (i) developed a methodological framework for tracing the interdependence between school spaces, digital instruments, and teachers’ practices in their use, and (ii) created practice-based knowledge about the relations of teachers’ percepti...
This study examined Finnish eighth graders’ (N = 1136) educational aspirations and how those can be predicted by mindsets, academic achievement, and gender. Multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted to investigate how two mindset constructs (intelligence and giftedness), domain-specific academic performance (mathematics and reading),...
The present investigation examined cross-age peer tutoring in the context of organising a technology-enhanced STEAM project aimed at bringing elements of maker culture to a lower secondary school. We examined how 8th graders tutored 7th graders in programming skills. The participants were peer tutors (n = 15) studying in a technology-oriented class...
This paper presents our systematic review of empirical learning analytic studies carried out at K-12 education with a specific focus on pedagogically innovative (constructive) approaches on technology-mediated learning, such as knowledge building, knowledge creation, and maker-centered learning and maker culture. After reading abstracts of identifi...
The years of adolescence form a crucial period in students’ academic path, as it is during these years that the maladaptive or adaptive academic pathways begin to diverge. Simultaneously, the unsupervised engagement with digital media begins a sharp increase during these years. The dynamics between these have been a recent topic of concern – does e...
Advances in immersive virtual reality (I-VR) technology have allowed for the development of I-VR learning environments (I-VRLEs) with increasing fidelity. When coupled with a sufficiently advanced computer tutor agent, such environments can facilitate asynchronous and self-regulated approaches to learning procedural skills in industrial settings. I...
A guide to computational thinking education, with a focus on artificial intelligence literacy and the integration of computing and physical objects.
Computing has become an essential part of today's primary and secondary school curricula. In recent years, K–12 computer education has shifted from computer science itself to the broader perspective of...
Current educational reforms concerning curricula and digitalization challenge educators to meet new demands for learning and schooling. What is common for current educational reforms is that they tend to emphasize competencies that are not related to the traditional subject-matters and reflect a stance which presents learning as a naturally reflect...
The gap between students’ formal, school-based learning and informal, social learning has been widely acknowledged. To overcome this gap, academic service-learning (AS-L) pedagogy involves deliberate efforts to interconnect formal and informal learning by enhancing students’ transitions across multiple authentic settings and fostering their partici...
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...
Background
This exploratory study engaged teams of elementary and middle school students in the collaborative design of digital games. Game design is theoretically examined in this study as a form of knowledge-creating learning that is characterized by collaborative efforts to advance a shared object of activity, i.e., the game being designed. Usin...
Techne Series - Research in Sloyd Education and Craft Science A, 28(3), 1-14.
The purpose of the article is to introduce a systematic, three-level video analysis method for tracing the emotional aspects of a collaborative design and making process. Maker-centred learning can evoke strong emotions affecting students' motivation because it involves t...
The purpose of the present paper is to examine the sociocultural foundations of technology-mediated collaborative learning. Toward that end, we discuss the role of artifacts in knowledge-creating inquiry, relying on the theoretical ideas of Carl Bereiter, Merlin Donald, Pierre Rabardel, Keith Sawyer, and L. S. Vygotsky. We argue that epistemic medi...
The research study focuses on the phenomenon of informal learning and teaching, as it materializes through the quiltmakers’ engagement in idiosyncratic community practices. The present study considers the construction of craft knowledge from a sociocultural perspective, focusing on social and material mediation, and embodiment as a form of meaning-...
This exploratory case study examined the kinds of activity that a ‘deskless school” (i.e., flexible physical school spaces) engenders among pupils and teachers. We also considered the meaning and significance that pupils and teachers attach to various features of the school, as well as the associated action possibilities. The data were gathered in...
Lay Description
What is already known about this topic
The developmental ecologies of our youth are being transformed through the socio‐digital revolution.
Adolescents participate in their digital media ecologies in
Friendship‐ (hanging out with friends) and
Interest‐driven ways (messing around and geeking out related to interests).
What this pap...
This chapter discusses “doing” educational research with two quilting communities located in Aotearoa New Zealand. The ethnographic inquiry explores the phenomenon of informal learning and teaching as they materialise through the quilters’ communal practices. Collective quiltmaking is often marginalised by non-quilters as a “granny” activity bounde...
Co-teaching is regularly paired with school improvements and educational reforms, yet research does not clearly separate the challenges of co-teaching for teacher professional development, course improvement and for wider reforms. We explored how co-teaching emerged and what barriers teachers experienced as meaningful for their co-teaching after a...
The present investigation aimed to analyze the collaborative making processes and ways of organizing collaboration processes of five student teams. As a part of regular school work, the seventh-grade students were engaged in the use of traditional and digital fabrication technologies for inventing, designing, and making artifacts. To analyze comple...
The purpose of the present investigation was to analyze the pedagogical infrastructures in three cycles of seventh graders' co-invention projects that involved using traditional and digital fabrication technologies for inventing and creating complex artefacts. The aim of the projects was to create high-end multi-material makerspaces by expanding Fi...
Digital technologies have been increasingly embedded in students’ everyday lives. Interest-driven socio-digital participation (ISDP) involves students’ pursuit of interests mediated by computers, social media, the internet, and mobile devices’ integrated systems. ISDP is likely to intertwine closely with young people’s social networks that has been...
In this study, we examined maker‐centred learning from an epistemic perspective, highlighting the agentic role of material engagement and artefacts in learning and creativity. The use of physical materials plays a crucial role in maker activities where the socio‐epistemic aspects of knowledge creation entangle with the designing and making of physi...
This article discusses the informal learning processes of a quilting community, located in Aotearoa New Zealand, as participants engage in a collaborative textile project. Few studies have investigated everyday quilters’ collective learning processes, even though communal quiltmaking has been undertaken over the centuries. The concept of zone of pr...
This article examined digital learning engagement as the out-of-school learning component that reflects informally emerging socio-digital participation. The gap hypothesis proposes that students who prefer learning with digital technologies outside of school are less engaged in traditional school. This hypothesis was approached from the framework o...
The present researchers studied elementary school students’ use of electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) in their craft education over a three-year period. The data consisted of the textual and the visual content of the students’ (n= 38) ePortfolios. The students’ productions were analyzed and conceptualized through the qualitative analysis of conten...
Co-invention projects in elementary school engage pupils in complex, open-ended design tasks in a practical, hands-on way. Physical materials are an intrinsic part of design, involving transformation of conceptual ideas into material forms, such as prototypes. These tangible objects mediate embodied thinking and act as material-social mediators of...
This study contributes to the research on the differences in young peoples' approaches to socio-digital participation (SDP). We first investigated the differences in SDP between three samples of Finnish students (i.e., elementary school 6th grade, n = 741; high school 1st year, n = 1317; higher education 1st year, n = 1232) and then looked at how t...
Tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli selvittää, millaisia tavoiteorientaatioryhmiä voidaan löytää kuudennella luokalla ja miten eri ryhmät eroavat toisistaan henkilökohtaisten koulutustavoitteiden, niiden arviointien sekä koulumenestyksen suhteen. Oppilaat (N=761) jaettiin tavoiteorientaatioryhmiin hyödyntäen henkilösuuntautunutta lähestymistapaa ja K-keski...
Background
Adolescence is a time of ongoing neural maturation and cognitive development, especially regarding executive functions. In the current study, age‐related differences in the neural correlates of different executive functions were tracked by comparing three age groups consisting of adolescents and young adults.
Methods
Brain activity was...
While sketching has an established role in professional design, its benefits and role in design education are subjects that invite research and opinions. We investigated how undergraduates studying to become design educators and textile teachers used sketching to generate and develop design solutions in a collaborative setting. The students were gi...
The authors studied students' experiences of using an electronic portfolio over four years to develop its use as a method of documentation. The main research question focused on the pupils' experiences of the functions and the benefits of using an electronic portfolio. AUTHENTIC EVIDENCES The ePortfolio is a personalized tracking of learning (e.g.,...
The purpose of the present study is to investigate gender and cultural background similarities among adolescents’ patterns of networking within a multicultural Finnish school. The participants consisted of 109 seventh to ninth graders who represented three cultural groups: major-culture (n = 50; 46%), bi-culture (n = 26; 24%) and minor-culture (n =...
This study explored the remaining potential of gestures as creative tools for collaborative designing. We compared novice designers’ use of sketching against gesturing in early ideation and rough visualisation. To preserve the kinesic character of gestures, we developed a detailed video analysis method, which revealed that the majority of sketching...
We examined how the emerging digital culture has affected magicians’ careers, the development of their expertise and the general practices of their professions. We used social network analysis (n=120) to identify Finland’s most highly regarded magicians (n=16) representing different generations. The participants were theme interviewed and also coll...
The purpose of the present study was to examine the discursive framing of space-time in the context of a collaborative task in a higher education course. We employed the concept of chronotope, which was developed within the dialogical approach for a socio-cultural examination of space and time. We conducted participant observation at a media-design...
Due to ongoing cultural-historical transformations, the space-time of learning is radically changing, and theoretical conceptualizations are needed to investigate how such evolving space-time frames can function as a ground for learning. In this article, we argue that the concept of chronotope – from Greek chronos and topos, meaning time and place/...
Due to ongoing cultural-historical transformations, the space-time of learning is radically changing, and theoretical conceptualizations are needed to investigate how such evolving space-time frames can function as a ground for learning. In this article, we argue that the concept of chronotope – from Greek chronos and topos, meaning time and place/...
Advances in scripting theory and advances in support for student-driven knowledge construction call for a reconsideration of long-standing issues of guidance, control, and agency. This symposium undertakes a fresh analysis based on the relations between two widely adopted approaches that may be poles apart but arguably viewed as variations within a...
In the design studio, within educational contexts, sketching, model-making and prototyping of tangible objects are parts of the design process that support students in achieving final design solutions. This paper presents research in which three design experiments involving design studio settings, using a Learning by Collaborative Designing model f...
Given the importance of entrepreneurial thinking and acting as a meta-skill in the future world of work, we focus on the emerging entrepreneurial mindset in the transition to adulthood. We study the role of personality characteristics and age-appropriate entrepreneurial competencies (leadership, self-esteem, creativity, proactivity motivation) in t...
The present study analyses data collected from a series of developmental seminars in a fingerprint laboratory during which fingerprint examiners jointly discussed and developed their work processes, analytical methods, decision-making criteria and rules of documentation. The analysed organizational development took place in the context of moving fr...
Maailmanlaajuiset ongelmat vaativat uudenlaisia kykyjä omaksua, ymmärtää ja luoda tietoa. Opiskelijoiden valmiuksia kehittyä luoviksi asiantuntijoiksi voidaan vahvistaa tutkivan oppimisen pedagogiikalla, joka nojaa jaettuun asiantuntijuuteen ja yhteisölliseen toimintaan.
Recent research shows an increased concern with well-being at school and potential problems associated with students' use of socio-digital technologies, i.e., the mobile devices, computers, social media, and the Internet. Simultaneously with supporting creative social activities, socio-digital participation may also lead to compulsive and addictive...
Three core ideas are at the heart of this book: relational expertise, the capacity to interpret problems with others; common knowledge, which consists of knowing what matters for professionals in other practices; and relational agency, which involves using that common knowledge to take action with others. These ideas are based in cultural-historica...