Kalle Juuti

• PhD (in education)
• Professor at University of Helsinki

This paper discusses the significance of school curricula in reflecting societal priorities and needs, focusing on the incorporation of computational thinking (CT) in Nordic national curricula. Our point of departure is that the preparedness of future generations for a digitally driven society can be determined by analysing how CT is either explici...

Recognizing students’ learning-related emotions and taking them into consideration are important pedagogical tools for teachers. Taking students’ views into account promotes their participation. In this study, instant video blogging (IVB) is used to collect primary school students’ first-hand accounts of their emotions in learning situations. Throu...

This chapter analyses the integration of digital tools and project-based learning pedagogy into secondary physics teaching and learning. The teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) model is used as a framework for this analysis. TPACK combines Shulman’s structure of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), content or subject matte...

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...

The purpose of this study was to analyze knowledge co-construction as a self-organization process and the role of technology as its catalyst. Novel AI-directed speech recognition technology and the artifacts it generates were deployed to scaffold the knowledge co-construction process in two groups of pre-service teachers in a science education cont...

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 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...

Lately, new materialism has been proposed as a theoretical framework to better understand material-dialogic relationships in learning, and concurrently network analysis has emerged as a method in science education research. This paper explores how to include materiality in network analysis and reports the development of a method to construct networ...

Research on student retention in higher education (HE) physics could benefit by studying emotions in the context of engagement and learning. However, popular retention theories include only a narrow selection of emotions, creating a need to look elsewhere. In this study, we borrow the lens of an affective engagement model, the framework of an optim...

The existing co-teaching practices in teachers’ professional learning emphasize collaboration between pre-service and in-service teachers. Although this collaboration is usually defined by a mentor–student relationship with asymmetric power relations, successful co-teaching practices in schools are considered to involve parity, resulting in mutual...

This study contributes to the understanding of the relationship between emotions and development of scientific understanding by examining (1) how students perform in scientific sensemaking in the context of a three-cycle predict-observe-explain (POE) activity, (2) what kind of trajectories of situational epistemic emotions students show when making...

To better understand the gender gap in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) aspiration, the article examines the critical role of domain-specific motivation (i.e., expectancy and task values). Using longitudinal data from 5th and 6th grade (∼11–12-year-old) students (n = 360, 55% girls), person-oriented analyses was applied to understan...

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...

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 p...

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...

Drawing together an international author team from Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the UK, this book examines how we might democratize and open up access to ‘knowledge of the powerful’ for all. This book moves beyond the narrow knowledge vs skills debate of the 20th century to interrogate the epistemic quality of education i...

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...

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...

Digital technology has a lot of potential in terms of teaching and learning. However, experimental and especially survey studies have provided mixed evidence on the impact of digital technology on educational outcomes. The correlation between students' reported use of digital technology and achievement has continually appeared to be of no significa...

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 remote learning period that took place due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020 was a novel experience for many students, teachers and guardians in Finland and globally. To be prepared for similar occasions in the future and to support all students appropriately, it is important to be aware of students’ experiences. In...

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...

The purpose of this study was to explore antecedents of Finnish and Norwegian student teachers’ prospective commitment to work as teachers or pursue other careers. Are student teachers’ perceptions of coherence between the theoretical and practical elements of the teaching programme related to their commitment to work as teachers or to pursue other...

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...

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...

Finnish teacher education is praised for its research-based approach. However, educational research practices are not very common in teacher education. We introduce simple, affordable HTML5-based application (app) software to implement an authentic video research activity in teaching practice. With the observation tool, it is easy to code the activ...

The present study employed a person-oriented approach to (1) identify elementary school students’ self-concept and intrinsic value profiles across the subjects Finnish language, mathematics and science and to examine (2) the stability and change of these motivational profiles from 2nd to 3rd grade, (3) gender differences in profile membership as we...

Science education can be alienating for students, as it is apart from the mundane world with which they are familiar. Science education research has approached the gap between everyday understandings and science learning largely as a challenge arising while learning about science concepts and the kinds of instructional approaches that may support t...

Current mainstream practices of education tend to have an authoritative and serious side through their emphasis on the transmission and reproduction of canonical knowledge. Simultaneously, there are calls for dialogical approaches that provide students with opportunities to express their understandings and thereby increase engagement in learning. Y...

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...

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...

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...

According to modern expectancy-value theory, students’ motivation in school subjects begins to vary at the very beginning of their school careers, showing a task-specific pattern of motivation. However, there is no clear evidence in the literature on how students’ value beliefs are formed and interact with each other in early elementary schools. Us...

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 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...

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.,...

Fieldwork is an important part of biology as well as science and biology education. However, teachers perceive several reasons for the limited use of fieldwork in schools. Further, outdoor education is often organised as a single fieldtrip guided by outdoor educators, and little research has been done on fieldwork as a regular part of formal biolog...

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...

This study focuses on how Finnish pre-service teachers’ instructional self-efficacy contributes to their belief in their ability to provide learning opportunities and positive classroom outcomes. Data were gathered from 153 pre-service teachers and analysed using structural equation modelling. We found that experiences with problem behaviour negati...

The duration of on-campus academic engagements is an uncertain and highly debated indicator of study input. Researchers adopt this indicator with the expectation that student teachers must invest an amount of time and effort in their courses that more or less equals a normal workweek. In the present empirical study, we examine factors influencing t...

The article discusses the development of an educational model intended to support teachers’ professional development in science education. In this research and development project, LumaLähetit, pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and teacher educators formed teams to collaboratively plan teaching and produce material for inquiry-based and in...

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...

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...

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...

This paper introduces and analyses education of professional teachers and support of school site to this professionalism in Finnish education context. First, the aims and content of teacher education is analysed and discussed. Three main areas, crucial to the professionalism of teachers were recognised to be: teachers' knowledge base, their willing...

The aim of this study was to design a novel and holistic way to teach chemical bonding at the middle school level according to research on the teaching and learning of bonding. A further aim was to investigate high achieving middle school students' conceptual structures concerning chemical bonding by using a systemic perspective. Students in one me...

This article introduces a procedure aimed at fostering pre-service teachers’ reflective thinking and practical wisdom and encouraging them to adopt a theory-based view of promoting learners’ motivation while taking into account learners’ different motivational profiles. The procedure is based on a study about the promotion of science-related motiva...

Experiences shows that the knowledge of species among teacher students has decreased the last twenty years, and recent research from different parts of the world shows the same: The knowledge of species is decreasing. As an introduction to their science teacher education 39 students followed a course over seven weeks, where they learned more about...

This study analyses teacher educators' and student teachers' perceptions of teaching and learning situations in an international English as a lingua franca (ELF) context in an English-medium instruction (EMI) teacher education programme in Finland. The analysis of semi-structured interviews revealed that the participants perceived a partial reversa...

Teachers’ engagement in Design Based Research (DBR) is analyzed in the context of the Innovative School (ISC) model. The ISC model emphasizes the development of students’ learning and learning environments, teachers’ professionalism, leadership and partnerships. The model engages teachers, students, school principals, parents, and actors of the loc...

Background:Applying structural models is important to chemistry education at the upper secondary level, but it is considered one of the most difficult topics to learn.Purpose:This study analyses to what extent in designed lessons students learned to apply structural models in explaining the properties and behaviours of various materials.Sample:An e...

This study aimed to design a teaching sequence for science education that enabled lower secondary school students to enhance their motivation towards science. Further, it looked to examine the way the designed teaching sequence affected students with different motivational profiles. Industry site visits, with embodied theory-based motivational feat...

The goal of this paper is to study the question of whether a phenomenological view of the Earth could be empirically endorsed. The phenomenological way of thinking considers the Earth as a material entity, but not as an object as viewed in science. In the learning science tradition, tracking the process of the conceptual change of the shape of the...

The article investigates the potential and challenges of integrating geography with other school subjects. The analysis is based on the outcomes of a course that introduced the principles of discipline-based integration. The course was included in multicultural-class teacher education programme at the University of Helsinki. For a project within th...

Textbooks are a major tool in the teaching and learning process. This paper presents the results of an analysis of the Finnish and Thai 6th grade science textbooks: electric circuit lesson. Textual and pictorial information from the textbooks were analyzed under four main categories: 1) introduction of the concepts, 2) type of knowledge, 3) represe...

The first objective of the present study was to test the factorial validity of the inventory designed to measure students' motivation to study physics in school. Based on self-determination theory (SDT), it was hypothesised that the four factors of External Regulation, Introjected Regulation, Identified Regulation and Intrinsic Motivation account f...

Tiivistelmä: Kehittämistutkimuksella kohti peruskoulun alaluokkien fysiikan opetusta ja opiskelua. Diss. -- Helsingin yliopisto.

Recently, there has been critiques towards science education research, as the potential of this research has not been actualised in science teaching and learning praxis. The paper describes an analysis of a design-based research approach (DBR) that has been suggested as a solution for the discontinuation between science education research and praxi...

Scientific observation plays a central part in the formation of scientific knowledge and thus it has an important role in the teaching and learning of science. Despite its importance there are only a few studies that focus on the problems in making observations. The paper begins with the collection of factors effecting scientific observation. In or...

In inquiry-based science education, there have been gradual shifts in research interests: the nature of scientific method, the debates on the effects of inquiry learning, and, recently, inquiry teaching. However, many in-service programs for inquiry teaching have reported inconsistent results due to the static view of classroom inquiries and due to...

In order to ensure the reader understands the reasons for Finnish students’ high achievements in the PISA Scientific Literacy Assessment, this chapter describes the implementation of the national level science education policy through national and local level curriculum and teacher education. We highlight: (1) the science curriculum for compulsory...

Teacher questioning has a central role in guiding pupils to learn to make scientific observations and inferences. We asked 110 primary student teachers to write down what kind of questions they would ask their pupils about a demonstration. Almost half of the student teachers posed questions that were either inappropriate or presupposed that the pup...

This paper explores the relationship between students' interests in environmental issues, attitudes to environmental responsibility and biocentric values in school science education. The factors were investigated within the framework of three moderators: gender, school and residential area of the school. The survey was carried out using the interna...

Students find science relevant to society, but they do not find school science interesting. This survey study analyzes Finnish grade 9 students’ actual experiences with science teaching methods and their preferences for how they would like to study science. The survey data were collected from 3,626 grade 9 students (1,772 girls and 1,832 boys) acro...

Gender issues and severe related problems have been discussed in the context of using modern technologies over a long period of time. Similar discussions have concerned science teaching, especially the problems of physics education and female students. Finland has been one of the most advanced countries in the implementation of modern technologies,...

This paper analyses the use of various communication channels in science teachers' professional development project aiming to develop versatile uses for ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) in science teaching. A teacher network was created specifically for this project, and the researchers facilitated three forms of communication conce...

Citizens in contemporary societies are encountering more and more issues that are somehow related to science and technology. Therefore, science and technology education plays an important role in providing students with the knowledge and the competences they need in their life. The research and development project discussed in this chapter focuses...

Citizens in contemporary societies are encountering more and more issues that are somehow related to science and technology. Therefore, science and technology education plays an important role in providing students with the knowledge and the competences they need in their life. The research and development project discussed in this chapter focuses...

This paper examines lower secondary school students' motivational orientations on the characteristics of science and technology occupations. The survey data of 9th grade students were collected in spring 2003, in Finland from 75 schools (3626 students) and in Latvia from 39 schools (1065 students). An exploratory factor analysis was used to describ...

Activities for science teaching and learning focusing on reading and writing as processes and the use of modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in learning have been designed using the design-based research approach. Based on our theoretical problem analysis reading and writing activities should support collaborative, constructive,...

This article describes a professional development project aiming to develop practical approaches for the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) into science education. Altogether, 13 two‐day face‐to‐face seminars and numerous computer network conferences were held during a three‐year period. The goals for the project were b...

Interest in biology and the out-of-school experiences of Finnish secondary school pupils (n=3626, median age 15) were surveyed in the spring of 2003 using the international ROSE questionnaire. Likert-scaled items were categorised with an explorative factor analysis. The scores of eight interest-context factors and seven out-of-school experience fac...

An ICT strategy and an implementation plan for teacher education were created in a cooperative process. Visions and expectations of staff members and students were registered by questionnaires and by making notes during sessions in which the strategy was created. Thereafter, an implementation document, where the staff development programme and plan...

This paper analyses demands on Web-Based Study Communities (WBCs) by off-campus students. It reports a teaching experiment where two groups of unqualified primary school teachers were given a course in teaching science. It is described as a typical case study yielding feedback for further development of the web-based environment but emphasising als...