Information and communications technology (ICT) is now widely used in education. However, the effect of ICT on the development of students' scientific higher-order thinking skills (S-HOTS) is a controversial issue in science education research. This has attracted significant attention from researchers worldwide in the field of educational…

Finland is known for its high-performing educational system, but local assessments have shown that performance has declined during the past decade. We report the results of nationally representative learning to learn assessments in which 15-year-olds took an identical test in the same schools in 2001, 2012 and 2017. The results show that the level…

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…

This paper centers on to evaluate whether and to what extent the learning objectives of the geography curricula emphasize students' higher-order thinking skills (HOTS), and whether students are capable of answering to HOTS-questions by using the Finnish upper secondary geography education as an example. The revised Bloom's taxonomy was used as a…

This paper quantifies the learning gain that accrues to 15-year-old students over one year of schooling in 18 countries and economies, where the cohort eligible to sit the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)ISA test overlaps with two distinct school cohorts. School-entry regulations are used as an exogenous source of…

The relationship between Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and science performance has been the focus of much recent research, especially due to the prevalence of ICT in our digital society. However, the exploration of this relationship has yielded mixed results. Thus, the current study aims to uncover the learning processes that are…

This article explores the language learning experiences of four recently arrived adolescent plurilingual immigrant students who participated in additional structured linguistic support (SLS) in lower secondary education. The SLS was targeted at creating scaffolding for students who were learning both the language of schooling and the…

This study employs interviews and observations to investigate instructional rationales of two purposefully sampled teachers with divergent classroom discourse practices in Swedish-speaking Finnish lower secondary mathematics classrooms. Studies on classroom discourse often point to beliefs and contextual factors shaping teachers' discourse…

Drawing on a cross-cultural, qualitative study in Finnish and Korean comprehensive schools, we explore how teacher control and student agency are manifested and exercised in the teaching and learning practices of the "official school" and in the student-teacher interactions of the "informal school". We also elaborate on how…

In this article, we approach large questions regarding justice and equality in the Nordic classrooms. A substantial body of previous research emphasises the importance of student engagement in teaching and learning. Drawing on video data from Norway, Sweden and Finland, we focus on whole-class teaching, i.e. situations in which the teacher…

The present article will examine informal learning in popular and jazz music education in Finland and evaluate it as a part of formal upper secondary vocational musicians' training, which is typically teacher directed. It is not necessarily the best model of working in popular and jazz music learning, which has traditionally benefitted from…

This article is based on a case study where groups of Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian young people played a simulation game that stimulated collective deliberation on social issues. The game has been designed to provoke students to deliberate and to reflect on social problems relating to issues of citizenship and democracy. The analysis of the…

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are adequate for analyzing complex scientific and spatial phenomena in geography education. "Google Earth" is a geographic information tool for GIS-based learning. It allows students to engage in the lesson, explore the Earth, explain what they identify and evaluate the implications of what they are…

In authoritative teaching methods, whereby the teacher controls the social interaction and other classroom activities, the actions of many children are often in response to what they perceive to be the teacher's expectations and the requirements of traditional school evaluation practices, such as examinations and tests. In this kind of school…

This paper explores moral sensitivity in Finnish secondary school teachers and students. Moral sensitivity comprises capacities to identify and interpret different kinds of situations in the ethical framework; it is the awareness of how our actions affect other people. In the teaching profession, teachers have to consider different lines of action…