Developing students' skills in solving mathematical problems and supporting creative mathematical thinking have been important topics of Finnish National Core Curricula 2004 and 2014. To foster these skills, students should be provided with rich, meaningful problem-solving tasks already in primary school. Teachers have a crucial role in equipping…

Understanding chemical models can be challenging for many university students studying chemistry. This study analysed students' understanding of molecular structures using the Lewis structure as a model, and examined what hinders their understanding. We conducted pre- and post-tests to analyse students' conceptions and changes in them. The…

Purpose: This study focuses on courses that prepare applicants for universities' highly competitive entrance examinations in Finland. The analysis clarifies the market-making practices and the construction of this field. Design/Approach/Methods: To understand these processes, we use Caliskan and Callon's five framings for studying marketization as…

This study analysed questionnaire responses from 309 history teachers who come from nine European countries and Israel. The open-ended questions explored their experiences of teaching Sensitive historical Issues (SI) from joint social psychological and history didactics perspectives. First data was analysed hermeneutically, it was then interpreted…

This paper examines the main rationales for and possible implications of the policy of increasing international student numbers in higher education (HE). Drawing on critical discourse analysis, we map key themes emerging from two sets of data--university strategy documents and interviews with staff--collected at eight universities in four national…

This article presents a study aimed at examining the novice student answers in an introductory programming final e-exam to identify misconceptions and types of errors. Our study used the Delphi concept inventory to identify student misconceptions and skill, rule, and knowledge-based errors approach to identify the types of errors made by novices…

The relationship between maternal parenting stress and infant/toddler behavioural development was examined in a longitudinal pilot study. Fifty mothers reported parenting stress via the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form when their infants were eight months old. Parents subsequently rated their children's emotional and behavioural problems with the…

In November 2001 the Finnish Ministry of Education published a working group report on the internationalisation strategy for higher education, and shortly after another report concentrating on the local dimensions and effects of higher education. In the era of internationalisation and globalisation, local concerns seem to be so great that the…

This yearbook is the seventh for the Mathematics Education Research in Finland series and contains ten articles presented at the decennial jubilee colloquium. The first three articles discuss Constructivism both in general and with regard to mathematics education. Analysis is directed to the origins of constructivism, to the learning of…