Parenting for a digital future: Finnish imaginaries and realities

Finland has previously been considered to be technologically hostile, advocating for old-style children’s play at the risk of not preparing children for a digital future, argues Kristiina Kumpulainen from the Playful Learning Center in the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Helsinki, Finland. But this is about to change…

Bridging dichotomies between children, nature, and digital technologies

Peer reviewe

Picturing voice: Visual Methods and Children’s Voices in Finnish Education

Peer reviewe

Commentary: Research Methods for the Advancement of Possibility Knowledge and Practice in Science and Engineering Education

Peer reviewe

Researching learning across context : From Dichotomies to a Dialogic Approach

Peer reviewe

A principled, personalised, trusting and child-centric ECEC system in Finland

Peer reviewe

The sociomaterial ecology of emotions in a school's makerspace

In this chapter, we investigate the sociomaterial ecology of emotions in students’ engagement within a school’s makerspace. The notion of sociomaterial ecology accentuates the holistic view of emotions that emerges in the multifaceted relations among people, technologies and the sociocultural environment. The empirical data of our study consist of video recordings of 9–12-year-old students’ interactions in a makerspace called the FUSE Studio in a Finnish primary school. The video data were subjected to a multimodal analysis to investigate the multiple modes and embodiments through which students’ emotions were expressed, shared and negotiated in situ. Our study shows how the students’ engagement in maker activities involved multiple and – at times – tension-laden emotions ranging from excitement, joy, happiness, pride and humour to irritation, frustration and disappointment. We also show how these emotions were entangled with fellow students, teachers, the makerspace, its material artefacts and requirements, as well as the rules and practices of the school. Overall, the display of emotions was found to be strong in situations in which the students experienced challenges. However, the ways in which the students responded to and negotiated these challenges, such as ownership of emotions, gave rise to different opportunities for their engagement and learning. In all, the chapter demonstrates the integral role of emotions in students’ maker activities, pointing out the value of researching and understanding emotions from the perspective of sociomaterial ecology.Peer reviewe

Online collaboration and identity work in a brony fandom : Constructing a dialogic space in a fan translation project

Online collaboration has become a regular practice for many Internet users, reflecting the emergence of new participatory cultures in the virtual world. However, little is yet known about the processes and conditions for online collaboration in informally formed writing spaces and how these create opportunities for participants’ identity work. This ethnographic case study explores how four young adults, fans of the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (bronies), negotiated a dialogic space for their online collaboration on a fan translation project and how this created opportunities for their identity work. After a year of participant observation, we collected interviews, ethnographic diaries and participants’ chats, which were analysed with qualitative content and discourse analysis methods. The findings showed how the Etherpad online writing platform used by the participants facilitated the construction of dialogic space through the visualization of a shared artefact and adjustable features. It was in this dialogic space where the participants negotiated their expert identities which furthered their discussions about writing, translating and technological innovations. The study advances present-day knowledge about online collaboration in affinity groups, engendering the construction of a dialogic space for collaborative writing and participants’ identity work.Peer reviewe

Researching formal and informal learning. From dichotomies to a dialogic notion of learning

This article is situated in a body of research focusing on learning in and out of school, often referred to as studies of formal and informal learning. Drawing on the dialogic approach, the article warns against simplistic and dichotomous definitions of what counts as formal and informal learning. Instead, it calls for the importance of understanding learning as a dialogue between contexts of discourse in which the attributes of "formality" and "informality" intersect. By taking "discourse" as the core unit of analysis, the approach advocated here focuses on examining how students\u27 discourses embedded in diverse contexts are managed, negotiated, and hybridized during their academic work. We shall exemplify our argument with empirical data stemming from a case study on elementary school students\u27 online interaction during creative collaborative writing. In our analysis of the data, we illuminate the hybridization of students\u27 online interaction in which diverse contexts of discourse come into dialogue, producing opportunities and tensions for their engagement, learning, and identity. The article finishes by considering the wider implications of the dialogic approach to understanding learning across contexts. (DIPF/Orig.

A visual narrative inquiry into children’s sense of agency in preschool and first grade

This socioculturally framed case study focuses on children’s sense of agency in educational settings. The study has two objectives: (a) to portray the modalities of children’s sense of agency in preschool and first grade settings, and (b) to identify the sociocultural resources that mediate children’s sense of agency in these two activity contexts. We seek to achieve these objectives through a visual narrative inquiry that entails the children’s (N:5) photo-narration of their sense of agency in preschool and primary school settings. In addition, the children were observed during their photo-documentation, and they were later interviewed about their photos. The results indicate the sociocultural embeddedness of the children’s sense of agency. They also show continuities and discontinuities in the children’s sense of agency across the preschool and first grade settings. The children’s sense of agency was mediated by people and material artefacts, as well as by the rules, objectives, time-structures, and social interactions of the activity contexts. These findings are pivotal in understanding how to support the educational engagement of children and their positive transition to school. The study also shows how visual narrative inquiry offers a potential methodology for listening to children, especially in terms of their sense of agency