Participation in national curriculum reform - coherence from complexity

National curriculum reform is a complex negotiation point of how basic education should be practiced and what role it should take in society. The question of participation in this process is central to creating a coherent, responsible, and implementable curriculum—but still left for little investigation in the national level reforms. Our goal was to answer, how can participation in curriculum reform create coherent system-wide change in a complex education system? In this study, we approach the participative national Finnish Core Curriculum Reform 2014, through interviews of the reform steering group who acted as central stakeholders in the reform. We practiced a thinking with theory -oriented analysis and utilized Michel Callon’s four moments of translation as a theoretical framework to examine the interviews. Results illustrate how the moment of interessement leads to enrolment —how participation adds complexity to reforms but also offers an opportunity to build more coherent and lasting system-wide change from it during the processes of learning with and from each other. The results also provide us with a practical view on why coherent, lasting change cannot be authoritatively forced in a system, such as the education system, but is by its nature networked, collaborative and shared.Peer reviewe

Development of Students’ Social Support Profiles and Their Association With Students’ Study Wellbeing

Effective social support from teachers, peers, and guardians is a key to promoting students’ study wellbeing at school. However, little longitudinal research has examined the implications of distinctive combinations of social support for students’ study wellbeing. To address this limitation, we measured multiple dimensions of school-related social support (teacher, peer, and guardian support), study engagement, and study-related burnout in a sample of 1,545 Finnish lower secondary school students in Grades 7, 8, and 9 (age 13, girls 51%). Latent transition analyses identified a six-profile solution for each wave of data and revealed substantial inequality in perceived social support. First, we found four profiles where social support from all three sources was experienced either on high, moderate, low, or very low level labeled as strong support (33%), moderate support (43%), low support (13%), and exceptionally low support (3%), respectively. In addition, two “mixed profiles” were found, where a low level of social support from one source was combined with moderate levels of social support from two other sources. These two profiles were labeled as adult support (5%) and low teacher support (3%) profiles. The social support profiles differed from each other in terms of study engagement and study-related burnout, suggesting that social support from specific sources has a somewhat different effect on features of students’ study wellbeing. Moreover, the results showed that the experiences of school-related social support and study wellbeing are prone to change, highlighting the importance of each source of support throughout the students’ school path.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Curriculum making: A conceptual framing

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Ylipainon ja elintapojen yhteys selittyy osittain nuoren sosioekonomisilla tekijöillä

Tuoreessa tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin nuorten terveyttä, hyvinvointia ja terveyskäyttäytymistä kuvaavien tekijöiden, perhetaustan ja ylipainon yhteyksiä

The role of empathy between peers in upper secondary students’ study engagement and burnout

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