Finnish Lower Secondary School Research Articles

Social Support, Engagement, and Burnout: A Comparative Analysis of Student Athletes and Regular Students in Finnish Lower Secondary Schools

Social Support, Engagement, and Burnout: A Comparative Analysis of Student Athletes and Regular Students in Finnish Lower Secondary Schools

Privileged and non-privileged agencies – education about, into and with social justice in religious education classrooms

ABSTRACT When social justice education is conducted in religious education (RE) classes, it can take the forms of education about (concepts and facts), into (enhancing commitment), with (negotiating practices) and through (pupil-led action) social justice. The first three approaches were used in seven RE lessons observed in urban Finnish lower secondary schools. The aim was to find out how different approaches to social justice education fit into RE classes and what kind of social justice identities these create. Social justice identities were combinations of the degrees of privilege and agency constructed in the classroom interaction. The analysis shows that non-privileged identities were often referred to as absent and remote. Construction of agency was also often left incomplete. The exceptions were the instances where the teacher intentionally taught with social justice and encouraged the pupils to criticise school practices. They provided a safe but limited way to address powerlessness and promote pupil agency. RE classrooms are well fitted for cultivating informed and concerned citizens but more attention needs to be paid to fostering agency and addressing minoritized identities.

Implementing a Multidisciplinary Curriculum in a Finnish Lower Secondary School – The Perspective of Science and Mathematics

ABSTRACT Finland has recently reformed the national school curriculum, basing it on so-called twenty-first century skills. The curriculum prescribes that schools must organise at least one multidisciplinary learning module per year. In this case study, we investigate the implementation of such a module in secondary school (grade 9) from the perspective of the school headmaster and science and mathematics teachers. The data comprise interviews with the headmaster, teachers, and protocols from collegiate meetings. Despite some gains experienced by teachers concerning cooperation with colleagues, the results reveal challenges connected to diffusely defined learning goals, as well as to the vagueness of goals concerning the role of different subjects in the module. The study shows the importance of offering research-based support and time for shared sensemaking for stakeholders to avoid the problems identified when implementing multidisciplinary teaching.

The Effects of Financial Education: Evidence from Finnish Lower Secondary Schools

We study the effects of a peer‐to‐peer learning environment designed for lower secondary schools that provides financial education using games, videos and other materials provided online. We exploit a quasi‐experimental setting with a control group to evaluate the effects of the learning environment and to distinguish them from the effects of a general economics course. We use two different samples from subsequent years to check the robustness of the results. Our results demonstrate the positive effects of financial education on financial knowledge, but no significant effects are shown in terms of savings behaviour. Further, although we find that girls improve their scores much more than boys after the educational intervention, we also find that this results from general education rather than from the specific intervention. Finally, we find that increased knowledge and enhanced savings behaviour are strongly correlated, supporting the notion that financial education holds promise for changing financial behaviour.

Enhancing students’ sense of belonging through school celebrations: A study in Finnish lower-secondary schools

The notion of school belonging refers to the sense of membership and relatedness individual students feel with the other students and with the teachers at their school. Educational and psychological studies carried out in various contexts have shown that students’ sense of school belonging is associated with several academic and non-academic outcomes, such as students’ motivation to learn, level of academic achievement, and general future orientation. However, one of the major gaps in school belonging studies is the lack of connections between theoretical studies and actual school practice. There is an international need to gain a better understanding of the factors affecting students’ sense of belonging in schools. To deepen our knowledge of how schools can better promote students’ sense of school belonging at the whole-school level, this study focuses on school celebrations. The study consists of a statistical survey questionnaire conducted at three Finnish lower-secondary schools during the 2013–2014 academic year. To analyze the data and test the methodological hypotheses, we used a structural equation model (SEM). The findings of this study show that students’ socio-emotional and educational experiences of school celebrations are positively related to their sense of school belonging. The study also shows the notable role of peer relationships in shaping students’ social and emotional experiences of these events. The findings highlight the need for educational researchers, curriculum makers, and practitioners to pay more attention to the social, emotional, and educational content that school celebrations provide for students.