Research findings in the Finnish core curriculum, issues related to GID

Well, we have ended up to my last blog writing for now. In the previous blog post I gave a sneak peak to my doctoral research results. There are interesting findings in many perspective. Finlands core curriculum is rather versatile in information literacy issues. The problem will not be in curriculum, when we are working on teaching our students to be information savvy. The challenge we face is in teachers’ skills and use of tools; how to enhance the learning of students information literacy skills. This has been a challenge for a long time. And what are the tools?

The studied core curriculum presents issues, which function as preliminary phases before entering the information searching part. There is for example the inquiring mind. This idea is very similar with Guided Inquiry Design. The text in general changed from the 2004 core curriculum to 2014. The earlier often stated, that ‘the student will learn’ and ‘the student is taught’. The new 2014 core curriculum states ‘the student is encouraged’ and ‘the student is supported’, and so forth. This is pointing to a more student centred learning approach. The encouragement and supporting the students to find their own strengths and best learning styles is also about learning to learn.

The least interesting issue in 2014 core curriculum results at the moment is the part of information searching and critical thinking. These themes came out strong in the interviews. But what was emphasised in the core curriculum but not in the interviews was working with the found information. In my opinion the tools in GID could be extremely useful also in the context of the Finnish core curriculum.

The teachers in my study say, that the students have difficulty expressing their doings and thoughts in writing; especially when they would need to reflect on their learning. The tools in GID provides help in the construction of learning and making the progress more concrete and easier to follow for the student. Issues like reviewing, summarising, combining and constructing information is expected in the core curriculum. Students very often forget working with the information, since they are used to making homework like small tasks: finding facts and listing them on a worksheet, presentation or paper. As we know, this is also an issue of how to give and formulate the given assignment. It is also challenging for the students to learn a new way of working.

Learning to use the inquiry logs and journal is crucial in making the leanring concrete and in keeping the collected sources organised. These are magnificent tools for teachers to use. The recording of students learning and the tools to support the learning process are the core. When I tested GID in a small-scale project, the teachings during that process were remembered afterwards.

The assessment – the new ideology of continuous assessment by the teachers could be greatly benefitted by these tools as well. With the tools the teacher will know how the assignment result was reached during the process – not to mention to get the understanding of moments of possible interventions if needed during the process.

This was just a quick glimpse to the issues of how to combine GID and the Finnish core curriculum. The issue is as important as it is interesting. During 2017 I have also been involved in the research of false media, or fake news, whichever expression we want to use. Me and two other researchers have studied the use of sources of the most popular Finnish false media. We have with the same crew also written a book called Valheen jäljillä (On the track of lies) and it will be published in the beginning of 2018 (only in Finnish).

Seems like there are powers in the world at the moment, which try to divide people in case after case. Whether it is politics, sports, nutrition, or society. Even social media kind of got out of hands, as former Facebook manager Palihapitiya stated just now in December 2017. Our students have to reach a high enough level of general knowledge, reading skills, critical thinking skills and research skills to be able to come to a decision in whichever issue they face. In my mind, a lot of these issues could be set to a better track by implementing GID ideology.

I will be coming to Denver in the beginning of February 2018 for ALISE conference. In case one of you readers will be there too, please contact me! It would be very nice to exchange ideas! In case you are around, let me know: anu (at) anuojaranta (dot) com

Wishing all of you warm seasons greetings and a very happy new year!

 

GID greetings,

Anu

 

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