Kirsi Tirri

Auli Toom

This book takes a holistic approach to pedagogy and argues that the purpose of education is to educate the student's whole personality including cognitive, social, and moral domains. The four sections and twelve chapters address the current pedagogical challenges in basic and higher education in international contexts. The authors describe the principles and practices through which meaningful education is promoted and enhanced in a variety of ways. The challenges educators face in their profession as well as ways to overcome them are elaborated on both theoretically and empirically. The book allows both researchers, teachers, and educational policy makers to reflect on current developments, challenges, and areas of development in educational institutions when aiming to support student growth and learning.

Current Developments and Challenges

Pedagogy in Basic and Higher Education

Elina Kuusisto

In this volume, we take a holistic approach to education, viewing human beings as lifelong learners who need interaction in all educational domains – cognitive, affective, psychomotor – to actualize their full potential. The chapters are based on presentations given at the 2012 conference of the Finnish Educational Research Association (FERA), whose theme was Interaction in Educational Research. Prof. David Clarke, from the University of Melbourne in Australia and the conference’s keynote speaker, opens our symposium with a discussion of international comparative research in educational interaction by constructing and concealing differences. The chapters that follow, arranged in three parts, deal with interaction in cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. In Part I, theoretical and philosophical approaches to interaction are examined through ontological, epistemological, and semiotic perspectives. Part II presents a series of empirical studies on educational interaction. Together, these show regional differences in cognitive and psychomotor learning outcomes, the importance of academic emotions in learning, cultural aspects in understanding the visual arts, and interactive learning for gifted science students. Part III introduces three programs that promote educational interaction: one enhances teacher education with interdisciplinary integration; another explores the benefits of Finnish-Russian cooperation; and a third uses musical concerts as an interactive tool for special education. All of the chapters contribute to the current research and discussion on learning and interaction. In this field inquiries need to be carried out in different learning domains and in various cultural contexts. In particular, cross-cultural comparisons are useful in validating the findings of empirical studies and testing the culture-dependent and culture-invariant dimensions of educational interaction.

Interaction in Educational Domains

Teachers’ Professional Ethics in Finland is intended for international readers in education who want to learn the theoretical frameworks that guide teachers’ ethics and that help them address concrete challenges in their everyday work.

Theoretical Frameworks and Empirical Research from Finland

Teachers’ Professional Ethics

Selected papers presented at the 8th Nordic Conference on Religious Education in Helsinki, Finland in June 2005.

Kirsi Tirri

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