This exploratory study engaged teams of elementary and middle school students in the collaborative design of digital games. Game design is theoretically examined in this study as a form of ...knowledge-creating learning that is characterized by collaborative efforts to advance a shared object of activity, i.e., the game being designed. Using mixed methods, we examined how students experienced the game design project and how the project fostered connected learning, that is, integration of students’ personal interests and supportive peer relations with their schoolwork, and how their self-assessed digital competences developed.
The digital competences of 98 comprehensive school students across Finland were traced using pre- and post-questionnaires. The post-questionnaire also included validated measures on connected learning. Quantitative methods were used to analyze structured measures, and qualitative methods were used to analyze open-ended measures.
Students experienced game design as an inspiring, challenging activity. Game design engaged student teams in sustained, collaborative efforts to create shared digital artifacts. Their efforts involved a great deal of mutual support and knowledge sharing. Participation also improved students’ self-reported technical and artistic digital competences. The game design project fostered informal, interest-driven, sociodigital participation; inspired learning engagement; and improved schoolwork practices.
The game design project appeared to be a pedagogically meaningful way of engaging students in knowledge-creating learning and of connecting students' formal and informal learning. The project sparked students’ motivation to learn, fostered digital competences, and enriched the learning environment.
•Students experienced game design project as inspiring yet challenging activity.•The game design project enabled students to develop their digital competences.•The project had positive effects on both students' in and out of school activities.•The project assisted in integrating students' formal and informal learning.
Recent research shows an increased concern with well-being at school and potential problems associated with students’ use of socio-digital technologies, i.e., the mobile devices, computers, social ...media, and the Internet. Simultaneously with supporting creative social activities, socio-digital participation may also lead to compulsive and addictive behavioral patterns affecting both general and school-related mental health problems. Using two longitudinal data waves gathered among 1702 (53 % female) early (age 12–14) and 1636 (64 % female) late (age 16–18) Finnish adolescents, we examined cross-lagged paths between excessive internet use, school engagement and burnout, and depressive symptoms. Structural equation modeling revealed reciprocal cross-lagged paths between excessive internet use and school burnout among both adolescent groups: school burnout predicted later excessive internet use and excessive internet use predicted later school burnout. Reciprocal paths between school burnout and depressive symptoms were also found. Girls typically suffered more than boys from depressive symptoms and, in late adolescence, school burnout. Boys, in turn, more typically suffered from excessive internet use. These results show that, among adolescents, excessive internet use can be a cause of school burnout that can later spill over to depressive symptoms.
The present investigation aimed to analyze the collaborative making processes and ways of organizing collaboration processes of five student teams. As a part of regular school work, the seventh-grade ...students were engaged in the use of traditional and digital fabrication technologies for inventing, designing, and making artifacts. To analyze complex, longitudinal collaborative making processes, we developed the visual Making-Process-Rug video analysis method, which enabled tracing intertwined with social-discursive and materially mediated making processes and zoomed in on the teams’ efforts to organize their collaborative processes. The results indicated that four of the five teams were able to take on multifaceted epistemic and fabrication-related challenges and come up with novel co-inventions. The successful teams’ social-discursive and embodied making actions supported each another. These teams dealt with the complexity of invention challenges by spending a great deal of their time in model making and digital experimentation, and their making process progressed iteratively. The development of adequate co-invention and well-organized collaboration processes appeared to be anchored in the team’s shared epistemic object.
The authors analyze and compare three models of innovative knowledge communities: Nonaka and Takeuchi's model of knowledge-creation, Engeström's model of expansive learning, and Bereiter's model of ...knowledge building. Despite basic differences, these models have pertinent features in common: Most fundamentally, they emphasize dynamic processes for transforming prevailing knowledge and practices. Beyond characterizing learning as knowledge acquisition (the acquisition metaphor) and as participation in a social community (the participation metaphor), the authors of this article distinguish a third aspect: learning (and intelligent activity in general) as knowledge creation (the knowledge-creation metaphor). This approach focuses on investigating mediated processes of knowledge creation that have become especially important in a knowledge society.
This exploratory case study examined the kinds of activity that a ‘deskless school” (i.e., flexible physical school spaces) engenders among pupils and teachers. We also considered the meaning and ...significance that pupils and teachers attach to various features of the school, as well as the associated action possibilities. The data were gathered in a new school in the Helsinki capital area that was architecturally designed to have flexible learning spaces (FLS) without traditional classrooms or desks for pupils in an attempt to encourage pedagogical renewal. The participants comprised 17 pupils in one second-grade class and their two teachers. The data were collected by participant observation (15 lessons over 3 weeks) and interviews with the teachers and groups of pupils. Those working in FLS engaged in collaborative learning and teaching activities. Pupils worked constantly in pairs or small groups and studied collaboratively. They also incorporated mobility into their own learning activities and developed agency by choosing how and where they would work. In particular, they appreciated being able to collaborate with their peers and freely choose where and how to study. Teachers approved of the school environment’s facilitation of collaborative learning and highlighted the importance of professional co-planning and other aspects of collaboration. Overall, the design of school environments matters at the pedagogical and professional level. With thoughtful planning, such design can support deeper collaboration among teachers and pupils, foster knowledge sharing, and even develop pupils’ agency. Although the learning space itself does not ensure change, it does enable new kinds of interaction and joint learning activities.
We argue that beyond metaphors, according to which learning is a process of knowledge acquisition by individual learners (a "monological" approach) or participation to social interaction (a ..."dialogical" approach), one should distinguish a "trialogical" approach, i.e., learning as a process of knowledge creation which concentrates on mediated processes where common objects of activity are developed collaboratively. The third metaphor helps us to elicit and understand processes of knowledge advancement that are important in a knowledge society. We review three approaches to knowledge-creation, i.e., Bereiter's knowledge-building, Engestrom's expansive learning, and Nonaka and Takeuchi's organizational knowledge-creation. We give a concise analysis of the trialogical character of the knowledge-creation approach, and illustrate how the third metaphor may be applied at the school level.
The purpose of the present study was to examine primary school students' learning experiences with immersive virtual reality (I-VR). Traditional education practices are failing to inspire new cohorts ...of young people who have grown up with digital culture based on active participation. Given this development, the pedagogic use of I-VR systems represents a promising way of fostering students' learning engagement. This study involved engaging three groups of 10-12-year-old students with an I-VR system as part of an environmental studies project. Data were collected from the students before, during, and after the project via surveys that included structured and open-ended items. Through qualitative content analysis, we analysed the students' experiences, comprehension of virtual reality, assessment of learning impact, and desire for educational I-VRs. In general, we aimed to contribute to more learner-driven development for the technology. The students' experiences were primarily positive and revealed various actualised physical, cognitive, and emotional affordances. Their comprehension of virtual reality was influenced by the devices used, mental immersion, and aspects of the current project. Furthermore, I-VR was experienced as having influenced learning motivation, methods, and content. Finally, the students imagined various I-VRs for learning, most of which included time travel to imaginary spaces.
Current educational reforms concerning curricula and digitalization challenge educators to meet new demands for learning and schooling. What is common for current educational reforms is that they ...tend to emphasize competencies that are not related to the traditional subject-matters and reflect a stance which presents learning as a naturally reflective and collaborative act. It is often assumed that teachers are automatically ready to implement ideas of this kind in practice. In this study, we propose that teachers' theories about knowledge, knowing and learning, particularly their epistemic theories, may be related to how teachers approach these reforms which challenge their previous ways of working and how they perceive their wellbeing at work. To examine these matters, we explored the dynamic interrelations between teachers' epistemic theories, conformity with the novel curricular and digital reforms (ideas behind the new curriculum and digitalization program), perceptions of the school leadership, work engagement and burnout. Participants (Study 1
= 228; Study 2
= 200) were Finnish class teachers and subject-matter teachers. Both data sets were collected before the COVID-19 pandemic. For data analysis, we plotted correlation network figures. Results showed that if teachers' epistemic theory was in harmony with the curricular or digital reforms, there is a positive association with work engagement and negative association with burnout. In sum, results of this provided a hint of the phenomenon suggesting that teachers' epistemic theories may be a factor which buffers teachers to meet the current epistemic and developmental challenges of teachers' profession, and furthermore, serve as grounds for a positive association for teachers to feel adequate and satisfied in their work.
The study examines students’ disciplinary learning in physics and interdisciplinary science learning opportunities that students encounter during a collaborative invention project. Thirteen student ...teams (aged 11 to 12,
N
= 46) designed and constructed a prototype of a technology invention meant to solve one of the challenges students face in daily life. The data was collected from a physics achievement test taken both before and after the invention project and artifacts (student essays and process portfolios) that students constructed during the project. Seven inventions were categorized as physics-intensive and six as non-physics in nature. The change in students’ achievement prior to and after the invention project was rather modest, and the increase was related to the level of physics-intensity of the inventions made during the project. However, the process portfolios revealed various interdisciplinary science learning opportunities and physics learning that could not be identified with the achievement test. Further, the co-occurrence analysis revealed several interdisciplinary learning opportunities that connected physics contents to the interdisciplinary themes. Working with varied materials and technologies and experimenting with them enabled the students to ponder different science topics and perhaps deepen their understanding through creative problem-solving. We conclude that such collaborative invention projects challenge teachers to take an active role in designing invention challenges so as to more explicitly interlink students’ invention processes with science learning. In order to foster students’ science learning opportunities, teachers should intensively evaluate each student-team’s learning throughout the project and use portfolios to reflect on and scaffold their science learning systematically.
The study focuses on examining elementary pupils’ (N = 42, 11–13 years old) reflections on collaborative design processes, team collaboration and their co-inventions. Digital and traditional ...fabrication technologies were used in a 2-year co-invention project containing approximately 16 sessions during year 1 and 11 sessions in year 2. Between the two project periods, the pupils were asked to write a structured essay about their co-invention and design process, and in year 2 they kept journal notes in each team’s design-folder. Each pupil’s structured essay was analyzed with qualitative content analysis that focused on three main aspects: (1) description of the co-invention, (2) progress of the co-invention process and (3) quality of collaboration. Based on the essay analysis, we constructed a “Co-invention Table” with five categories: user, conceptual design, technical design, appearance, and construction. The nature of the 13 pupil-teams’ co-inventions varied greatly, and these co-inventions were divided according to three main functions: (1) improving cleanliness, (2) providing reminders or (3) addressing well-being. The essays provided information on how creative ideas were generated and how critical thinking and evaluation of ideas were crucial in improving ideas for further development. The collaboration was dependent on everyone’s active and equal participation into work and the importance of an adequate division of the labor was highlighted.
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