Kirsi Tirri

By Mikko A. Niemelä and Kirsi Tirri

The purpose of this chapter is to explore and analyze the kind of knowledge curriculum integration (CI) required of teachers and how teacher education should be developed to prepare teachers better for CI. The chapter is organized as follows: first, the concept of CI is briefly introduced in the context of the Finnish curriculum for comprehensive schools. Then Lee Shulman’s theory of teachers’ knowledge is discussed and applied to the framework of CI to identify the challenges teachers may face in implementing it. Finally, implications for teacher education are suggested based on the current challenges identified in the Finnish context.

Part of the book: Contemporary Pedagogies in Teacher Education and Development

By Kirsi Tirri

In this chapter, a purposeful teacher is introduced as a goal in teacher education for the twenty-first century. Purposeful teacher is defined as a teacher with moral purposes. Purposeful teachers are ethical professionals who have both freedom and responsibility to make pedagogical decisions in the best interest of their students. Purposeful teaching is discussed in the Finnish context with some examples of the current educational challenges. The purpose profiles of Finnish student teachers are presented to inform the needs for purpose education for future teachers. Different approaches to teach purpose in the teacher education and in schools are introduced with examples from different countries. The didactic approach used in moral education is presented as a case-example to teach purpose in teacher education. The aims of twenty-first century learning call for purposeful teachers who actualize and model lifelong learning in their profession. A growth mindset in learning and ethical skills is introduced as important assets in the professional growth toward purposeful teaching.

Part of the book: Teacher Education in the 21st Century

By Ita Puusepp, Tuisku Tammi, Minna Huotilainen, Teija Kujala, Elina Kuusisto, Sonja Laine and Kirsi Tirri

Mindsets have been identified as an important factor in explaining learning differences among students. Growth mindset students have been shown to recover from mistakes easier than fixed mindset students, and recent neuroscientific research has shown differences in the brain’s event-related potentials to errors in fixed and growth mindset participants. The purpose of this study was to examine and evaluate these differences in the Finnish elementary school context. To achieve this, event-related potentials of ten 8-9-year-old female students, five of them with a fixed mindset and five with a growth mindset, were recorded during a go/no-go task. Differences between the two groups emerged; however, they were different from the results of some previous studies in the field. These findings are discussed in the light of earlier neuroscientific research related to mindsets, including limitations and suggestions for future research in the field.

Part of the book: Behavioral Neuroscience

By Kirsi Tirri and Auli Toom

The purpose of this chapter is to present the key concepts and actors in pedagogy and didactics in the context of institutional teaching. We present a holistic approach to education and view human beings as lifelong learners who need to be educated comprehensively to actualize their full potential. In this chapter we discuss how pedagogy, the science and art of teaching, can promote the educational goals identified in the curriculum. In this chapter we adhere to the Didaktik curriculum tradition in which values and morals are emphasized in guiding the teaching-studying-learning process. This means that pedagogy is moral in nature, and the teacher’s main task is to reflect the values underlying her teaching and the purposes she wants to advance in her teaching. We also discuss the current pedagogical challenges in both basic and higher education in educating students for the twenty-first century.

Part of the book: Pedagogy in Basic and Higher Education