This article describes a project called "The art based methods in developing transversal competence" funded by The Finnish National Board of Education. The article is based on the hermeneutic phenomenological approach in action research. The project developed learning environments as well as project-based learning with emphasis on the…

This article is about a multidisciplinary R&D project in which a Canadian Learning Through The Arts (LTTA) program was imported to Finland in 2003-2004. Cultural differences in arts education in Finland and Canada are discussed. While Finland has a national school curriculum with all the arts included. Canada relies more on partnerships to…

The introduction of foreign languages into the first three-year cycle of primary school has spurred the need for qualified teachers, and is one of the main discussion points among experts in foreign language teaching. Most of the contemporary studies report that there is a global gap between the supply of qualified teachers of foreign languages to…

Profiles Finnish government employees--10 percent of the Finnish labor force. Describes preservice and inservice training and the effect of such trends as use of technology, transfer of activity from the private to the public sector, and European unification. (SK)

Fiste is a three year Comenius project based on a need for innovative and effective ideas for in-service teacher education. The Fiste project is funded by the European Comenius and deals with the use of new web based educational technologies for teaching in-service teachers in Europe. The Fiste's main task is to create a common in-service…

Based on findings from national and international evaluations, this article discusses the extent to which goals and reality meet in Finnish teacher education, noting that teacher research produces important information that supports teacher education and asserting that teacher education should be anchored not only in research but also in the…

This article describes a professional development project aiming to develop practical approaches for the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) into science education. Altogether, 13 two-day face-to-face seminars and numerous computer network conferences were held during a three-year period. The goals for the project were…

Finnish teachers were asked to describe school reform and changes in the classroom and to discuss how they translated the moral language of administration into their own language as teachers. The study focused on a comprehensive school reform intended to enhance educational quality in a welfare state by providing all children equal opportunities…

An in-service training program, developed for language center teachers in Finland, is discussed. The program was devised with the help of the University of Birmingham, England, and ran for three years with English as the language of instruction. The content of the program was based on the needs expressed by language center teachers and on the…

Reports on the effects of six different primary inservice training courses aimed at teachers' motivation, anxieties, hands-on working skills, and support needs. Results showed that primary teachers felt they needed more continuous support in the area of improving their knowledge and understanding of the subject, especially in chemistry and…

This volume of articles is a report from the national teacher in-service development program in teaching content through a foreign language at the Continuing Education Centre of the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. This publication is mainly in English, because of the basic rationale of the Teaching Content through English (TCE) programme, and…

These proceedings consist of 12 papers examining various strategies used in different countries throughout the world for providing teachers with inservice training in counseling students. Included in the volume are the following papers: "Inservice Training of Graduated Teachers for Guidance and Counselling of Youth in CSSR" by Marta…

The first teacher in-service development program in foreign language content instruction was run by the Continuing Education Centre of the University of Jyvaskyla in 1991-1992 as a contract program for the City of Kokkola. The success of that program led to the development of the present Teaching Content in a Foreign Language (TCFL) Program, which…

This report, written in popular education style and designed to be readable both by adult educators and by the people with whom they work, describes a week-long meeting of the World Assembly of Adult Education. Under the general themes "Where are we?""Where are we going?" and How to do it" the report provides synopses of…