All human decision-making is based on different expectations and assumptions about the future. Futures literacy, consisting of knowledge, emotions, and skills, is an essential competency for the 21st century. Educational steering documents, as the Finnish national curriculum, state that the teachers shall scaffold the students in problem solving,…

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…

Sexuality education is important for children's well-being, peer relationships and safety, yet pre-teenagers and their diverse experiences have remained largely overlooked within the field. In Finland, the national curriculum obliges schools to prevent sexual harassment and homo- and transphobic violence, to provide knowledge on gender diversity,…

In their recently renamed theory, situated expectancy-value theory (SEVT), Eccles and Wigfield (2020) emphasized the importance of situations in influencing individuals' motivational beliefs and academic choices. Adopting a novel approach--network analysis--this study aimed to examine how situations may impact the associations among expectancies,…

This study brings empathy to the centre of literacy practice by investigating children's augmented storying as it was related to empathetic encounters across the human and more-than-human worlds. The study applies sociomaterial theorising that defines empathy as relational and emergent across human-material-spatial-temporal assemblages. The…

The beginning of primary education is an important time to form a good basis for students to develop their digital competence. However, the use of digital technologies is seldom a part of everyday schoolwork during the first years of primary school education. Furthermore, instruction on digital competence is often loosely connected to the…

We investigated how the transition to remote schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic affected the rates of bullying victimization among students in primary and lower secondary education and analyzed how a specific group of students, namely previously victimized students experienced remote schooling. The 2-month school lockdown offered a unique…

The current experience sampling study examined the change in distinct daily positive and negative emotions of 136 students (aged 10-12) participating in the Flourishing Students program. Students completed smartphone-based questionnaires covering emotions, daily activities, and social context at eight semi-random intervals for six days. Using a…

This study examines primary-school children's beliefs about their school performance at the end of their first school year in Finland and feedback that they have received, and furthermore possible gender differences between these beliefs. Children from Grade 1 (N = 544), approximately 7 years old, were interviewed. The data were assessed using…

Frequent exposure to victimization by peers is related to greater psychological problems. It is often assumed that peer victimization is associated with fewer psychological problems in classrooms where defending victims of bullying is common (i.e., a norm). The few studies testing this claim have been cross-sectional and have produced mixed…

This study examines the effects of a role-play-based pedagogical method in Finland on the twenty-first century skills propensity among 6th graders (12-year-olds). The approach entails a simulation of a society in a gamified learning environment as part of their formal education. Structural Equation Modeling was employed to analyze the students' (N…

Through a conversation analytic approach, we investigate the emergence of accounts provided by autistic children in small-group discussions. Nine Finnish children (7-10 years old) attending school with special support participated in a five-month-duration pedagogical practice purposefully designed to enhance children's participation in groups. We…

The agency of primary school students has been studied increasingly in recent years; yet, we know relatively little about student agency in music educational settings or how students experience their participation in joint musical action. This study explores sixth-grade students' experiences of their agency in whole-class playing. Qualitative…

This study investigated pupil experiences and perceptions of two kinds of classroom-based physically active math lessons during the Moving Maths programme in a Finnish primary school context. Qualitative data were gathered in focus group interviews with 16 nine-year-old pupils. Pupils in the group with physically active breaks during math lessons…

Teacher self-efficacy (TSE) is assumed to affect classroom environment, although empirical evidence for this assumption is still elusive. This study examines the relationship between TSE in behaviour management and classroom behavioural climate using a two-level cross-lagged model. TSE in behaviour management was assessed with six-item subscale of…