Globally, there is a political and social consensus that teacher education is a key priority for the 21 st century. However, studies have so far paid little attention to a crucial issue, namely leadership in teacher education. This chapter contributes to discussion on transforming teacher education practices by focusing on leadership practices in a particular Finnish teacher education department. Adopting a subject-centered sociocultural approach, we elaborate the main challenges, insights, and lessons learned, as perceived by the four leaders of the department, in efforts to move towards more innovative and collaborative practices. We argue that teacher education leaders
In this article we examine first-year student teachers' possibilities to become interested in professional issues in teacher education. We study the phenomenon of becoming interested among first-year student teachers via three different kinds of data. We analysed our data through John Dewey's definition of interest, where a person has an interest if s/he is actively keen on some object that has personal meaning for her/him. According to our data, student teachers adopt an object of interest that teacher educators provide. Learners found it difficult to find the objects of interests by themselves, and it was exceptional for them to find personal meaning and an active state of interest. This is problematic because studying may be performanceoriented without the conditions of interest conceptualised by Dewey. Through our study we also discuss a theoretical approach which would help understand the mechanism behind becoming interested.
In Finland, history is taught in comprehensive schools at both primary and secondary levels. In primary schools, teachers are qualified class teachers who study one or two history courses during their teacher education. The amount of history taught in teacher education is limited, but student class teachers have studied history while at comprehensive school and general upper secondary school, and they have lived experience of historical cultures as members of different groups and communities. Thus, they have conceptions of what history teaching in school is, and what it should be. In this article, student class teachers’ conceptions of teaching history were examined using data (n=92) consisting of students’ writings at the beginning of their history studies. A phenomenographic approach was used to identify and characterize different conceptions. The results showed that student class teachers considered understanding of the present to be the most important objective in school history. Based on their own school experiences, they highlighted the significance of the big picture instead of learning scattered facts and details. Students also stressed the importance of the motivation to study history. Their conceptions are similar to the curriculum objectives for history teaching in primary school.
In Finland, the trend towards a new kind of history teaching emphasizing the understanding of historical knowledge and historical thinking skills began in the mid-1990s, when history teaching objectives were defined much more broadly in the curriculum than previously. In this article, we examine how, in over twenty years since the changes in curriculum objectives were made, general upper secondary school teachers have come to value the curriculum objectives of history teaching and how these have impacted on their teaching. The data for this article were collected by a semi-structured survey in 2016. Using counts, percentages, means, standard deviations and medians, a descriptive exploration was made of history teachers' perceptions of the essential objectives in teaching history and how often they were put into practice in related student activities. To investigate the balance between the objectives the teachers emphasized as the most essential and the teaching methods they actually used, we applied the Kruskal–Wallis test and the Friedman test. According to the results, what the teachers considered essential for teaching history did not correlate with their teaching methods. In addition, according to the results, this state of affairs is still undergoing change; old traditions and new objectives of history teaching are creating tensions. The results were interpreted in the light of the cultural viewpoints of Finnish teaching, the position of matriculation examinations in Finnish general upper secondary schools and the challenges the curriculum is setting for history teachers.
Exercise capacity and hemodynamic parameters were measured in ten patients with a previously unpublished variant of hemoglobin (Hb-Linköping) and in ten age- and sex-matched controls. Bicycle ergometer test was almost maximal and the indices of working capacity and cardiac tolerance were similar in patients and controls. The hemoglobin dissociation curve was shifted to the left at rest and after exercise the shift to right was half of the corresponding shift in controls. Lactate accumulation during exercise was similar in patients and controls, also the elimination rate seems identical, but requires further studies. Hydrogen ion production in the patients during exercise was more marked than in the controls. If this is a sign of altered energy metabolism remains to be ascertained in future studies. In acute short-term exercise the patients with abnormally high hemoglobin oxygen affinity seem to have similar tolerance and cardiovascular load. Aberrant metabolism and adaptation to relative hypoxia in spite of erythrocytosis may have long-term effects that require long-term follow-up of these patients.
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