Institute for Educational Research

Institute for Educational Research - Finland

Institute for Educational Research - Finland

Source: Institute for Educational Research

Overview
Research Teams

Overview

The Institute for Educational Research (IER) is a separate institute of the University of Jyväskylä, itself an establishment with long educational traditions. It is a centre for educational research and evaluation in Finland. The IER's strongest area is national and international assessment and evaluation of education.

The IER is investigating, assessing and developing the Finnish educational system and school culture. Its research findings and its experts are a much-exploited resource in educational reforms covering the whole of the educational system from pre-school to higher education and to the links between vocational and academic education and working life.

The IER produces critical scientific knowledge about education and its foundations, but simultaneously it also participates, together with the Ministry of Education and the National Board of Education, decision-makers and teachers, in educational development work. The challenge is to combine science and theory for the benefit of educational practice and the individual learner.

The activities of the IER are multidisciplinary in nature. A spectrum of different viewpoints enriches educational research and creates a many-sided picture of education as a whole. The IER makes a wide-ranging contribution to the development of new scientific innovations and research methods.

Society and culture are changing constantly. An understanding of such change is best reached through research, open collaboration and discussion. The IER has a widespread network of collaborative links with both national and international partners. Its national partners include the Ministry of Education, the National Board of Education, the Academy of Finland, many institutions and enterprises in working life, educational establishments and teachers.

The IER has partners on all continents and in most countries of the world. Collaboration and researcher exchange stem from a broad range of different interests and methodological approaches all marked by an interdisciplinary ambition.

The IER's most central field of international collaboration is educational evaluation. Extensive international comparative studies generate knowledge about how Finnish education fares in the world and about the direction in which school should be developed. At the same time Finnish educational research is being exploited internationally. The expertise offered by the IER has been in great demand, for example in solving educational problems facing both the most industrialized and developing countries.

On the international level the IER collaborates most extensively with the IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement), the OECD and the EU. In the last few years this collaboration has broadened from comparisons of learning outcomes to many-sided descriptive and evaluative studies of different countries' educational systems and educational cultures. Another important form of collaboration are international developmental and information dissemination activities. The IER is both the international and the national coordinator of several international projects.

Apart from their collaborative research engagements, IER researchers appear as active expert contributors in various international contexts and organize international meetings and seminars. The IER suppports researchers' mobility by offering facilities for the use of foreign scholars.

Research Teams

Research Team on Quality of Education and Evaluation of Educational Quality

At both national and international level, evaluation/assessment has become an increasingly important tool for developing and monitoring education. Accordingly, evaluation of the quality of education and theoretical and empirical analyses of the factors determining quality are becoming the core of evaluation research. The research team focuses particularly on assessment studies of reading, mathematical and scientific literacy and social comptence on the various levels of the educational system, from initial education to adult education. The most central interest of the study are learning outcomes, but at the same time learning outcomes are defined more broadly than the traditional starting point. A further object of the study are identifying and describing the links and causal mechanisms involved in learning. The work of the research team is organised around the solid and multidisciplinary expertise consciously built by IER in the field of evaluation research. An essential aspect of this expertise are vigorouse international cooperation and close collaboration with both educational establishments and educational authorities. International collaborative studies are a powerful learning environment for broadening and deepening the theory and methodology of and practical competencies in evaluation research.

Vocational Education and the Changes in Working Life

The projects of the research team focus on various aspects of the relationship between upper secondary and tertiary vocational education on the one hand and on international, national and regional changes in working life on the other. Within the tripartite relationship between the student/citizen, education and working life, the educational organisations must respond to local, regional and national qualification needs in order to support their students' capacity to take an active part in changing working life and society. The individual research projects focus on employment among these with upper secondary and tertiary education gualifications, the functioning of the educational system as a whole, the relationship between vocational and general education, and the qualifications and competencies produced by education.

Research Team on Workplace Learning

School-based education and training out of touch with the practices of working life is incapable of meeting individuals' employment needs or the demands for change expressed by working life in the best possible way. Workplace learning is today an important factor both in educational and social policy. Learning at work and to work is based on the assumption that students will learn in teams and communities of experienced professionals, which will enable them to use and apply their knowledge and skills in authentic situations and environments. The theoretical frameworks of the team's studies conceptualise the pedagogy of workplace learning and work, the culture of project work, workplace supervision, the processes through which people become employable and find actual employment, and human capital.

The methodological choices of the research team are influenced by approaches to the problems involved in workplace learning from the learners' perspective on the one hand and from the systems-level perspective of investment on the other. The research programme will analyse

what enterprises are like as learning environments as assessed by students, teachers, workplace trainers and employers;
what factors in workplace learning foster employability and promote employment prospects;
how workplace trainers supervise students;
how far the different parties involved see workplace learning as an investment; and
what project work is like as a method of workplace learning

The identity of the research team will be shaped by its approach, linking local and national research projects with international research and developmental collaboration. The research team will contribute to attempts to find out how local organisation of developmental and training collaboration affects the structure of occupations and fields of competence. The main international partners will be the International Vocational Education and Training Association (IVETA), EERA's Network of Research on Vocational Education and Training (VETNET), UNESCO-UNEVOC, Research Forum WIFO in Germany, the European Centre of the Development on Vocational Training (CEDEFOP) and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Little is know which value the young people give to their learning through work. The topics of the research team are focusing on untraditional crossing points: combining formal and informal learning (at school and in work). The projects making up the research programme will function as the core of support services, based on electronic networking, for research and developmental collaboration.

Research Team on Transgressive Knowing at University and in Working Life

The aim of the research team is to determine the nature of the change in conceptions, belief systems or cultural understanding involved in learning. Different theoretical and methodological questions constitute a dialogue that makes possible, simultaneously, the preservation of different viewpoints and their analysis as an aspect of the whole formed by the research team. Uncovering - at least partially - the transgressions entailed by knowledge leads to a fuller grasp of the nature of learning, the task of the teacher, and the various approaches adopted in the pedagogy of higher education and of art. The team also serves the training of new researchers and contributes to current methodological discussion.

Higher Education Studies HIEST Research Team

The subject of the studies carried out by the HIEST Research Team are Finnish universities and AMK (vocational higher education) institutions and the functioning of the whole higher education system as a part of Finnish society. Its research projects approach the subject both from multidisciplinary perspectives and by applying different methods.

The shared activities of the research team are organised on the basis of a research programme that is rewritten every three years. The research topic that will unite the team in 2000-2002 is MASSIFICATION AND MARKETISATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION. This shared theme will be elaborated in the context of each researcher's own projects.

The HIEST Research Team is a project organisation where each researcher is responsible for their own research projects. Collaborative projects bringing together several researchers are also quickly organised whenever needed. The research team assembles regularly in a research seminar, "integration afternoon", to discuss both topical questions and themes involved in international research. Outside speakers may also be asked to participate. The research team also bears the main responsibility for organising in Finland, every three years, a NATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON HIGHER EDUCATION STUDIES.

Research Team on the School Community and the Teaching Profession

Looser external supervision enables schools to interpret the functions of school in a variety of ways. Schools are expected to develop their curricula and teaching and engage in self-evaluation, teachers to collaborate with each other to develop the school as a whole. Teachers are expected to display more initiative and expertise in education and teaching and wide-ranging professional skills. In this new situation it is increasingly important to support and study the school community and the teaching profession. The research team conducts mainly action and developmental research of a kind that yields concrete benefits to all participants. A central task is supporting teachers' professional development. The study analyses school-level activities, teaching, teachers' duties at school and the curriculum and develops teacher training and methods for assessing the school community and the work of school. The results will benefit teachers, schools, teacher trainers and national-level decisionmakers.

Research Team on the Learning and the Development of Expertise in the Interaction Between Higher Education and Working Life

The relationship between higher education institutions and their environment has changed remarkably during the last two decades. Massification and diversification of the higher education system, novel modes of knowledge production, new requirements and the increasing complexity of professional work and the establishment of the polytechnics in Finland have challenged higher education institutes to develop new kind of relationships with working life and new kinds of pedagogy and educational practices. The purpose of this research project is to examine co-operation and interaction between higher education and working life from four different perspectives:

from the viewpoint of student learning and the development of expertise,
from the viewpoint of educational institutes and staff,
from the viewpoint of working life organisations and employers, and
from the viewpoint of society and the system of education.

The project will be carried out using three complementary strategies:

by examining different pedagogical and institutional approaches to connecting education and work, such as working life oriented project-based learning, virtual university courses for the personnel of a private company, "contextualised" education that is specifically tailored for the needs of working life, and open university at the service of working life,
by examining the differences and similarities between learning at work and learning in formal education, and
by conducting cross-national comparisons and a theoretical analysis on the changing relationships between higher education, working life and society.

The overall aim of the study is to produce knowledge for the pedagogical development of work-based learning in higher education and for promoting co-operation between higher education and working life.

Research Team on ICT in Learning and Working Environments

Collaboration and Authenticity in Open Technologically Enriched Learning Contexts (CATO)

The aim of the study

The aim of the study is to promote integration of new information technology in open, authentic and collaborative learning contexts to enhance the quality of learning and teaching through understanding changing relations between individuals, artefacts and social groups. The study has a strong educational and computer science orientation. It assumes that learning is enriched by new information and communication technology; it is responsive to changes in the knowledge production; it is based on a constructivist view of learning, mediated by collaboration, and anchored in authentic learning and assessment activities in both formal and informal learning contexts.

Methodological perspectives

From the methodological perspective, the study applies both qualitative and quantitative approaches and research strategies from experimental to ethnographic field studies and from co-operative action research to methodological basic research and developments.

Web literacy - Empowering Individuals in the Learning Society (WEBLI)

The study examines how people, both as individuals and as communities, are facing the new culture of literacy and particularly of information networks. The focus of the research is on transformations of literacy - texts, readers and strategies in technology-supported and virtual contexts. The study intends to enhance the quality of literacy learning and teaching through understanding changing media culture. The study is based on socio-constructivist and socio-cultural views of literacy learning and it is anchored in authentic, contextual and functional literacy activities within open, technologically enriched learning and living environments. It serves educational purposes in order to enhance literacy instruction as well as to empower individuals for life-long learning, working and active citizenship.

Research Team on the Methods and Data Management in the Educational Research

On the general level, main tasks of the research group is to deepen the knowledge of the statistical methods used in the educational research and increase opportunities to develop methodological skills in the Institute for Educational Research and, in addition, maintain hardware and software as well as the modern computer technology and increase the methodological expertise. Along with the personal research projects, the members of the group are responsible of planing and implementing of research projects in the institute together with the other researchers, to perform statistical analysis and data processing for research projects and to support the use of micro computers, providing equipment, programs and instructions.

In the methodological research, the focus of the method moves from the use of a method to develop new methods and thus a methodological research can be done on different levels. The knowledge and expertise gained from these different levels can be as valuable for the institute. Models like path models and multilevel models, in which there are very fast development at the moment, needs a lot of resources only to maintain the international level of knowledge and skills, to be able to use new applications. A special emphasis is given to following research projects:

Sampling methods in the school sampling
Multilevel models of school data
Path models with intra-cluster correlation
Item analysis in the multiple choice tests

Item theories are especially connected with the Rasch model analysis and the evaluation of the usefulness of generalizability theory in various educational studies. Sampling theories and their practical use in school research is a common subject for all researchers in the group. All methodological research projects are working more or less with problems resulted of the sampling design such as the intra-cluster correlation, the homogeneity/ heterogeneity of a sample and the sampling error etc.

In the measurement of the educational achievement, the instruments and the precise use of methods are of the most importance in planing a sampling study. In the international projects the precision of the measurement has increased in all areas from study to study. The full understanding of this implies that the skills of using the sampling and analysing methods are on the international level. The deep knowledge about these methods is also one strength of the institute. The research projects, mentioned earlier, have been chosen of the most important subsectors of this strength.

In addition to the methodological research and to the research related activities, the research group is responsible for other tasks, which are mainly joined to the computer technology. Most important of these tasks are:

The calculating, advising and guiding projects in statistical problems
Hardware and software procurement and services including net- connections
Intranet and information technology applications
Services outside institute, according to a separate agreement

The members of the research group are mainly permanent workers of the university. This is because there are activities, which are important for the institute on the long run. Along with these tasks, the research activities are mainly based on the individual working plans and interests.

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