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PHENOMENON-BASED TEACHER EDUCATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF JYVÄSKYLÄ (FINLAND): PERCEPTIONS ON CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION
A Dissertation
by
BILLY JACKSON
Submitted to the Doctoral Program
of American College of Education
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION
June 2017
PHENOMENON-BASED TEACHER EDUCATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF JYVÄSKYLÄ (FINLAND): PERCEPTIONS ON CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION
A Dissertation
by
BILLY JACKSON
Approved by:
Dissertation Chair: Dr. Tiffany Hamlett
Committee: Dr. Julius Wynn
Dr. Marsha Phelps
Program Chair: Dr. Crystal Neumann
Academic Dean: Dr. Ronald P. Kern
Copyright © 2017
Billy Jackson
ABSTRACT
This qualitative study examined instructors, professors, and curriculum leaders’ perceptions of phenomenon-based education curriculum implementation at the University of Jyväskylä (JYU; Finland). Data was collected through a series of one-hour, semistructured interviews with nine research participants, all staff members at the JYU. That data was then sorted and analyzed according to the research questions: (a) What are the shared experiences of JYU professors in implementation of phenomenon-based education courses? (b) What shared challenges are JYU professors experiencing in implementation of phenomenon-based education courses?
The study revealed generally positive perceptions of phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum implementation with research participants mentioning increased student and staff collaboration, improved student engagement and motivation, and an overall more holistic teacher education program. Challenges included a difficult first year, with staff and students experiencing confusion in classroom roles, along with an overwhelming workload. Despite these challenges, all nine staff research participants perceived the new phenomenon-based curriculum as an improvement from the former content-based curriculum.
DEDICATION
This dissertation is dedicated to my newborn son, Landon, and my wife, Van. Landon, in the most difficult times of this journey, I just pictured holding you at graduation and that was all the motivation necessary needed to move forward. I hope you grow up proud to have me as father and this doctoral degree makes it clear that anything truly is possible for your future. Your grandparents (my parents) worked hard with the hope that I would have opportunities that they only dreamed of and I hope to bestow the same on you, my dear son.
Van; there is no way I could have done this without you. You have given me a family, a loving home, and the will to always strive to be the best person I can possibly be. I love you more than all the words in this dissertation could ever formulate.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A doctoral degree was never something that seemed possible based on my background and would not have been possible without the support and guidance of my family. First, I want to thank my wife, Van, for ensuring the lows did not last and that I always continued to move forward. Your constant love and nurturing reminded me every day that this journey was about so much more than just me. To my mother and father, Craig and Anita Jackson, I could not have asked for more encouragement to pursue higher education from two parents that did not attend college themselves and had four other mouths to feed. Thank you to my Grandma and Grandpa Campbell for mercilessly ensuring that I studied my spelling word in first grade until mastery and for always being there for me when needed most. Thank you to my sisters, Alisha, Trista, and Tara, for ensuring that I never starved during the most difficult parts of my academic career. Thank you to my brother, Craig, and cousin, Josh, for being great academic role models. Finally, thank you Dennis, for editing some of my early, atrocious essays.
The American College of Education for offering an outstanding program that was affordable, even on a young teacher’s salary. A special thanks to my Dissertation Chair, Dr. Hamlett, for patience and invaluable guidance, Dr. Neumann for connecting me with the JYU, and my dissertation committee members Dr. Wynn and Dr. Phelps. To the JYU for allowing me to research their innovative curriculum, and especially Dr. Rautiainen and Moilanen for making me feel at home when I visited the university.
My greatest teachers, Mr. Nanni and Mr. Dummer (R.I.P.), for helping me see my potential. Coach Bergeron and McGuire for showing me that the hard work and sacrifice that leads to success on the mat mirrors real life. Thank you, Dr. Dillon (Wayne State University) for causally replying to my plans for a second master’s degree with “Why not just get PhD?” Mr. Clinkscale, thank you for providing me an amazing opportunity as an educator. Thank you, Barbara Babich for initiating my international curiosity, and thank you to the rest of my Berkshire family for providing a workplace full of upstanding professionals and great people.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES xi
LIST OF FIGURES xii
CHAPTER
1. INTRODUCTION 13
Background of the Study 13
Statement of the Problem 14
Purpose of the Study 16
Research Questions 16
Conceptual Framework 16
Nature of the Study 17
Definitions of Terms 18
Limitations 18
Scope and Delimitations 19
Assumptions 19
Significance of the Study 19
Chapter Summary 20
CHAPTER
2. LITERATURE REVIEW 21
Introduction 21
Educational Science and Philosophies 22
Related Learning Theories 26
Teacher Education in Finland/University of Jyväskylä 31
Recent History of University of Jyväskylä’s Teacher Education Curriculum 32
Previous Case Studies Relevant to Phenomenon-Based Education 39
Conclusion 41
Chapter Summary 43
CHAPTER
3. RESEARCH METHOD 44
Introduction 44
Research Design 45
Role of the Researcher 46
Instrumentation 46
Sample/Population Selection 47
Data Collection Procedures 48
Data Analysis 50
Credibility and Dependability 51
Ethical Concerns 52
Chapter Summary 53
CHAPTER
4. DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 54
Introduction 54
Description of the Population 54
Data Analysis Procedures 55
Interview Themes 57
Evidence of Credibility and Dependability 66
Chapter Summary 68
CHAPTER
5. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 69
Introduction 69
Summary of the Findings 69
Discussion of the Findings 72
Limitations of the Study 75
Recommendations 76
Implications 78
Conclusions and Reflections 79
REFERENCES 81
APPENDICES 87
Appendix
A. Research Participant Recruitment Letter 88
B. Informed Consent Agreement 90
C. Semistructured Interview Template 94
LIST OF TABLES
TABLE
1. University of Jyväskylä Staff Research Participants 55
2. Natural Emerging Themes From Research Participant Interviews 57
LIST OF FIGURES
FIGURE
1. Bloom’s taxonomy 23
2. Tynjälä integrated pedagogy model 24
3. University of Jyväskylä 2007 teacher education course requirements 33
4. 2014 JYU teacher education degree program 35
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Renowned educational philosopher John Dewey (1938) once said that to make education meaningful problems must be investigated in the “constitution of individual experience” (p. 8). Nearly a century later, the University of Jyväskylä (JYU) in central Finland furthers this mindset in their unique, phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum. The JYU is one of many educational institutions in Finland that are implementing phenomenon-based learning curriculum/courses, but among the first teacher education departments.
Finland’s 2016 National Core Curriculum states that all secondary schools should implement at least one phenomenon-based education course at all grade levels (Halinen, 2016). Phenomenon-based education is the student-centered study of complex phenomena like the European Union and global warming from various learning perspectives and alternative interdisciplinary scientific theories. Finnish leaders believe phenomenon-based education courses will increase students’ understanding of cross-curricular competencies, prepare students to solve multifaceted 21st-century societal and vocational challenges, and promote a holistic and inclusive learning environment, which will extend these same qualities to Finnish society as a whole (Halinen, 2016).
Background of the Study
The need for curricular reform was necessitated by the impact of globalization and future sustainability challenges that have arisen since the beginning of the 2000s (Halinen, 2016). Since skills needed in societal and vocational life now necessitate increased collaboration and transversal skills, subsequently, instructional and scholastic practices followed suit (Halinen, 2016). While the National Core Curriculum encourages at least one phenomenon-based education course, it is up to local education leaders to determine best methods for their specific schools, as Finland’s education system is heavily decentralized (Kuusilehto-Awale & Lahtero, 2014).
At the JYU, phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum was implemented in 2014 and is used as a research-based approach to prepare students for the future complexities encountered at various grade levels as a professional educator. An inquiry and subsequent research-oriented approach is thought to provide students conceptual answers to pressing pedagogical problems and at the same time provide students practical experiential knowledge in a problem-solving framework (Moilanen, 2015).
Phenomenon-based education contains components of previous pedagogical methods like problem-based learning, experiential learning, and multidisciplinary education, but with a focus on combining multiple perspectives to explain real-life phenomena, allows a more student-defined learning process, and includes a research-oriented component (Fox, Finer, Khourey-Bowers, & Heaphy, 2016; Malnarich & Lardner, 2003; Repko, 2008). Students begin by observing courses to determine a large phenomenon to study with the instructor’s counsel. Students then collaborate in small groups to review prevailing research and examine various philosophical perspectives, and finally create a cumulative product demonstrating their learning of the phenomenon. Further, a central premise of phenomenon-based education is that real-life situations are rarely simple or fully understood from just a textual perspective (Moilanen, 2015).
Statement of the Problem
Finland’s focus on phenomenon-based education is a unique curricular reform method. There has been prior research on similar curricular pedagogical approaches like integrative, multidisciplinary/cross-curricular, and interdisciplinary education (Fox et al., 2016; Malnarich & Lardner, 2003; Repko, 2008). Research on phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum is currently nonexistent outside of prior studies by the JYU, but there have been individual phenomenon-based courses studied, which show an increased presence of advanced student problem solving (Francis, Breland, Østergaard, Lieblein, & Morse, 2012). This study will be the first vigorous study of a phenomenon-based teacher education university curriculum. This study seeks to shed light on the intricacies of phenomenon-based education, particularly the curriculum integration aspect, based on perspectives of professors and curriculum leaders at the JYU, who may conceivably be credited with turning textual theories into real-life pedagogy.
Concluding the first full year of implementation in 2015, JYU professor Pennti Moilanen published entry-level experiential research detailing the purpose for reforms and his experiences of the university’s development of phenomenon-based education curriculum. Moilanen’s research provided a summary of JYU’s move from a traditional content-heavy approach to a phenomenon-based curriculum, but his close connection to the program limited the objectivity of the data he collected. Upon reflecting on the study, Moilanen (2015) admitted his experiential anecdotes could contain both researcher and institutional bias and were insufficiently robust because other curriculum implementation leaders and instructors’ experiences were omitted. Phenomenological research combining Moilanen’s experience with additional professors and curriculum leaders perceptions will provide a more robust and comprehensive investigation of JYU’s phenomenon-based education curriculum. In addition, a researcher from a foreign university will remove fears of potential researcher and institutional bias. This study will be informative to the JYU for future reflection and decision making while contributing to a variety of academic institutions, particularly university teacher education departments that might deem it suitable for consideration in their respective curricular reform processes.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine shared experiences of instructors and curriculum leaders in the implementation of phenomenon-based education courses in the college of teacher education at the JYU (Finland). Through this study, the researcher sought to define JYU’s phenomenon-based education curriculum based on the experiences of educators directly immersed in implementation, consequently providing experiential knowledge for future deliberation to institutional leaders in the greater global education and scholarly community.
Research Questions
To achieve the goals of the purpose statement, two research questions were formulated.
1. What are the shared experiences of University of Jyväskylä professors in implementation of phenomenon-based education courses?
2. What shared challenges are University of Jyväskylä professors experiencing in implementation of phenomenon-based education courses?
Conceptual Framework
The research for this experiment will follow a social constructivist framework. Social constructivist research participants construct or define a phenomenon by sharing their understandings of a situation or lived experience. In social constructivism, the researcher’s role is to interpret meaning from the participants shared experiences on the subject. This constructivist worldview manifests into phenomenological research when participants describe their experiences in an interview (Creswell, 2013).
Phenomenological research seeks to provide a detailed and comprehensive description of a participant’s personal experiences (Kafle, 2013). Phenomenology initiates from the premise that knowledge and understandings are naturally embedded in the natural world that makes up our daily lives. However, this knowledge and understanding is not necessarily quantifiable or easily expressed statistically (Walters, 1995). The phenomenological approach used in this research attempts to gain shared anecdotal knowledge and understanding from the research participants’ daily lives. It is reasonable to expect a research population made up of professors and other education leaders at the JYU with direct experience of the phenomenon being studied (phenomenon-based education curriculum implementation) to provide extensive and intricate descriptions of their lived experiences in one-hour semistructured interviews.
Nature of the Study
This is a basic study with the researcher serving a nonobtrusive role. Specifically, this research will add to the existing body of published research on phenomenon-based education curriculum, which is currently almost nonexistent. The researcher hopes to gather information by interviewing participants that have experiential knowledge of phenomenon-based education curriculum, while avoiding having any impact on the truths of their shared experiences.
Under the premise that phenomenological research participants should be chosen based on who has direct experience with the phenomenon, nine instructors and curriculum leaders with experiential knowledge of the implementation of phenomenon-based education curriculum will be selected from the JYU (Englander, 2012). These participants will be engaged in semistructured interviews allowing them to share their experiences completely and without intrusion. The goal of the interview is to allow participants to describe their experiences with curriculum implementation accurately and with as much detail as possible.
Definitions of Terms
Cross-curricular learning. The intentional teaching of skills and concepts that are relevant to more than one subject area (Barnes, 2012). Sometimes used synonymously with integrative learning.
Integrative learning. A learning theory describing the belief that education should foster students’ abilities to “integrate” (Huber & Hutchings, 2004, p. 1) across content areas, over time, and between scholastic and real-life settings.
National Core Curriculum (Finland). Finland’s national curriculum with assistance from teachers, researchers, municipalities, and other shareholders, which debuts in Autumn 2016 (Halinen, 2016).
Phenomenon-based education (also phenomenon-based learning). A research-oriented form of education where students investigate real-life phenomena through their own experiences and with the aid of theories and concepts from various sciences; it is meant to emulate the complexities of real-life situations encountered (Moilanen, 2015).
Limitations
This study focuses on the faculty perceptions of phenomenon-based education curriculum at the JYU. The results cannot be assumed to be true for all universities or schools within Jyväskylä or Finland as a whole. In addition, Finland’s education system is heavily decentralized furthering the notion that these results cannot be projected for other universities or tertiary institutions in Finland. The researcher has no affiliation to the university, which limits researcher bias, but does limit the researcher’s knowledge of the university to publications and experiences garnered during the university visit by the researcher.
Scope and Delimitations
The coverage of this study is limited to the shared experiences of the faculty research participants from the JYU at the time they were interviewed (April 2017). Their reported experiences are not necessarily transferable to other faculty experiences in the education department, or the JYU as a whole.
Assumptions
It is assumed that faculty participants in this study were honest in describing their perceptions and experiences of phenomenon-based education curriculum. Since participants are voluntary and knowledgeable of potential publication, it is expected that they will not object to information shared becoming public knowledge.
Significance of the Study
Using a phenomenological approach, this study will interview instructors and leaders in curriculum design, with the expectation of providing the university more thorough data clear of institutional bias. Also, the subsequent data grouping to identify prominent themes will provide instructors and leaders experiential knowledge for consideration towards future curricular decisions, and/or reflection on their own practices. While the shared experiences of JYU instructors will be unique to the university, education leaders implementing alterations from content-heavy to a more integrated curriculum in a plethora of institutions could gain meaningful knowledge from JYU instructors’ experiences. Furthermore, the phenomenological approach will provide a more clear understanding of the intricacies of JYU’s phenomenon-based learning curriculum based on perceptions of staff members.
Chapter Summary
This chapter offered a preliminary definition of phenomenon-based education, revealed background information leading to statement of the problem, and the significance of the problem. Furthermore, the research questions and pertinent information on the research methodology and other logistics were disclosed. The following chapter will include a comprehensive literature review detailing the research history, literatures themes, and international comparisons relating to phenomenon-based education.
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
At the JYU, phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum is in the third year of the implementation phase. While drafting and adopting the curriculum, the university did not have another institution from which to model pedagogy strategies. Instructors instead relied on case studies of successful courses and instructors’ hunches formulated by their understanding of education theories.
This review of literature seeks to compare and contrast the JYU’s phenomenon-based education curriculum with thoughts and positions held by educational theorists and researchers like John Dewey, Robert Marzano, and Benjamin Bloom. It further seeks to explain how these methods converge with Tynjälä’s knowledge acquisition framework.
Determining differences between phenomenon-based education and prior educational theories like problem-based learning, experiential learning, and integrative learning is not realistic without a comprehensive understanding of the specifics within each approach. The literature reveals that phenomenon-based education shares common characteristics with all three, but also includes research-oriented practices.
The JYU’s teacher education curriculum documents from 2007 and 2014 are compared, particularly focusing on their initiatives for student-centered learning and education for sustainability. Literary criticisms, as well as supporting documents, are scrutinized to provide a fair evaluation of the most prominent initiatives in the university’s curricular reforms. Finally, international examples of phenomenon-based education are highlighted along with a university course supporting the JYU’s hope for implementation.
Educational Science and Philosophies
Dewey (1916) theorized that education was just a continuation of social life and schools should prepare students to function in a democratic society. If education did not connect to students’ prior life experiences, much of the knowledge attained from the lesson or experience would immediately be lost (Dewey, 1916). Dewey further believed that education and new ideas only emerge when a student is put in an experiential situation where they must internally problem solve and observe corresponding outcomes. Furthering Dewey’s belief that learning should be a process for student development of higher order learning skills as opposed to the traditional method of reading textbooks and rote memorization of content knowledge is Benjamin Bloom’s A Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Bloom’s taxonomy, whether the original 1956 or updated 2001 version, is used in academia to ensure rigorous questioning and subsequent learning. Diagrams of the complexity of questioning for proximal student learning are displayed in Figure 1. Bloom’s taxonomy diverted from traditional education methods of rote learning and recall, noting that these practices should be replaced with higher order questioning (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). This more rigorous questioning would allow students to develop a deeper understanding of content by experimenting, constructing, investigating, and other higher forms of learning (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956). Since experimentation, investigation, and other higher order skills require a student-centered learning process, Bloom’s taxonomy lent further credence to moving away from the traditional content-based education approach.
[pic]
Figure 1. Bloom’s taxonomy. From Bloom’s Taxonomy by P. Armstrong, 2017. Retrieved from . Copyright 2017 by Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Reprinted with permission.
Moving to a higher order model specific to teacher education, Tynjälä, Häkkinen, and Hämäläinen (2014) provided a framework for creating an idyllic teacher education environment. Tynjälä et al. theorized that four distinct types of teacher knowledge existed; these include conceptual theoretical knowledge, practical experiential knowledge, self-regulative knowledge, and sociocultural knowledge. Conceptual theoretical knowledge is familiarity with theories and content pertinent to pedagogical practices. Practical experiential knowledge unites understanding of personal and teaching experiences. Self-regulative knowledge includes metacognitive and reflective skills that are developed through postoccurrence reflection. Sociocultural knowledge embraces the undisclosed rules or practices within a profession that can only be attained through direct immersion in the workplace. The combination of these four forms of knowledge creates the model of integrative pedagogy (see Figure 2), a model specifically designed to create optimal learning environments (Tynjälä et al., 2014).
[pic]
Figure 2. Tynjälä integrated pedagogy model. Reprinted from “TEL @ Work: The Model of Integrative Pedagogy” by P. Tynjälä, P. Hakkinen, & R. Hamalainen, 2014, British Journal of Education Technology, 45, p. 993. Copyright 2016 by Wiley-Blackwell. Reprinted with permission.
Research, or evidence-based instruction, championed by prominent education researchers and authors Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock (2001), states that all educational pedagogy should be backed by studies verifying the practices are effective. Support for research-based pedagogy is supported by a meta-analysis of studies on the topic completed by Marzano et al. (2001) that showed students scored .73 standard deviations higher using research-based methods than control groups educated using traditional practices. In Finland, research-based teacher education practices have been in place for over 30 years and usually considered successful (Toom et al., 2010). For much of the history of the Program for International Assessment (PISA), Finland has been a top performing country and Finnish teachers are considered by some scholars to be among the most effective in the world (Sahlberg, 2011). According to these scholars, a research-based approach will continue to be a central component of Finnish teacher education because it allows teachers autonomy in creating curriculum that is innovative and specific to meeting local communities learning needs (Munthe & Rogne, 2015; Sahlberg, 2011). Even though the JYU made immense changes to their teacher education curriculum, the new curriculum maintains a research-based approach (Moilanen, 2015). Finnish educators of all grade levels are expected to use research-based practices to determine curriculum that best meets the needs of their student population and to ensure the teacher is a master of the content being covered (Sahlberg, 2011; Westbury, Hansén, Kansanen, & Björkvist, 2005).
Local autonomy provided by Finland’s decentralized education system along with educator’s ability to draft curriculum that best meets their student population’s needs allowed the JYU to reform their curriculum from a content-heavy, research-based approach to a phenomenon-based variety of research-based instruction (Moilanen, 2015). Under the previous content-heavy approach, students were saturated with learning too many topics and theories, which were often confusing and even contradictory to students (Moilanen, 2015). This also did not allow students to build deeper meaning by comparing these theories to life experiences following Dewey’s (1916) philosophy. This overload of content also prevented instructors from extending student learning beyond the understand and remember levels of Bloom’s taxonomy to the more advanced steps like evaluate and create. The JYU’s phenomenon-based teacher education approach sought to allow students to create new meaning and evaluate a phenomenon, using a pedagogical inquiry approach. Currently, phenomenon-based teacher curriculum uses Tynjälä’s integrated pedagogy model with the goal of creating a superlative learning environment (Moilanen, 2015). From these perspectives, it could be argued that the scientific reasoning for the adoption of a phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum by the JYU could have merit and is worthy of research to see if it works as well in practice as in theory.
Related Learning Theories
Experiential Learning
Some of the education theories that inspired phenomenon-based education also spawned related contemporary learning theories. In the 1980s, David Kolb, based on discoveries in the works of John Dewey, Kurt Levin, and Jean Piaget and their reliance on experience in human learning and development, founded the experiential learning theory. Kolb (2014) described the experiential learning theory as a “theory that explains how experience is transformed into learning and reliable knowledge” (p. xxi). Other scholars warned that experience is not always a guaranteed path to universal knowledge. Experiences are often too complex to discern correct meaning from and experienced people often make decisions against their best interests for a variety of reasons (March & Olsen, 2010). Also, reliance on the concept of experiences for the transfer of knowledge often ignores biases that lead to inaccurate decision making (Hutchinson & Lawrence, 2011). Kolb countered that experience alone does not manifest absolute truths; reflection, questioning inferences, and extraction of the correct consequences are also necessary to complete the learning process. Studies have widely supported the application of the experiential learning theory in teacher education and professional settings (Kolb, 2014). The JYU’s phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum shares critical aspects with experiential learning. Students use life and field experiences to identify phenomena worthy of study and also develop deeper understanding of new experiences and textual information. Further, the university’s teacher education curriculum uses a research-based approach to ensure students are reaching logical conclusions and making accurate meaning from their experiences (Moilanen, 2015).
Problem-Based Learning
In the 1970s, medical schools first used what is now known as problem-based learning to transform students into expert problem solvers and moving student learning beyond just text memorization with tests for recall (Barrows & Tamblyn, 1980). Problem-based learning is an inquiry-based learning approach that seeks to deepen students learning through an active problem-solving approach (Barron & Darling-Hammond, 2008). Problem-based learning begins with an authentic problem for students to solve, students then gather research and brainstorm solutions in small groups with the teacher serving the facilitator role, asking higher order questions like “How do you know?” and “What does that mean?” The learning is not focused on locating the correct answer, but the process of collaboration and synthesizing information in the problem-solving process (Savery & Duffy, 1995). A slight variation of problem-based learning, project-based learning entails students working in collaborative groups to explore and find solutions for cross-curricular, real-world problems (Barron & Darling-Hammond, 2008). In a meta-analysis combining a number of published studies from 1976 to 2007 comparing problem-based learning and traditional lecture courses, results showed that there was no significant difference in student outcomes on traditional standardized tests (Ravitz, 2009). However, assessments that tested a wider range of skills related to performance tasks, long-term retention, and written essays clearly favored problem-based learning courses (Strobel & van Barneveld, 2009). Ravitz (2009) noted that problem-based learning shows more favorable results in teacher education programs than medical schools. The JYU’s phenomenon-based education curriculum acknowledges that their focus areas of the learning process are very similar to problem-based learning including focus on collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving skills, and applying content knowledge to real-life problems, but have one major difference due to the nuances of education not seen in the medical field (Blackburn et al., 2011). The word phenomenon replaces problem because a phenomenon is experiential, rather than intellectual, and extends beyond normal human conceptual understandings, making it difficult to concretely define (Francis et al., 2012). Consequently, phenomenon-based education is less structured and seeks to not necessarily find an absolute solution for a problem, but to identify well-reasoned solutions from different perspectives and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these decisions (Moilanen, 2015). While medical and teacher education may both prepare students to use problem solving skills to identify solutions, phenomenon-based education places an additional focus on helping students understand the complex realities unique to the teaching profession (Østergaard, Lieblein, Breland, & Francis, 2010).
Despite overwhelming support from the scholars quoted previously, there are detractors of experiential learning and the inquiry-based approaches. Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006) found inherent problems with these pedagogical methods rechristening them as minimally guided approaches. Under these practices, there is no differentiation between an expert practicing a profession and students who are experiencing a new subject as an amateur. Thus, students do not have a knowledge base to properly investigate a subject or build new practical knowledge from their investigations. Kirschner et al. further questioned whether the approaches even fit Dewey and Piaget’s model of constructivism and conclude that there is no body of evidence that support the techniques. Phenomenon-based teacher education at the JYU appears to avoid these potential pitfalls. While there may be issues with novice students being treated the same as experts in certain courses, a major focus of teacher education in Finland is developing teachers’ ability to conduct research in their classroom and community. While teachers may not be experts on the content, students entering the college of education have a strong background of education theory and practices to build new knowledge from (Sahlberg, 2011).
Integrative Learning
Integrative learning is a method where lessons cover multiple subject areas and connect past learning and student’s personal experiences to existing lessons (Huber & Hutchings, 2004). Integrative learning focuses on transferable skills like critical thinking, collaboration, or higher order thinking skills (Boix Mansilla, 2008). In a college setting, integrative learning usually includes a capstone experience where students continuously build a portfolio, which summarizes and serves as a climax of their learning as a student. Also, some colleges have implemented service-learning programs where students complete community service to test academic concepts in real-world settings (Huber & Hutchings, 2004). From student experiences in the real world, students are introduced to complex situations and individuals that have a variety of different perspectives. Integrative learning is not only about making connections, but to empower students to manage conflicting information to evaluate situations in their whole context (Newell, 2010). While quantitative studies are limited on integrative learning, a 2008 study showed that almost all colleges report being somewhat or very oriented towards interdisciplinary course connections, mentioning higher levels of student knowledge and inquiry, ability for complex problem solving, and peer collaboration as assumed benefits (Boix Mansilla, 2008). The JYU’s phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum is fully integrative. While both models introduce students to complex problems with conflicting information available and hope that deeper meaning is developed through collaboration and cross-curricular connections, phenomenon-based teacher education also includes student experiences and all knowledge acquired by the student. Prior experiential knowledge combines with scientific inquiry to provide a more accurate and holistic understanding of the phenomenon studied (Boix Mansilla, 2008; Moilanen, 2015).
Research-Based Education
One of the biggest problems for constructivist educational practices is that building knowledge from prior experiences is not infallible to false conclusions and thus educators should ensure safeguards are in place so students reach logical and factual conclusions (Krahenbuhl, 2016). The JYU’s teacher education department uses a research-based approach to ensure student experiences are interpreted correctly through synthesis with scientific theories (Moilanen, 2015).
In 1996, Hargreaves criticized what he perceived as a disconnect between education researchers and teachers, proposing that education should be a research-based profession, akin to medical professional influences on medical research. While Hargreaves’s research was criticized as overly simplistic because of the vast differences in measuring metrics in the two professions, research-based, alternatively called evidence-based, teaching practices continued to gain in popularity with new pedagogy models created (Brew, 2003; Hammersley, 1997). Despite international interest in research-based practices, the complexity of contextualizing the terms research and teaching and learning made the development of common practices an arduous task (Healey, 2005).
In Finland, teacher education has employed a research-oriented approach since 1979, requiring all teacher candidates to complete a master’s degree (Krokfors et al., 2008). From 1979 to the early 2000s, Finnish education leaders struggled to define the parameters of research-based pedagogy beyond the concept that educators were expected to be experts of their content area. Research-based teacher education was later defined as producing teachers that could base decision making on rational and logical, in addition to experiential, arguments as well as undertake their own research in the classroom (Westbury et al., 2005). Since the early 2010s, teacher education students in Finland learn qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research approaches from projects and coursework. Students conduct small inquiries, observations, and experiments as well. As a capstone prior to graduation, students complete a master’s thesis composed of writing and original research (Toom et al., 2010). This research-based teacher education approach is a critical element of teacher education throughout Finland. Conversely since 2007, the JYU’s teacher education curriculum has trained future educators to use research-derived competencies in their professional decision-making (Moilanen, 2015).
Teacher Education in Finland/University of Jyväskylä
Finland’s education system is often considered among the best in world due to performance on international assessments. In 2015 out of 65 countries participating on the PISA, Finland scored fifth in science, fourth in reading, and 13th in mathematics (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2016). Sahlberg (2011) accounted that to quality teacher education candidates. Finnish university students view education as among the most highly respected careers and acceptance to the department of teacher education is among the most arduous in the world (Sahlberg, 2011). Finnish teachers graduate with the ability to design, conduct, and present research. In Finland’s decentralized system, local teachers’ ability to conduct research on their student populations allows them to determine the best curriculum and specific needs for their specific student population (Sahlberg, 2011). This decentralized system allows colleges, universities, and local school districts to create a curriculum that best meets specific student needs. This decentralized system allowed the JYU to reform their teacher education curriculum to a phenomenon-based approach.
Recent History of University of Jyväskylä’s Teacher Education Curriculum
Prior to the JYU’s most recent curriculum reform in 2014, the last time school leaders’ drafted new curriculum was 2007. In the 2007 curriculum, the stated purpose of teacher education was to examine the relationships between three critical elements of teaching: theory, practice, and experience (JYU, 2007). Teaching practice is considered the core of the program, which then link to the other areas. Theme areas within the practical knowledge domain are self-knowledge, theoretical and practical principles of teaching and learning, pedagogical possibilities and limitations of content, and professionalism. Teacher candidates are to work in communities of diverse expertise, but developing a common knowledge and a teacher’s minimum know-how are considered critical to teacher development. Teacher education students also conduct theoretical and applied research on schools, teacher education, leadership, learning and guidance, and subject-pedagogic knowledge. As a capstone to develop self-knowledge, determine professional goals, and analyze strengths and weaknesses, students begin accumulating a portfolio in the first year of the program and update it throughout the five years as part of investigative teachership. The program totals 300 credits with bachelor’s degree making up 180 and master’s portion 120. The breakdown of courses by year is clearly defined in Figure 3.
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Figure 3. University of Jyväskylä 2007 teacher education course requirements. From Teacher Education Curriculum 2007 by University of Jyväskylä Department of Teacher Education, 2007. Copyright 2007 by University of Jyväskylä. Reprinted with permission.
The 2014 teacher education curriculum requires 300 credits to complete the program, but varies drastically in most other areas from the 2007 version. The document begins by stating that the underlying task of the Finnish school system is to “educate citizens who will take responsibility for building a more just world based on sustainable development” (JYU, 2014, p. 1). Correspondingly, teachers are taught in a renewing and self-sustainable way that allows them to be rational thinkers and lifelong learners (JYU, 2014). JYU’s phenomenon-based curriculum was implemented with the goal of providing aspiring teachers a deeper understanding of educational phenomena and problems relevant to education. Teacher candidates are required to consider topics from multiple perspectives and with the aid of scientific theories to better understand the complexities of real-world education problems. The education program is structured around five phenomena: Interaction and cooperation, learning and guidance, education society and change, scientific thinking and knowledge, and competence and expertise. Students are expected to also develop the following competences: ethical competence, intellectual competence, communicative and interactional competence, cultural community and social competence, pedagogical competence, and aesthetic competence. Like the 2007 curriculum, students have to complete a master’s thesis, but the 2014 model mandates students complete it on a self-determined educational phenomenon (JYU, 2014). To compare the 2014 phenomenon-based curriculum’s structure to the 2007 content-based, see Figure 4.
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Figure 4. 2014 JYU teacher education degree program. From Teacher Education Curriculum 2014 by University of Jyväskylä Department of Teacher Education, 2007. Copyright 2007 by University of Jyväskylä. Reprinted with permission.
From 2007 to 2014, the university’s teacher education goals and philosophies altered significantly. The 2007 versions focuses on students attainment of the content knowledge within the three domains (theory, practice, and experience), while 2014 edition hopes to enhance democracy by preparing students that will aid in creating a more just society. Overall, the reformed curriculum is more student centered allowing students a larger role in determining personal learning paths (Moilanen, 2015). Student-centered or learner-centered instruction puts the focus of a lesson or learning experience on the student. Contrarily, teacher centered instructions puts the focus on the teachers practices (Weimer, 2002). To be a student-centered classroom, Weimer highlighted five areas of teaching that must favor the learner which include balance of power, function of content, role of the teacher, responsibility of the learner, and assessment of learning. Reviews of student-centered teacher education programs shows that many teachers believe student-centered classrooms create enhanced classroom environments and many university programs plan to move in this direction. Additional studies show that students respond positively to a transformation from a teacher-centered to a learner-centered approach and often the most effective role for a teacher is as a facilitator (Smart, Witt, & Scott, 2012; Wright, 2011). The 2015 revision of the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area, a collaborative document created by education leaders throughout Europe highlighting recommended best practices, strongly advocates student-centered learning in higher education. The document claims that student-centered learning and teaching plays an important role in stimulating students’ motivation, self-reflection, and engagement in the learning process (Standards and Guidelines, 2015, p. 8). Conversely, Mckenna (2013) praised student-centered learning for being student focused, but also cautions the approach for not considering how material is taught and constructed and being too focused on autonomous characteristics of the student. From the scholarly research highlighted, it appears that the JYU followed the consensus of available research in moving to a more student-centered approach. Furthering Finland’s movement towards a more progressive model of teacher education curriculum is a directive focus on education for sustainable development (JYU, 2014).
A noticeable change from the 2007 to 2014 curriculum is that the JYU displayed a vision that students will instill a more just world through sustainable development (JYU, 2014). Sustainability education, or education for sustainable development, became a popular initiative in the early 1990s. At that time, the United Nations Agenda 21 explicitly called for local community leaders to determine best initiatives for achieving sustainable lifestyles (Sitarz, 1993). Since adoption by the UN, subsequent meetings continued to stress the importance of education as a tool for achieving sustainable development. In 2002, McKeown, Hopkins, Rizi, and Chrystalbridge defined education for sustainable development as giving people the knowledge for lifelong learning to find solutions to environmental, economic, and social issues. Mckeown et al. continued that traditional literacy approaches alone will not increase sustainability; students must be taught skills like critical thinking, ability to organize and interpret data, formulate questions, and analyze community issues. The JYU’s 2014 phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum appears to also provide students a potential foundation for using education as tool for sustainable development. The curriculum focuses on transferable life and vocational skills like problem solving and critical thinking. Furthermore, phenomenon-based education provides students with an approach to fully understand complex problems and phenomena that can be applied to future problems and potentially create students that are lifelong learners (Moilanen, 2015).
In response to Agenda 21 and other United Nations recommendations, the Finnish government’s National Commission on Sustainable Development published a report to summarize the roles of various bureaucracies in achieving sustainable development (Loukola, Isoaho, & Lindström, 2002). The program sought to provide citizens with skills necessary to tackle the challenges of sustainable development, which would increase Finland’s economic competitiveness and reduce the negative impacts of consumption and environmental destruction (Loukola et al., 2002). Since higher education has a strong tie to future employment, Finnish colleges, universities, and polytechnics promote education for sustainable development as a skill relevant to future employment, as private businesses also value sustainable practices (Lozano, Lukman, Lozano, Huisingh, & Lambrechts, 2013). The JYU officially committed to sustainable development practices by signing the United Nations Higher Education Sustainable Initiative, which guarantees teaching sustainable development across all disciplines of study (Sustainability at the University of Jyväskylä, 2016).
In Australia’s national curriculum, three cross-curriculum priorities are established to “connect and relate content across learning areas and subjects” (Australian Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority, 2016, p. 1). Sustainability is one of these cross-curriculum priorities and students are to develop the knowledge and skills to contribute to sustainable living patterns (Australian Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority, 2010). Similar to Australia’s curriculum, the JYU’s 2014 curriculum mentions that the goal of school system is to “educate citizens that will create a more just world based on sustainable development” (JYU, 2014, p. 1). In addition, phenomenon-based education is supposed to make students combines alternate theories and subjects, much like Australia’s cross-curriculum priorities (JYU, 2014).
Previous Case Studies Relevant to Phenomenon-Based Education
The Master of Science program at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences is a powerful case study supporting the premises of Finland’s phenomenon-based learning curriculum. The Norwegian University of Life Sciences created a phenomenon-based agroecology program where students interviewed farmers, learned about the economic and social realities of the farm, and assessed the farmers long and short terms goals over the fall semester. Students then interviewed key clients of the farmer including agricultural officers, local grocery stores, and municipal canteens. Students combined shareholder information with knowledge gained through pedagogy to brainstorm solutions on how to increase production and efficiency. Local farmers were impressed by students’ ability to acquire experiential knowledge and action-oriented solutions to encountered tribulations. The Norwegian University of Life Sciences identifies numerous alumni of the program that obtained prestigious agricultural executive positions due to their ability to solve complex issues (Francis et al., 2012). The results support Finland’s listed hopes of phenomenon-based education making students critical thinkers and capable of synthesizing multiple paradigms of information. Outside of Francis’s work, literature on phenomenon-based courses is lacking, especially articles focusing on instructor perspectives of implementation. Moilanen (2015) pointed to the aforementioned Norwegian University case study as inspiration for the JYU’s phenomenon-based curriculum. It may be of interest to the education community and future researchers to see if an entire curriculum based on phenomenon-based education can emulate Norwegian University’s success in this isolated agroecology course.
Independent to the JYU’s teacher education curriculum, the 2016 Finnish National Core Curriculum focuses on reforming the education system to meet world changes related to increased globalization and challenges for a sustainable future. The document reasons that linking real-life problems to scholastic knowledge will develop problem-solving skills and increased collaboration. In addition, combining knowledge and skills from different subjects will increase understanding (Halinen, 2016). The National Core recommends at least one phenomenon-based education course, defined as collaborative classroom practices where students work with several teachers simultaneously on cross-curricular projects that the students, themselves assist in planning, per school year. The duration and length of time of these courses is left to districts or individual schools themselves to determine (Søby, 2015). While the primary/secondary curriculum and teacher education curriculum are two separate entities, Darling-Hammond (2012) warned against the misconception that teaching is intuitive, or the transmission model, that the teacher shares their knowledge with students instantly making them more intelligent. Research shows this to be unrealistic as teachers must be able link students’ prior knowledge to new concepts, foresee and correct misimpressions, and provide feedback and application of knowledge among other skills (Darling-Hammond, 2012). With this in mind, it seems logical for future Finnish teachers to have learned using a phenomenon-based approach to conceptualize nuances and misunderstandings students may have, as they will be responsible for instructing students using this same format.
The United States’ Next Generation Science Standards (2016), an internationally benchmarked education reform embrace phenomenon-based education as a driver for teaching and learning across numerous grade levels. The standards have been adopted by 26 U.S. states as of publication (Next Generation Science Standards, 2016). Secondary science teachers have described phenomenon-based education as an enhanced version of the KWL model meaning what we Know, what we Want to know, and what we Learned. In addition, phenomenon-based science approaches are more engaging and fun for students (Bobrowsky, Korhonen, & Kohtomäki, 2014). While examples of full phenomenon-based teacher education curricula are still lacking, phenomenon-based education initiatives appear to be growing in popularity at lower levels of education. With future teachers possibly being required to teach using a phenomenon-based approach, it seems logical that universities would help students practice what they preach and model the approach in teacher training programs.
Conclusion
As supported by the aforementioned literature, the elements and philosophies that comprise phenomenon-based education correspond with the constructivist model and higher order learning theories championed by renowned education scholars and philosophers like John Dewey, Robert Voight, Robert Marzano, and Benjamin Bloom. These learning theories are synthesized into a model for teacher education according to Tynjälä’s (2014) integrative pedagogy model. Phenomenon-based education shows a strong similarity to popular methods like experiential learning, problem-based learning, and integrative learning. However, phenomenon-based education differs from these models in that problems are not meant to be solved with concrete certainty; instead students learn a scientific-based framework for reaching a variety of logical solutions that illuminate the complexities of real-life situations encountered by a teaching professional. To combat criticism that these methods lack scientific content and prior knowledge is insufficient in amateur researchers, phenomenon-based education has a research-based focus to ensure student conduct studies skillfully and constructed knowledge is supported by well-reasoned arguments.
The curriculum reform from 2007 to 2014 at the JYU is then reviewed critically, showing phenomenon-based education practices appear to be consistent with the university’s goal of education for sustainable development and a more student-centered approach. Finally, Finland’s national curriculum and international examples detail the rising popularity of phenomenon-based education in the secondary and primary levels. Specifically, the Norwegian University of Natural Sciences agroecology experiment provides a glimpse into the potential advantages that moving to a phenomenon-based curriculum can provide (Francis et al., 2012).
From this combination of literature, it is clear that phenomenon-based education, at least in theory, is supported by sound research, practices, and principles. Nevertheless, phenomenon-based education is based on the premise that education is full of complex, multifaceted problems that correspondingly do not have simple or even concrete solutions. Coincidentally, phenomenon-based education is itself an example of a phenomenon in education; an intricate topic that could never be fully comprehended by consuming textual explanations, as phenomena can only be experienced. This is further convoluted by the lack of research or even existence of universities with phenomenon-based teacher education curricula. Quantifying the progress of implementation before having a better understanding of the nuances and established assessment measures would be reckless from a research perspective. Thus, qualitative research focusing on people with direct experience of the topic or phenomenon will best reveal experiences of the implementation of phenomenon-based education curriculum. By collecting shared experiences from participants’ perceptions, an initial assessment of phenomenon-based education curriculum implementation at the JYU should materialize and these experiences have potential to be rich with experiential knowledge for the university as well as other institutions considering similar reforms.
Chapter Summary
Chapter 2 used peer-reviewed literature to provide reasoning beyond being a new and novel approach that phenomenon-based education curriculum at the JYU is worthy of research. In addition, the choice of qualitative research was briefly explained in relation to this literature. Chapter 3 will explain the specifics of the chosen research method and plans for execution of said research.
CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH METHOD
Introduction
The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine shared experiences of instructors and curriculum leaders in the implementation of phenomenon-based education courses in the college of teacher education at the JYU. The JYU’s phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum was constructed in 2014 after a rigorous collaboration of professors, administrators, and researchers in the education department and, as of publication, is the first university to employ this unique curricular approach (JYU, 2014).
This phenomenological study utilized a qualitative research approach to reveal professors and administrators perceptions of their experiences with the implementation of phenomenon-based education curriculum at the JYU to answer the following research questions:
1. What are the shared experiences of University of Jyväskylä professors in implementation of phenomenon-based education courses?
2. What shared challenges are University of Jyväskylä professors experiencing in implementation of phenomenon-based education courses?
A phenomenological approach is appropriate to examine these research questions in a realistic manner based on the personal experiences of shareholders involved in implementation. With phenomenon-based education in the preliminary stages of implementation, a phenomenological approach will illuminate shared instructor perceptions of phenomenon-based education pedagogy implementation at the JYU to gain a deeper understanding of this emerging topic (Lester, 1999). This section will detail the research design including instrumentation, sample population, data collection, and finally address ethical concerns for completing this study.
Research Design
Qualitative Research
Qualitative research methods focus on theoretical findings in natural settings, which make it ideal for discerning previously undiscovered phenomena. It is generally agreed all qualitative research shares the common characteristics of being collected in natural settings, uses the researcher as the main collector of data, uses inductive and deductive data analysis allowing the researcher to build themes in both ways, focuses on learning participants meanings of a topic, has a research process that is emergent so the researcher can modify the process to effectively answer research questions, requires the researcher to reflect on how their own biases could affect data interpretation, and use a holistic approach to paint a complete picture of the research topic (Creswell, 2013). Qualitative research data is collected through interviews, observations, and other unmitigated situations (Park & Park, 2016). Accepted qualitative methods are case studies, ethnography, and phenomenology, among others. Determining which of these methods should be used is determined by the specifics of the population studied and parameters of what is being researched (Park & Park, 2016).
Phenomenology
German philosopher Edmund Husserl described phenomenology as a “method of investigating and describing a phenomenon as experienced within human consciousness” (as cited in Paradowski, 2015, p. 1). Accordingly, this study seeks to investigate and describe phenomenon-based education curriculum implementation through experiences of professors and curriculum leaders at the JYU. Phenomenologists believe that phenomena manifest themselves in the natural world and do not require a clear definition or design for explication (Vagle, 2016). Phenomenological research aims to describe a phenomenon as accurately as possible, but without a preconceived framework. Since participants are liberated to construct their own meaning of a phenomenon, it is the researchers hope that participants will be able to describe their experiences as freely and accurately as possible.
Role of the Researcher
As mentioned previously, the researcher’s role is to interpret meaning from the participants shared experiences on the subject, while carefully considering potential biases (Creswell, 2013). The researcher has no affiliation with the JYU and his only prior knowledge was gained by completing the literature review detailing the history of the university’s teacher education curriculum.
Instrumentation
Data will be collected using semistructured interviews. In traditional scientific research, the relationship between an interviewer and the participant is expected to be of subject–object relationship. The belief is that depersonalizing the responses of the participant creates more objective data collection. However, phenomenology requires that the interviewee describe their experiences as accurately as possible based on their experiences. Thus, a subject–subject relationship is necessary for the interview, but should focus directly on the phenomenon being investigated (Englander, 2012). To strengthen the subject–subject relationship, the researcher asked clarifying questions when a point was unclear or lacked context.
The interviews were structured according to Bevan’s (2014) three-step approach, which includes contextualization, apprehending the phenomenon, and clarifying the phenomenon. The contextualization portion of the interview empowered participants to explain their role within the university with the question, “Tell me about your role within the university and your experiences with phenomenon-based education curriculum.” The apprehending component concentrated on their current perceptions of curriculum implementation with the question, “Tell me, based on your perceptions, what phenomenon-based education curriculum is at the University of Jyväskylä?” Finally, the researcher allowed participants to clarify the phenomenon with imaginative questions like “Describe specifically how one of the courses you’ve observed or taught at the University of Jyväskylä has changed from the former curriculum to the current phenomenon-based education curriculum?” Follow-up questions for each area were included based on field notes collected during the interview or possibly continuation questions to allow the participant to provide more details and contextual information in certain areas. The questions asked at this stage depended on what the interviewee shared in previous portions of the interview as the researcher hopes to gain a comprehensive picture of the phenomena described by filling in undisclosed areas (see Figure 4).
Sample/Population Selection
Phenomenological research is to be conducted with participants that have experienced the phenomenon firsthand (Groenewald, 2004). Thus, nine research participants from the JYU were selected based on their familiarity with implementation of phenomenon-based education. Through searches of peer-reviewed journals, the JYU’s phenomenon-based teacher education program was discovered and the researcher communicated with the international liaison of the university. The international liaison connected the researcher with the curriculum implementation leader. Through correspondence with the curriculum implementation leader, nine participants will be chosen based on their involvement with the implementation of phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum. The JYU officially implemented the phenomenon-based curriculum in 2014 so participants have at least two years of experience with system-wide practices. However, professors/teachers in Finland are given a high degree of autonomy over their teaching practices so experience with phenomenon-based pedagogy and other teaching practices could be very diverse across participants (Sahlberg, 2011).
Data Collection Procedures
Collection of Data
The researcher sent potential participants recruitment letters via e-mail explaining the obligations of research participants (see Appendix A). If a potential participant declined an invitation, a replacement was identified and sent an invitation to join the research group. Participants consenting to participation were sent follow-up e-mails asking for a preferred interview method (Skype, FaceTime, phone call). Prior to the interview, the researcher shared with participants the consent agreement form detailed in Appendix B. Participants were also asked for a written consent acknowledgement via e-mail allowing the researcher to use their interviews for research data after the participants have reviewed and edited the transcript. Only those interviews wherein participants complete all steps of the process are included in data analysis steps.
Beginning in April 2017, the researcher conducted interviews with each of the nine participants via phone or Skype/FaceTime calls to collect the data. The researcher recorded these communication sessions using the IOS application, TapeACall Pro. TapeACall Pro allows telephone conversations conducted on the iPhone to be recorded and is often used in business settings when participants require records of conference calls (TapeACall App for iPhone, 2016). The interviewer’s main goal was to ensure participants had the freedom to articulate their experiences with phenomenon-based education curriculum as accurately and openly as possible. The interviewer’s only interruptions were to clarify unclear concepts shared or to ensure participants stay on topic. The researcher documented field notes during the process, but the overall focus was on active listening in order to understand participant responses.
After the interview, the researcher listened to these recorded calls twice at half speed to ensure accuracy and transcribe the dialogue verbatim into a word document. Approximately a week later, the researcher sent participants the transcripts of their interviews to review and ensure accuracy. Participants were permitted the opportunity to change and add details to the transcript. The researcher then finalized the interviews and sorted according to the following practices.
Treatment of Data
After the interview portion, the participants were asked to thoroughly review the transcript and ensure accuracy. As part of the reduction process, the researcher eliminated filler words like um and you know to focus on the actual experiences shared by participants. From the shared transcripts, participants were also offered the opportunity to further clarify any points that they deemed unclear or add additional perceptions that were not included in the original interview. Outside of transcription, review of the data collected was postponed until full approval from the participant is provided. This included signing the initial consent agreement in Appendix B as well as providing written consent via e-mail after the participant reviewed and revised their personal interview transcription. Following ethical protocol, the participants were granted authority to remove themselves from the study at any time and all data they provided in the interview were deleted before analysis steps (Chapters 4 & 5).
Data Analysis
The researcher was careful to ensure that participants’ descriptions of the phenomenon are kept whole. Also, the researcher will follow Hycner’s (1999) five-step process to explicate and transform data past interpretation:
1. Bracketing and phenomenological reduction;
2. Delineating units of meaning;
3. Clustering of units of meaning to form themes;
4. Summarizing each interview, validating it and where necessary modifying it; and
5. Extracting general and unique themes from all the interviews and making a composite summary.
Specific to the study, the researcher transcribed and recorded interview data free of bias and as true to what is described as possible to ensure bracketing and reduction. To effectively delineate units of meaning, the researcher asked clarification questions that prevented potential filling-in-the-blanks moments that may haphazardly allowed inclusion of assumptions or unconscious biases. The researcher clustered units of meaning and themes within each interview, while ensuring the whole phenomenon was presented as such. Interviews were summarized in transcripts, but also checked for accuracy by the research participants prior to assigning meaning. Also, filler words like um and you know were removed, as they are not important to the overall summary of participants’ experiences. Finally, the researcher assigned meaning and themes to each interview that emerged organically after the interview interview transcription and multiple reviews. While interpretation is essential with coding and the development of thematic units in phenomenology, the researcher avoided errors by analyzing data with appropriate rigor (Lin, 2013). The researcher planned to use thematic data development software if necessary, but clear themes emerged naturally. Over the course of one-hour interviews that were transcribed and reviewed, the researcher hoped that participants would share common ideas, or experiential themes. If themes did not emerge, the researcher planned to return to the data collection step and recruit additional interview participants or alter the research questions. If themes still did not materialize, the researcher planned to report the data in its true fragmentary form. The researcher trusted the data were reliable because the chances of multiple participants having the same artificial interpretation of an experience are unlikely. In reporting the data in Chapter 4, the researcher will disclose the number of participants that shared a reported thematic experience. By reporting the participants shared experiences as accurately as possible; the researcher will avoid misinterpretation of meaning or potential bias.
Credibility and Dependability
As mentioned previously, the researcher ensured participants selected were knowledgeable of the research topic to ensure credibility. In a step known as member checking, all research participants reviewed their transcripts to ensure their shared experiences were recorded accurately. Further, participants and the researcher sought clarification regarding any potential areas of confusion or misinterpretation of their experiences. With qualitative interviews, member checking is the most critical credibility technique (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Member checking also increases dependability.
Dependability is the concept that the results would be the same or similar if the study was repeated (Bitsch, 2005). When conducting and transcribing interviews, the researcher adhered to the epoche, or avoid preconceived judgments or notions of the phenomenon (Baghurst, Chapman, & Holmes, 2013). In addition, all interviews followed the same framework so that differentiation in results is based on differences in participant perceptions, not mistakes in the execution of the interview. The researcher planned to increase the number of participants if the data did not reach the saturation point, or the point at which no new themes emerge from the data, is not met. Since the research participant group was a homogeneous group of educators, eight to 12 participants was a reasonable estimate of the necessary interview population to reach the saturation point (Guest, Bunce, & Johnson, 2006).
Ethical Concerns
Research participants engaged in semistructured interviews allowing them to share their experiences completely and without intrusion using an American College of Education Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved phenomenological format of questioning (Appendix C). All participants electronically signed active consent forms via e-mail disclosing their consent for participation and that they understood the information shared may be published (Appendix B). The goal of the interview was to allow participants to describe their experiences with curriculum implementation in as much detail as possible. The researcher reached out to the JYU to ensure compliance with their IRB. All participants in the study will be consenting adults who are academic experts at the JYU and thus already familiar with acceptable research protocol. Following protocol, participants were granted the right to remove themselves from the study at any time and all data they provided in the interview would be deleted before analysis steps (Chapters 4 & 5).
The researcher ensured all participants were kept from any potential harm. The active consent form in Appendix B informed participants of the purpose of the study, potential risks, and the overall research process. Since participation was limited to interviews, avoidance of harm focused on ensuring all data collected were kept confidential and participants had full autonomy over what reaches publication. All interviews were tape recorded, dated, and coded to ensure interview data were kept confidential and hidden from potential third parties. Within two years of the completion of the study, interviews and transcripts of interviews will be deleted to ensure no records exist.
Chapter Summary
In summary, this chapter provides a detailed explanation of this study’s qualitative research methodology and explains why a phenomenological research approach is suitable. After nine participants are selected based on their familiarity with the phenomena, careful ethical considerations were reviewed prior to collection. Also, rigorous collection methods were utilized to ensure research was credible and dependable. Finally, Hycner’s (1999) five-step process for data analysis and its application in this study were detailed comprehensively. The following chapter will share the findings from research described previously and present implications and conclusions based on these findings.
CHAPTER 4
DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
Introduction
The purpose of this phenomenological study is to examine shared experiences of instructors and curriculum leaders in the implementation of phenomenon-based education courses in the teacher education department at the JYU. Chapter 4 will begin by sharing procedures by which research participants were selected and subsequently interviewed. The results and themes that emerge from these semistructured interviews will then be shared with consideration of the two research questions:
1. What are the shared experiences of University of Jyväskylä professors in implementation of phenomenon-based education courses?
2. What shared challenges are University of Jyväskylä professors experiencing in implementation of phenomenon-based education courses?
The researcher hopes that this study will provide thematic, experiential knowledge for future deliberations to institutional leaders in the greater global education and scholarly community.
Description of the Population
The teacher education department at the JYU has total staff of 90 employees covering various fields and subjects of study (JYU, 2017). From this pool of employees, the research identified and ultimately recruited nine staff members for participation in the study based on familiarity and experience with phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum. This included five female and four male staff members. Seven of the participants have earned PhDs in educational fields and the other two are working to complete PhDs. To maintain participant anonymity, each individual was given a letter code. Table 1 presents participant codes, professional title at the university, and years of experience at the university level are outlined. Ensuring information shared does not reveal the participant’s identity, specific responses to interview questions will not be matched to named participants.
Table 1
University of Jyväskylä Staff Research Participants
|Staff participant code |University job title |Years of experience |
|Staff A |Professors/research |30 |
|Staff B |Teacher education dept. head/professor |18 |
|Staff C |University teacher |5 |
|Staff D |Teacher/professor |26 |
|Staff E |Lecturer/adjunct professor |27 |
|Staff F |Researcher/director of language |14 |
|Staff G |Lecturer/researcher |15 |
|Staff H |Professor/researcher |22 |
|Staff I |University teacher |4 |
Data Analysis Procedures
As shared in previous chapters, this study uses a qualitative approach to gathering data, developing thematic units, and interpreting data. Using a phenomenological approach, participants were selected based on their familiarity with the phenomenon studied (Groenewald, 2004). Each participant was interviewed according to the semistructured interview template (Appendix C). After the interview, transcriptions were e-mailed to participants to ensure responses were an accurate interpretation of their shared perceptions. Using a social constructivist framework, the researcher used the participants’ shared experiences to interpret meanings communicated during the interviews (Creswell, 2013).
Hycner’s (1999) five-step process (highlighted in Chapter 3) to explicate and transform data past interpretation was used to develop themes from the interview data. The themes were then organized in accordance with the following research questions:
1. What are the shared experiences of University of Jyväskylä professors in implementation of phenomenon-based education courses?
2. What shared challenges are University of Jyväskylä professors experiencing in implementation of phenomenon-based education courses?
Because phrases and topics were repeated in a plurality of the nine interviews, themes emerged naturally, which made thematic data collection software unnecessary. The researcher manually examined, categorized, and recombined similar quotes from the interviews using the final transcripts and a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (Rabiee, 2004). With the Excel spreadsheet, each participant’s interview transcript text was given a unique color, columns were created based on identified thematic topics, and relevant interview dialogue was sorted and placed in these thematic topics based on researcher’s interpretation of proper fit. In Table 2, the thematic nomenclature and frequency of participants disclosing thoughts or ideas that match the theme or topic are listed. As a critical disclaimer, the frequency of participants mentioning a labeled topic or theme is not intended to give any quantitative ranking or significance measurement. The identified themes are qualitative reports of similar, mutual human perceptions of experiences by the research participants and phenomenology is meant to inform readers of these common experiences (Smith, 2015). Since the interviews were semistructured, a participant’s failure to mention a certain topic does not necessarily imply they did not have similar experiences, as they were not directly asked their experiences on all the topics. In addition, the thematic placement of participants’ shared experiences was at the researcher’s discretion, an admittedly difficult task, as certain responses could have been integrated into two or more thematic units.
Table 2
Natural Emerging Themes From Research Participant Interviews
|Thematic code |No. interviews that mentioned this theme (9 possible) |
|Staff collaboration and culture |7 |
|Student collaboration |6 |
|Motivation/student engagement/class discussion |4 |
|Alternative assessments |6 |
|Holistic degree |4 |
|Challenges | |
|Students accustomed to traditional methods |5 |
|First-year growing pains/increased staff workload |6 |
|Modification of instructor and student roles |7 |
Interview Themes
Staff Collaboration and Culture
Cited in almost every interview, a perceived outcome of the JYU’s phenomenon-based education curriculum was a change in staff culture resulting in more authentic and frequent staff collaboration. As one respondent mentioned, “Phenomenon-based education has changed our entire learning culture. Leaders say that phenomenon-based education curriculum was made to change our learning culture . . . and this change was even more important than the actual curriculum.” Numerous participants mentioned that developing the curriculum, defining the meaning, and determining what that means in practice with phenomenon-based education curriculum was a challenging task that required regular meetings between members of the Department of Teacher Education. These meetings brought together teachers and professors from all subject areas and expertise, whereas under the previous content-based curriculum, staff members rarely worked outside their content area. Since defining individual phenomena requires expertise from different fields of study, diverse groups of professors and teachers worked together for the first time because, as shared by a participant, “It is impossible to plan these classes alone.” This also created more authentic collaboration as staff members from different curricular departments combined their expertise to answer some of the most difficult questions posed in the curriculum articulation process. One respondent communicated that the significance of this collaboration was profound, exclaiming “This multidisciplinary and collaborative approach goes beyond just our university curriculum. Experts in various professional and scholarly fields working in a real, collaborative approach are something that needs improvement. Our university approach is transformational in that way.”
Student Collaboration
Along with increased and enhanced staff collaboration, numerous participants noted that student collaboration followed a similar positive trend from the change to phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum. As one respondent stated, “The phenomenon students investigate are so complicated that it requires a group to get a grasp on them. It requires a combination of student knowledge and research to complete the complex picture that makes up a phenomenon.” Other respondents commented that this, like with staff collaboration mentioned previously, was more authentic collaboration as each student was expected to become an expert on a portion of the full phenomenon. Then, students combined this expertise to answer a difficult question that would have been impossible through individual research. As evidenced by one respondent that noted, “At the end of a semester, I have students saying things like I never could have solved that problem alone.” Another respondent echoed this ideal saying, “Students are now truly constructing knowledge in classes through teacher-guided, but student-led collaborative learning.”
Interviewees also described this student collaboration as a positive change to the overall student culture and climate. Interview participants noted that students were now deciding what was “important” to learn, creating “big idea” or critical questions, and overall negotiating learning paths based on their own interests. It was mentioned that this kept the curriculum innovative since students were selecting phenomena based on their personal interests and experiences from scholastic observations. One respondent added that not only was collaborative learning generating superior student learning outputs, but it was also producing life skills, noting that “secondary schools in Finland give mostly independent work. With the new curriculum, students are not only learning. They are learning to work in teams.”
Motivation/Student Engagement/Class Discussion
“There are some advantages to phenomenon-based curriculum, but student engagement and motivation is the most significant.” This respondent’s belief was shared by a number of interviewees. One respondent mentioned that in the former content-based curriculum students were sometimes forced to learn topics that did not interest them. With the change to phenomenon-based curriculum, students assumed responsibility for negotiating with their professors to determine phenomenon that they would like to research or study. Students were empowered with a more active role in their learning, and when the process was well guided, a more engaging classroom experience for all students was the result. Additionally, it was noted that students were creating new possibilities for their course studies and seeing more connections to specific situations in the classroom, which made the purpose for learning more clear and increased intrinsic motivation. In the early meetings discussing the new curriculum, teachers and professors were worried that students may choose phenomenon that weren’t challenging enough, but one participant noted that “only a few times did I have to stop students because their plan was not ambitious enough.”
Two respondents suggested this motivation and student engagement further led to an improvement in class discussions. After students completed their learning projects based on their defined phenomenon, professors and teachers would follow up with discussion on the topic. It was noted that these discussions went “deeper into the issues” and were overall “more thoughtful.”
Alternative Assessments
Six of the nine participants articulated that the change to phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum caused faculty at the JYU to rethink assessment practices. In the prior content-based curriculum, students typically culminated courses with written, summative assessments or essays on the specific content covered in that course. With the diversity of phenomenon studied in the new curriculum, conversely, assessment practices have greatly changed to keep pace. As one faculty member shared,
This change has given me courage to do things differently, before I had courses that I had only one way to complete final tasks; an essay. Now, students can build websites, write a song, create a teaching tool, or anything that summarizes their learning. Not all students best express themselves through writing.
Another respondent added, “You need standardized goals for certain things, but not measuring learning. Students are individuals and have different goals for their learning outcomes and assessment practices should reflect that.”
Other participants mentioned that assessment formats were also modified to fit the timetable logistics of the curricular change. In phenomenon-based courses, students require continuous feedback; this feedback is provided by peers and teachers/professors in group settings. The change to increased peer assessments and instructor feedback has, in a participant’s words, provided for assessments “that are more visible and specific to the individual phenomenon being studied.”
Holistic Degree
“Take a course, take an exam and when you are done forget about it . . . you are done and do not need to think about it ever again.” This response summarizes the problem respondents perceived with the former content-based curriculum. The student experience in the college of education was essentially a compilation of courses where material was taught and then assessed, with limited connections between the learning content. It was surmised that students would naturally make connections in their head, but as interviewees mentioned, this was not supported by collected, verifiable evidence. Faculty responses revealed the perception that phenomenon-based education curriculum has created a more holistic experience for students in the college of education as courses are more connected to each other. As another university faculty member noted,
We want a degree that is about the whole, not tasks or courses. This is a big change. Sometimes when you look at a syllabus, it is task after task and you do not even know where the progression becomes a whole. With the new curriculum, we are finally asking what a graduate of our program should be able to do when they finish, and we are designing courses with this strategic goal.
Another respondent added that the holistic quality of phenomenon-based education curriculum occurred naturally when students connected their courses to their preconceived biases and experiential knowledge. “The new curriculum makes students own perceptions and wonderings the center of the curriculum so they no longer think of completing a course as a standard.” Evidence of consistency between the instructors and students’ perceptions was seen in a respondent noting that in their student course evaluations, students described the curriculum as “more concrete” from their point of view.
Challenges
Students accustomed to traditional methods. “Do I really have to decide by myself what to learn?” This question epitomizes a professed challenge experienced by JYU faculty members. Students were accustomed to traditional teaching practices, where teachers taught the same content to students collectively. Thus, the change to phenomenon-based education curriculum created a new challenge, as students were expected to take direct control of their learning, which was difficult for a subset of the population. As one respondent put it, “It’s a question of taking responsibility for their own learning and sometimes it is quite difficult compared to when you are used to a school that a teacher tells you what to do.”
Another respondent added that students faced a certain amount of uncertainty with the curricular reforms and this was magnified by the lack of structure in the phenomenon-based education.
Students keep saying I need to know what needs to be done. What are the deadlines? What are the tasks to be completed? They keep saying or complaining that they are busy or I need to know what this is . . . and that’s why it’s difficult.
It was echoed by respondents that the first year was particularly difficult, as students were inexperienced with the new curricular methods.
First-year growing pains/increased staff workload. A professor shared that, “The first year was very demanding because we had to complete all course planning from zero, so not everything went perfectly and still many courses need to be made better.” This sentiment was echoed by a few participants, as the transition to phenomenon-based teacher education, especially in the first year, was somewhat difficult. In addition to the difficulty encountered by students with this new approach to learning, there were “growing pains” for the staff in creating a new curriculum. One respondent mentioned that the curriculum was created without literature to reference or experts to consult, as there were no documented examples of other universities making similar curricular reforms.
While the JYU teacher education staff somewhat agreed on a conceptual definition of phenomenon-based education, executing phenomenon-based teacher education in practice was a challenge. As one staff member mentioned, “I felt like such a bad teacher the first year. I was unsure of expectations and implementing a new curriculum that was so different than my prior approach.” To combat the challenges of defining the new curriculum in practice and instructor inexperience with this pedagogical transformation, JYU’s teacher education department held a number of collaborative meetings. These additional meetings created another challenge in that they increased the need to adjust work schedules.
Of course, it takes time to meet people and teams. Many teachers are in many teams. So, that is a problem. Too many people in too many teams and we have a just a certain amount of time in a day. You cannot do this 24/7.
As the interviewee summarized, meetings or negotiations were plentiful and overwhelming to the staff, especially in lieu of still having all other teaching responsibilities. Another respondent extended this saying, “I think it was easier before. We taught just a subject we were experts in. Now, we are learning ourselves along with the students.” Numerous staff members agreed that in addition to the challenges created by the increased workload and first-year growing pains, the change in their classroom role was also difficult.
Modification of instructor and student roles. With some professors at the JYU teacher education department having 30 years of experience in the profession, it was not surprising to hear respondents mention the difficulty of changing their role with students in courses. The most difficult component was that the curriculum did not only just change the content, but forced instructors to redefine the role of a teacher. One participant declared, “The change from content-based to phenomenon-based teaching cannot just happen suddenly or overnight. It is not just a new topic. It is your teacher identity. You need to create a new identity.” Another staff member added,
For me, it was quite difficult because the topics could be anything related to education. I did not have an expertise on all topics, which changed my relationship with the students. I couldn’t tell them what to do, but only ask them about their ideas and discuss with them.
In additional interviews, staff members mentioned that it was difficult for professors and instructors that had taught a course on their areas of expertise for many years to move from an expert to a facilitator role. The previous curriculum was described as more “straightforward” for instructors as they taught all students the same material, the same way. The new curriculum forced JYU faculty to leave their “comfort bubbles” to take a more authentic way of seeing education.
Extending on the theme of difficulty with change, one respondent suggested that the degree of struggle with getting educators to accept curricular reforms could be a consequence of past accomplishments of the Finnish education system asserting,
In Finland, it is too easy to think that we are quite good in our educational system. We do well on PISA so why change. But, it only takes one stone to start an avalanche. The idea that we are doing well can be bad for change.
Overall Satisfaction
“I have been very unsure throughout the process. I do not know if this is right or the best curriculum, but I know after seeing it in action we cannot turn back to the old curriculum.” This response came from a staff member, described as conflicted, on their perceptions of the results of the change from content-based to phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum. This statement was very powerful, as even though conflicted and overall unsure, the staff member sees no way that the JYU’s teacher department should turn back to the old curriculum. All nine staff members interviewed shared this sentiment. Although some staff members mentioned areas of struggle or potential for improvement, all agreed that the curricular reforms were a positive change for the department. This extended to their perceptions of their colleagues’ opinion of the reforms, a thought summarized by one respondent,
I think now our teachers believe that there is no turning back. They do not want to go back to content-based curriculum. They have learned a lot on their own teaching. They have learned a lot from each other because we have multi-scientific approaches to teaching the phenomenon-based courses.
In addressing the population of the staff that was critical of the reforms, a participant disclosed, “Some of them [critical staff members] keep complaining, but if you ask them whether they would like to change or go back? I think that most would say no.”
Other participants expressed enthusiasm on the positive aspects of curricular reforms, one respondent explaining,
We recently asked staff members how they feel about the curriculum after two years and the response was very positive. It has been a difficult, but rewarding change. Teachers are now teaching differently and students have now learned how to be better students.
This was echoed in other interviews with one faculty respondent sharing the data collected in end-of-course student surveys. “After the first year, results were mixed, but with most students in favor of the change. Since the first year, students have further embraced the new curriculum, with limited objections.” This same respondent added,
Teachers and professors are now seeing that in the previous curriculum we were only going on the surface of topics. Now, we have time to go deeper and understand what’s really going on in the school in relation to problems students will see in the profession.
Evidence of Credibility and Dependability
As mentioned in Chapter 3, this study sought to ensure credibility by selecting a research population that had experiential knowledge of phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum at the JYU. As Table 1 showed, the nine participant research population consisted of staff members that had between four and 33 years’ experience at the university. Since phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum was first implemented two years ago, all participants have directly participated in the curricular reforms. Of the original 12 identified experts of phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum, nine agreed to be part of the research population. Therefore, the research population was made up of ideal choices, based on familiarity with the phenomenon being studied.
Each interview was sent back to the participant to review and revise for the member-checking portion. This step allowed respondents to check the accuracy of their interview transcript, ensuring it portrayed their intended verbal descriptions of the phenomenon. This also offered the participant an opportunity to expand on answers where necessary.
The JYU is a bilingual university and all research participants were fluent English speakers and completed interviews in English. Participants admitted that responding in English, despite being fluent, is sometimes difficult and the researcher feared the possibility of errors due to misinterpreted verbiage (JYU, 2017). Combining the verbal interviews with the participant’s follow-up reviews of the interview transcripts ensured that credibility was not compromised due to linguistic miscommunications.
The research population was a diverse group from different departments within the JYU teacher education department. These staff members included feedback from staff-wide surveys, and all participants included thoughts shared by other colleagues in collaborative, curriculum development meetings. Thus, the data collected is transferable to the JYU’s teacher education department as a whole. Since the JYU’s phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum was not implemented in other Finnish universities, the findings cannot be extended to other institutions in Finland or other college or university teacher education departments globally.
All interviews were conducted identically using the semistructured interview template (Appendix C). Since themes from these interviews emerged in a straightforward manner, the dependability of the data collected is sufficiently robust.
The researcher avoided bias in the interpretation of the interview data as an additional part of the member-checking step. By giving participants control over the final transcription of the data used for analysis, the reported data would be similar if collected by any competent researcher.
Chapter Summary
Chapter 4 profiled the research population and then quickly reviewed the data analysis procedures that were more thoroughly outlined in Chapter 3. Then, the major themes from the phenomenological interviews of the JYU’s staff were detailed. The themes were divided into subtopics based on the two research questions (shared experiences and challenges). Following these subtopics, the overall satisfactions of the interview participants from the JYU’s teacher education department are summarized.
Chapter 5 will further analyze the research participants’ perceptions of phenomenon-based education curriculum in relation to the two research questions. This will include interpretations based on the conceptual framework. Finally, the researcher will offer recommendations for future research and reflections on phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum at the JYU.
CHAPTER 5
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
Introduction
The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine the shared experiences of instructors and curriculum leaders in the implementation of phenomenon-based education courses in the college of teacher education at the JYU. The researcher anticipates this will add to the existing body of published research on phenomenon-based education teacher education curriculum, which is currently almost nonexistent.
The research focused on answering the research questions:
1. What are the shared experiences of University of Jyväskylä professors in implementation of phenomenon-based education courses?
2. What shared challenges are University of Jyväskylä professors experiencing in implementation of phenomenon-based education courses?
This chapter begins by summarizing the findings in relation to these two research questions. It will then proceed to discussing the findings, significance of these findings, and future implications.
Summary of the Findings
Research Question 1
Based on the first research question, What are the shared experiences of University of Jyväskylä professors in implementation of phenomenon-based education courses? the semistructured interviews revealed the following themes: staff collaboration and culture, student collaboration, motivation/student engagement/class discussion, alternative assessments, and holistic degree.
Staff collaboration and culture. Often mentioned as the most significant outcome of the change to phenomenon-based education curriculum, participants declared that the new curriculum completely “changed the staff learning culture.” The curricular change required meetings and negotiations with staff from multidisciplinary departments and resulted in more authentic collaboration.
Student collaboration. Because the phenomenon studied were complicated, student projects required collaborative research of the various portions to “complete the picture.” University staff were impressed with students’ ability to complete work that “would have been impossible” for an individual and that students were developing the life skill of “learning to work in teams.”
Motivation/student engagement/class discussion. Phenomenon-based teacher education forced students to take a more active role in their learning. With students determining what was important to study, intrinsic motivation increased. In addition, instructors reported class discussions went “deeper into the issues” and overall higher in quality.
Alternative assessments. In the prior curriculum, almost every course culminated with either a written, summative assessment or an essay. The change to phenomenon-based curriculum opened the door for assessments that are more fitting to each student’s individual project, which could include “websites, song, or other learning tools.” Continuous feedback was also necessary for students’ projects to self and peer assessments became a common practice.
Holistic degree. A mentioned weakness of previous curriculum was the lack of connections between courses and comprehensive learning goals. The new phenomenon-based curriculum has “put student wonderings at the center of their learning” and students’ describe teacher education coursework as more “concrete” than before.
Research Question 2
The second research question, What shared challenges are JYU professors experiencing in implementation of phenomenon-based education courses? revealed the following themes: students accustomed to traditional methods, first-year growing pains/staff increased workload, and modification of instructor and student roles.
Students accustomed to traditional methods. Students were accustomed to traditional pedagogical methods where teachers led all lessons and a subset struggled with their new roles and responsibilities under the new phenomenon-based curriculum. Since the class expectations were only semistructured in the new curriculum, some students complained that there was too much uncertainty and the curriculum lacked structure.
First-year growing pains/increased staff workload. The JYU’s teacher education department developed their phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum without consultation or guidance from academic literature or leaders with similar experience. Thus, development of the curriculum required an immense amount of collaborative meetings to determine what phenomenon-based teacher education was conceptually and practically. This increased workload and uncertainty was stressful for staff in addition to completing customary instructor responsibilities.
Modification of instructor and student roles. Modifying instructional roles in the classroom was difficult because instructors were accustomed to being experts on all topics covered in their courses. Phenomenon-based curriculum altered instructors’ tasks to more facilitatory roles, as students became experts on their selected phenomenon. Instructors had to modify their teaching identity to fit this new role, which was a thorny transition.
Overall Satisfaction
All nine staff members interviewed acknowledged that they preferred the new phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum to the former content-based curriculum. While some staff members acknowledged that there was still room for improvement in certain areas, no one considered changing course to a different curriculum. Staff members further shared that satisfaction survey responses from students and staff provided evidence that the great majority have embraced the new phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum.
Discussion of the Findings
Comparison to the Literature Review
In the literature review (Chapter 2), student-centered and constructivist learning theories like experiential learning, problem-based learning, inquiry-based learning, and integrative learning were compared to the JYU’s phenomenon-based curriculum. The major themes that materialized from the participant interviews including increased student collaboration, improved student questioning, intrinsic motivation, and alternative assessments correspond with characteristics of these constructivist learning theories described in published scholarly literature. In addition, literature suggesting inquiry-based research component of phenomenon-based education would produce higher order questioning and subsequent learning was verified by respondents claim that class discussions now “went deeper into the issues” and were overall “more thoughtful.”
Kirschner et al.’s (2006) forewarning that minimally guided approaches put too much responsibility on an amateur to play the role of an expert did not seem to come to fruition. While some students struggled in their new roles, respondents claimed that the majority did very well in investigating their selected phenomenon and sharing this research to class, which resulted in rich class discussions. It is possible that Kirschner et al.’s criticism is not valid since the students in the JYU’s teacher education program have experience beyond the average student labeled as an amateur.
It was acknowledged by participants that the lack of published literature on phenomenon-based education curriculum made creating the new curriculum a challenge. This lack of published literature was identified in the literature review. Furthermore, interviewees confirmed that the curriculum development process was largely based on instructor hunches and feedback from staff and students. The department’s instructors, not centralized local or national bureaucracies drove the curricular reforms. This decentralized approach to drafting curriculum, as the review of literature suggested, is common practice in Finnish educational institutions.
The researcher concludes in the literature review that the complexity of phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum makes it impossible to measure quantitatively. Research participants supported this mentioning that there are limited quantitative measurements, outside of graduation rates. Thus, evaluating the curriculum quantitatively may never be feasible or valid.
Findings in Consideration of Conceptual Framework
The research followed a social constructivist framework, where participants shared interpretations of an event or phenomenon are combined to define the true meaning of the subject or topic. The shared interpretations, with consideration for the two research questions, uncovered the following themes:
• staff collaboration and culture,
• student collaboration,
• motivation/student engagement/class discussion,
• alternative assessments,
• holistic degree,
• students accustomed to traditional methods,
• first-year growing pains/increase staff workload, and
• modification of student and instructor roles.
To be reported as a shared interpretation, four of the nine participants’ interview transcripts contained verbiage relevant to the theme (see Table 2).
The researcher’s role in the study was to select participants with vast experiential knowledge of the research topic and then allow them to share this knowledge as freely as possible. In consideration, the researcher conducted semistructured interviews with minimal interruptions and then empowered participants with complete control over their final interview transcripts collected for data analysis. These interviews produced the eight clearly identifiable themes, requiring minimal interpretation by the researcher.
Conclusions
Based on perceptions of collected staff responses and review of the analyzed data, the JYU’s transformation from content-based to phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum has been an overall success. Five of the eight themes that emerged from the interviews were considered positive, versus only three that were challenges or negative components. Of the three challenges, it could be argued that any curricular reform approach would have similar issues. A difficult first year of implementation and overcoming students’ and staff familiarity with the former curriculum are reasonable expectations for any major curricular change. Further, the increased workload generated by numerous staff negotiations and collaboration are necessary for successful implementation and incessant improvement of the new curriculum. The notion that curriculum is drafted by a central body and then teachers, instructors, and professors follow the script to effectively teach the curriculum is erroneous. Teaching is a very complex process and thus determining what curriculum looks like in practice requires continuous negotiations and meetings. In addition, this development and delivery of curriculum should regularly evolve to meet the needs of the students’ community (Henson, 2015).
While it is reasonable to assume that university staff may have confirmation bias for supporting a curriculum they helped draft, the researcher is not concerned with this possibility. The stereotype of Finnish people being honest and humble was certainly true from the researcher’s experiences interviewing staff from the JYU’s teacher education department (Cartmell & Earl, 2011). One interviewee bluntly mentioned that they were surprised that a scholar from a foreign institution “judged the new curriculum as worthy of studying.” Other respondents mentioned that the university saw a huge uptick in visitors from foreign institutions since the PISA scores 10 years ago showed Finland as global leader and added that “the people that visited and were expecting to see something special probably left disappointed.” With this supplementary context, the reliability of the truths determined from the research should have increased validity.
Limitations of the Study
This study focused on faculty perceptions of phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum at the JYU and as previously mentioned, results are not transferable to all universities or scholastic institutions within Finland or worldwide. These results are also not transferable for evaluation of the Finnish National Curriculum, which now mandates the inclusion of at least one phenomenon-based course at the primary and secondary level.
Beyond this disclaimer, the researcher is confident in the credibility of the study since the participants were extremely knowledgeable of the subject area and necessary steps were observed to ensure accuracy in data collection and analysis. The results and conclusions are accurate illustrations of the perceptions shared by the JYU’s teacher education department. While these results and conclusions cannot be considered universal truths that extend to other universities, the results of a similar university that transformed their curriculum from content to phenomenon-based teacher education could see similar outcomes.
Recommendations
Student-Centered Sample
This phenomenological study focused on professors’, instructors’, and administrators’ perceptions of the JYU’s implementation of phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum. The study is authentic because the selected participants were among the most knowledgeable to the phenomenon studied. However much like the university’s curricular reforms changed instruction from teacher centered to student centered, the researcher recommends that future studies focus on, or at the very least include, student perspectives on implementation. Some staff members interviewed included perceptions based on their end-of-course student feedback, but a more rigorous study could follow the same research methodology to collect data on student perceptions.
Broader Sample
Under the premise that a more student-centered study would provide a more comprehensive evaluation of the JYU’s phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum, the researcher recommends that future research involve more staff and student participants. Since research on phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum was almost nonexistent when the researcher began this study, a phenomenological study focusing on staff members with experiential knowledge of the implementation process was determined the most logical since the topic was so complex and multifaceted. With this study combined with JYU researchers like Pennti Moilanen on phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum, the curriculum should be easier to understand both conceptually and practically. Thus, future research should focus on including a large research population to gain an even broader understanding of the curriculum. A mixed methods study may be the most desirable for meeting this initiative. The quantitative portion should be a survey that is sent to all faculty and students in the JYU’s teacher education department. The qualitative portion should include focus group interviews with a smaller population of students, staff, or both or phenomenological interviews with both populations.
Teacher Education Preparation, Not Training
In 2009, the American Education Research Association, with the assistance of 15 deans and education professors, published an honest and thorough study detailing the state of teacher education programs based on credible research (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2009). The study used this research to determine how effective current methods in teacher education programs prepared students for teaching in 21st-century classrooms (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2009). A major revelation from the report is that teacher education students should be prepared for the nuances of the classroom, not trained. In this example, preparation means students are taught problem-solving techniques and skills necessary to become lifelong learners as opposed to content knowledge that becomes forgotten or at best applicable only in certain situations (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2009).
A central idea of phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum is that classroom occurrences teachers face on a daily basis are quite complex and cannot be fully understood by reading a textbook or hearing a professor lecture on the topic. In addition, it is an erroneous mindset to believe that a teacher education student can be taught all the necessary knowledge to be a successful professional educator in a two- or three-year program. The JYU’s phenomenon-based teacher education program is an example of the added value of teacher education programs that prepare students as opposed to train students. Training teacher education students will only allow them to fruitfully teach the average classroom that fit the situations detailed in their studied content. Preparing teacher education students will create flexible and innovative educators that are lifelong learners, problem solvers, and have the tools to succeed in any classroom environment.
Implications
In a participant interview, it was mentioned that certain staff members at the JYU were resistant to curricular change because they believed Finland’s scholastic success proved that their current practices were “working.” In addition, a population of staff was hesitant to embrace phenomenon-based teacher education because “no other universities were using the approach and there was no published evidence suggesting it would work.” For the JYU, the researcher would like this to be used in association with other studies on phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum to evaluate progress and inform future strategic decision making. This study in combination with journal publications by the JYU researchers should provide reviewable evidence to leaders of scholastic institutions that may consider reforming their curriculum from content based to phenomenon based, or similar student-centered models.
From an educational leadership perspective, the JYU’s phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum introduces a reality that 21st-century leaders must acknowledge; leadership will require continuous and rapid change. As Fullan (2014) stated, “Today’s leaders face a dilemma: failing to act when the environment is radically changing leads to extinction, yet making quick decisions under conditions of seeming chaos can be equally fatal” (p. xiii). Unlike past leadership decision making, 21st-century leaders will face increasingly complex conditions that require almost immediate responses. With this is in mind, future curriculum, like the JYU’s phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum, should be adaptable to quickly evolving environmental conditions. This study details only one example of an innovative and adaptable curriculum, but all future education leaders should consider the impact a curriculum will have on their staff and student culture and create curriculum and institutional policies that are rapidly amendable in reaction to a swiftly and perpetually changing educational landscape.
Conclusions and Reflections
As a teacher and lifelong learner, the hypocrisies experienced in teacher education and professional development programs are maddening. For example, why was a graduate lesson on student-centered learning presented in a lecture hall from a PowerPoint with zero student interaction? Why was a professional development session titled “Engaging Students: Bringing Fun Back to the Classroom” one of the most lackluster presentations ever viewed? While these are just anecdotal examples, it is likely that most aspiring and professional educators have similar stories from their own professional learning experiences. This is not meant to demean the profession, but shine a spotlight on an area of potential growth for educational leaders and the reason the JYU’s phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum interested the researcher. The cliché “practice what you preach” is often disregarded at the highest levels of educational leadership.
The JYU’s phenomenon-based teacher education curriculum, beyond presenting a framework for lifelong learning that is adaptable to any classroom environment, empowers students as future professionals. It is logical that to empower students our teacher education students must experience personal empowerment themselves first. The cliché “practice what you preach” should be extended to all professional development sessions and teacher education courses. If future educators are to lead innovative, engaging, and student-centered classrooms, all professional learning should authentically model these practices. Future education leaders must be the change we wish to see in the world or in this case, the classroom.
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APPENDICES
APPENDIX A
RESEARCH PARTICIPANT RECRUITMENT LETTER
RESEARCH PARTICIPANT RECRUITMENT LETTER
Good afternoon, Dr. (Insert potential participant’s name):
My name is Billy Jackson and my home university is the American College of Education (Indianapolis, IN). Dr. (University Leader Anonymous) recommended that I contact you because of your curriculum leadership experience.
I will need participants for semistructured interviews with professors and curriculum leaders on my dissertation topic, phenomenon-based education, and was wondering if you would be kind enough to participate. The interview will take approximately one hour and will be conducted by Skype, FaceTime, or telephone call. After the initial interview, I will send a transcription of the interview. You will be able to change any information transcribed that is inaccurate or add information that was not shared in the initial interview. This will ensure accurate information is collected on your experiences with phenomenon-based education curriculum prior to inclusion in my dissertation research. The interviews will be conducted (Insert Dates after IRB Approval). If you are willing to participate, please complete the accompanied research waiver and request a specific interview date and time.
Thank you much,
Billy Jackson
American College of Education
APPENDIX B
INFORMED CONSENT AGREEMENT
INFORMED CONSENT AGREEMENT
Informed Consent to Participate in a Research Study
PHENOMENON-BASED LEARNING AT UNIVERSITY OF JYVÄSKYLÄ (FINLAND): INSTRUCTORS PERCEPTIONS ON CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION
Billy Jackson, Ed Doctorate candidate, Principal Investigator
Introduction
You are invited to be in a research study. Research studies are designed to gain scientific knowledge that may help other people in the future. There are no health risks associated with this study. Your participation is voluntary. Please take your time to make your decision, and ask the researcher to explain any words or information that you do not understand.
Why Is This Study Being Done?
The purpose of this study is to reveal instructor and curriculum leaders perceptions of phenomenon-based education implementation at the University of Jyväskylä.
How Many People Will Take Part In The Study?
Approximately 10 University of Jyväskylä faculty members will take part in this study. A total of 12 subjects are the most that would be able to enter the study.
What Is Involved In This Research Study?
Each participant will complete approximately a one-hour interview. The interview will then be transcribed and sent to the participant for their approval and to ensure there were no misstatements or errors in transcription.
How Long Will You Be In The Study?
You will be in the study for about one hour plus transcription review time.
You can decide to stop participating at any time. If you decide to stop participating in the study we encourage you to talk to the researcher.
What Are The Risks Of The Study?
There are no risks associated with this study.
Are There Benefits To Taking Part In The Study?
If you agree to take part in this study, there may or may not be direct benefit to you. We hope the information learned from this study will both inform the university leaders as well as academic leaders globally.
What About Confidentiality?
We will do our best to make sure that your personal information is kept confidential. However, we cannot guarantee absolute confidentiality. U.S. federal law states that we must keep your study records private.
If we publish the information we learn from this study, you will not be identified by name or in any other way. In the event that participants are directly quoted, the researcher will contact each participant for personal approval.
What Are Your Rights as a Research Study Participant?
Taking part in this study is voluntary. You may choose not to take part or you may leave the study at any time. Refusing to participate or leaving the study will not result in any penalty.
Who Do You Call If You Have Questions or Problems?
For questions about the study or in the event of a research-related injury, contact the study investigator, Billy Jackson at (xxx)xxx-xxxx. You should also call the investigator if you have a concern or complaint about the research.
For questions about your rights as a research participant or methods employed, contact the American College of University IRB Chair Dr. Kathryn Talley @Kathryn.Talley@ace.edu.or Mr. Jackson’s advisor Dr. Tiffany Hamlett @Tiffany.Hamlett@ace.edu You should contact if:
o You have concerns or complaints about the research.
o The research staff cannot be reached.
o You want to talk to someone other than the research staff.
You will be given a signed and dated copy of this consent form.
Certificate of Consent
I have the read the information about the study, or it has been read to me. I have had the opportunity to ask questions about the study, and any questions have been answered to my satisfaction. I consent voluntarily to be a participant in this study.
________________________________________________
Subject Name (Printed)
________________________________________________ ____________________
Subject Signature Date
I confirm the participant was given an opportunity to ask questions about the study and all the questions asked by the participant have been answered to the best of my ability. I confirm that the individual has not been coerced into giving consent, and the consent been given freely and voluntarily.
________________________________________________
Lead Researcher (Printed)
________________________________________________ ____________________
Lead Researcher Signature Date
APPENDIX C
SEMISTRUCTURED INTERVIEW TEMPLATE
SEMISTRUCTURED INTERVIEW TEMPLATE
1. Tell me about your role within the University of Jyväskylä and your experiences with phenomenon-based education curriculum.
a. Clarification questions based on their answer and field notes
2. Tell me, based on your perceptions, what phenomenon-based education curriculum is at the University of Jyväskylä?
a. Clarification questions based on their answer and field notes
3. Describe specifically how one of the courses you’ve observed or taught at the University of Jyväskylä has changed from the former curriculum to the current phenomenon-based education curriculum?
a. Clarification questions based on their answer and field notes
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