Live, Laugh and Love to Learn Turning Learning from Traditional to Transformational

Abstract

In recent years, educators and policy makers have been focusing on student achievement and well-being. After the great Pisa -success and glory, Finnish researchers have risen up discussion about future skills, school activity and motivation – fields where Finnish students haven’t indicated so well. Quickly changing 21st century challenges teachers to see life outside the school and recognize not only the core subjects but also the key skills needed outside there. When transferring from traditional to transformational education, one has to imagine new ways to think about teaching and learning. The research project, introduced in this article, focuses on transformational pedagogic and the questions of assessment in the learning process. The aim of the research is to identify modern ways to develop teaching and learning to create individual learning paths and to give each child equal learning possibilities in 21st century learning environments. The ongoing research project highlights the questions of evaluation and assessment as tools for each child to find individual ways to learn and achieve learning goals at his best. According to Meriläinen and Piispanen (2013) the assessment is seen as one of the key factors when moving teaching and learning from traditional to more transformational settings. The classroom intervention is based on the Contextual Pedagogical approach to Learning (CPAL) as a framework of teacher´s 21st Century Civil Skills Pedagogical Content Knowledge ((Meriläinen & Piispanen, 2012, 2013). This design research shows that working in CPAL framework supports learning, where everyone will succeed, through individual learning paths, in primary school contexts.