Project Based Teacher Education to Develop Materials, Instruction and Culture for Phenomenon-Based Steam Projects with Pupils in Schools

Abstract

In Finland, the most radical ongoing school reform is fading out the borders around school subjects to better prepare young people for future challenges. The new National curricular guidelines include phenomenon - based learning (PhBL) at all school levels. In teacher education, we have adopted a project - based approach for accustoming teachers to this change. Communities of learners with diverse areas of expertize are called together to accomplish projects, along with student teachers. The driving questions are directing the development of materials and guidance to realize cross - subject educational projects with pupils in schools. We are applying Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour to examine student teachers’ salient beliefs for three primary constructs: attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control defining their intention to accomplish PhBL. The initial data were collected by a questionnaire from 14 special education student teachers, after participating in a Checkpoint Leonardo: Stealth – project to develop teaching for cross - subject science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) learning sequence. Three of the students were interviewed after the project. The main findings for improving teacher education are the perceived opposition of pupils’ parents towards PhBL and the variance of concerns that student teachers have towards realizing PhBL. These findings are used as the basis of an intervention in the following years’ project - based teacher education.