What are your research topics?
My research focuses on the role of digital tools in school. What I am particularly interested in is how digital tools employed and practices applied by professionals in various fields can be introduced to teaching at schools – what learning is like when children and adolescents create something new using digital tools. The study of these phenomena requires organising new phenomena of learning in partnership with teachers.
I investigate learning in authentic classroom situations. Together with teachers, we are planning teaching experiments where pupils have the opportunity to familiarise themselves with new digital tools and practices.
Where and how does the topic of your research have an impact?
Developing the school culture and teaching is challenging. Everyone has been at school, and everyone has strong feelings and opinions about teaching. This is why classroom research is needed.
It deepens the theoretical understanding of the role of digital tools in learning. It helps teachers and policymakers in planning teaching and setting educational goals as well.
What is particularly inspiring in your field right now?
Nothing beats seeing the enthusiasm of children and adolescents when they get to do things they might not have thought they would get to do at school.
In research projects, pupils have, among other things, created concepts for sustainability inventions, works of digital visual arts and models that explain scientific phenomena.
The planning of teaching experiments and the collaborative study of teaching and learning with teachers remind us that the research is carried out for the sake of children and adolescents.
Kalle Juuti is the Professor of Digital Learning at Schools at the Faculty of Educational Sciences.