If you wish to attend online, please email Kati Jääskö-Santala (kati.jaasko-santala@helsinki.fi) to request the Teams link for the event.
In this seminar, professor Arniika Kuusisto, professor Sami Paavola, senior university lecturer Anna Rainio, university lecturer Liubov Folger and docent Riikka Hofmann present their research. We will share abstracts for the seminar closer to the event.
Here are additional details about their presentations
10.15-11.00 Professor Arniika Kuusisto (Early Childhood Education at the University of Helsinki and Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Oxford) will present her research
11.00-11.45 Professor Sami Paavola (Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki), Senior University Lecturer Anna Rainio (Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki), University Lecturer Liubov Folger (Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki) and Professor Riikka Hofmann (Learning Sciences at the University of Cambridge, Docent in Psychology of Education at the University of Helsinki):
Developing theory through qualitive inquiry in practice settings: On abductive methodology
Abstract: Generating theory through qualitative inquiry in practice settings remains a mystery in methodological literature, particularly in research that is based on ethnographic, participatory and practice-based settings in educational research. There is potential in the concept of abduction in articulating this important part of a research process. We have an emerging research programme on abductive methodology that we have been developing on various conference presentations (see e.g.: Hofmann et al 2024a; 2024b Rainio, 2025; Paavola et al., 2024). Abduction was originally presented by Charles Peirce in the 1860s as a third main mode of reasoning alongside induction and deduction. Abduction is now an established concept in the methodological literature but quite controversial when it comes to how it is interpreted. We maintain that abduction is supposed to give means for ‘theorising’, to describe and help to explain how theoretical concepts are constructed during the qualitative research process. In our presentation we give main interpretations of abduction in methodological literature and as a means for qualitative analyses with some examples.