On the road of becoming democracy educators?

Action research about the growth of primary-school teacher students

Authors

• Mikko Hiljanen Jyväskylän yliopisto
• Riitta Tallavaara Jyväskylän yliopisto
• Matti Rautiainen Jyväskylän yliopisto
• Perttu Männistö Jyväskylän yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33350/ka.111332

Keywords:

democracy as a way of life, democratic competences, primary-school teacher-education

Abstract

The Finnish education system is based on the skills and autonomy of teachers, which teachers adopt during teacher training. However, several studies have shown that, although democracy as a value is identified in all Finnish teacher training units, the training provides only little capacity to implement democratic education. In this article, we analyze a project that has aimed to provide primary-school teacher-students with competencies to realize democracy and social education. First, we describe the daily life of the group and the activities that have been used to achieve our educational goals. Then we examine the changes that have happened in students' thinking by analyzing writings that the students have done during their training through a two-stage content analysis and reflecting the findings with the theoretical framework of democratic competencies created by the Council of Europe. Based on the analysis, we suggest that to create a foundation of democratic way of life in schools and more widely in education is a continuous journey where one has to constantly recreate the school culture through dialogue and interaction, which is on one hand influenced by people's perceptions of themselves and group activities, and on the other hand by previously adopted perceptions of school and education.