How to improve K12 teachers’ ICT competence in Finland: The Joensuu region case

Abstract

Unlike the usual, administration-led approach to plan and offer ICT training for K12 teachers, an action-driven approach emerges from the school activities at the grassroots level. A Finnish instance of the action-driven K12 teachers’ ICT competence training was designed and implemented in the country’s eastern region around the municipality of Joensuu in 2015. It was based on two innovations: (1) trying-out new ICT-based learning methods or tools as in-class tutoring by peer training, and (2) sharing the results at a regional continuing education festival. The innovations tacked four common challenges in the ICT training: level of abstraction, training transfer, financial, and professional identity challenges; all of them having a human and a technical dimension. A parallel case in the country’s south western region helps to reflect upon the approach.